worst:

Te Amo Corazón

Betcha By Golly Wow

dinner with delores

Sexy MF

best:

when doves cry

1999

Gett Off

Kiss

[Edited 12/1/16 19:14pm]

IamBryan said:

unpopular choice, i'm sure, but: "thieves in the temple". loved it from the start.

correct me if i'm wrong but isn't this the only real new/new song on GB?

great song, nice video, superb maxi single extended version that's one of
my favorite prince songs full stop, that extended version.

worst lead single is probably "betcha by golly wow", just because, well we all
know because what and why. bit of an anti-climax.

IamBryan said:

Best

When Doves Cry - This song became a phenomenon that set the stage for the Purrple Rain LP and movie.

I Wanna Be Your Lover - If he had picked another first single and it was unsuccessful, then his career would have started with a lower initial trajectory. Radio wouldn't have given "Lover" a chance as a second single off the album since he will still seen as a new artist. Even established artists have some difficulty launching a second single if the first is unsuccessful.

Worst

Hate U - I love this song and it was a great fit for R&B radio but not pop radio. Especially given all the more accessible nuggets on TGE.

Pink Cashmere - Similar as above in that I love this song but it was too complex for pop radio. I am not suggesting that Peach should have been the lead single, but that surely he had something better to include as the new song on "the Hits" and then released as the new song. Artists during the time often had huge hits with the new songs on their hits albums.

IstenSzek said:

unpopular choice, i'm sure, but: "thieves in the temple". loved it from the start.

correct me if i'm wrong but isn't this the only real new/new song on GB?

great song, nice video, superb maxi single extended version that's one of
my favorite prince songs full stop, that extended version.

worst lead single is probably "betcha by golly wow", just because, well we all
know because what and why. bit of an anti-climax.

My favourite single too. We've always had similar taste.

It was the only new song on GB, and written in anger. Which often ended up in strong song.

kepurplehunter said:

IamBryan said:

worst:

Te Amo Corazón

Betcha By Golly Wow

dinner with delores

Sexy MF

best:

when doves cry

1999

Gett Off

Kiss

Best Head Sexy Mr Lady Cab Driver The Max Purple Rain The Beautiful Ones The Worst ????? None Sorry!!!!

First singles?

214 said:

kepurplehunter said:

IamBryan said: Best Head Sexy Mr Lady Cab Driver The Max Purple Rain The Beautiful Ones The Worst ????? None Sorry!!!!

First singles?

from albums

IamBryan said:

worst:

Te Amo Corazón

Betcha By Golly Wow

dinner with delores

Sexy MF

best:

when doves cry

1999

Gett Off

Kiss

[Edited 12/1/16 19:14pm]

IamBryan said:

IstenSzek said:

nextedition said:

IstenSzek said:

unpopular choice, i'm sure, but: "thieves in the temple". loved it from the start.

correct me if i'm wrong but isn't this the only real new/new song on GB?

great song, nice video, superb maxi single extended version that's one of
my favorite prince songs full stop, that extended version.

worst lead single is probably "betcha by golly wow", just because, well we all
know because what and why. bit of an anti-climax.

Yes Thieves was a slamming first single. And one i heard the extended version for the first time i wet my pants!

His post warner periode is a disaster in term of leading singles. Just because TMBGITW was an international hit, he thought that he will find success by releasing a low tempo as a lead single.

But when he was with Warner, they always picked up the right one.

for me the worst leading ever is Te Amo Corazon, never understood this song..

But Sexy Motherfucker is fantastic, a Prince classic.

I wonder why you don't like that excellent funk track?

gandorb said:

Worst

Hate U - I love this song and it was a great fit for R&B radio but not pop radio. Especially given all the more accessible nuggets on TGE.

Technically speaking, "Eye Hate U" was the 2nd single from "The Gold Experience".

The 1st was "The Most Beautiful Girl In The World", even if it was released 2 years before the album.

I think the worst of all was "Betcha By Golly Wow".

As an album track it was OK, but come on.... it is the record "you born to do", the first record after freeing you from the WB slaverish..... and between 36 songs to choose from you release a faithful cover to a Stylistics song as the first single?!?!?!?

TwiliteKid said:

IamBryan said:

from albums

Most of your list weren't singles, let alone the first from that album.

Yeah, that is what i was talkin about

calhounlovejoy said:

IamBryan said:

worst:

Te Amo Corazón

Betcha By Golly Wow

dinner with delores

Sexy MF

best:

when doves cry

1999

Gett Off

Kiss

[Edited 12/1/16 19:14pm]

[/quote "All these non-singing, non-dancing, wish-I-had-me-some-clothes fools who tell me my albums suck. Why should I pay any attention to them?" Prince

haha sarcasm??? I get it, I could say something pretty disrespectful, but i wont...

SomeSoldier said:

IamBryan said:

worst:

Te Amo Corazón

Betcha By Golly Wow

dinner with delores

Sexy MF

best:

when doves cry

1999

Gett Off

Kiss

I agree with your best choices. Worst, for me, Alphabet St (my least favourite of the hits).

yeah...it's not great...but it isnt diiner with delores bad either! lol

TwiliteKid said:

IamBryan said:

from albums

Most of your list weren't singles, let alone the first from that album.

please explain what you mean?

nextedition said:

IamBryan said:

worst:

Te Amo Corazón

Betcha By Golly Wow

dinner with delores

Sexy MF

best:

when doves cry

1999

Gett Off

Kiss

[Edited 12/1/16 19:14pm]

In europe sexy mf was a smash. Great first single.

in the US..it peaked at #66..that equals.... shit the bed.... i

SquirrelMeat said:

IstenSzek said:

unpopular choice, i'm sure, but: "thieves in the temple". loved it from the start.

correct me if i'm wrong but isn't this the only real new/new song on GB?

great song, nice video, superb maxi single extended version that's one of
my favorite prince songs full stop, that extended version.

worst lead single is probably "betcha by golly wow", just because, well we all
know because what and why. bit of an anti-climax.

My favourite single too. We've always had similar taste.

It was the only new song on GB, and written in anger. Which often ended up in strong song.

IamBryan said:

TwiliteKid said:

IamBryan said: Most of your list weren't singles, let alone the first from that album.

please explain what you mean?

Probably they mean that the original question was about the first single released from each album, not any subsequent singles or tracks that were never released as singles--and that therefore your list included songs that had nothing to do with the question. So (at the risk of being annoying but also because it makes it easier for me to formulate my own answer to the original question) the relevant songs from each album (excluding those for the Hits/The B-Sides, The Chocolate Invasion, The Slaughterhouse, and those albums with no commercial singles) are the following:

Soft and Wet, I Wanna Be Your Lover, Uptown, Controversy, 1999, When Doves Cry, Raspberry Beret (for the US--Paisley Park in other regions), Kiss, Sign o the Times, Alphabet St., Batdance, Thieves in the Temple, Gett Off, Sexy MF, Letitgo, The Most Beautiful Girl in the World (if you want--but I would accept an argument that Eye Hate U might count), Dinner with Delores, Betcha By Golly Wow, The Truth (hey, it was available before the album--but, yeah, this hardly counts--I mean, I'm not counting the promos from The Vault... Old Friends 4 Sale--although I actually heard Extraordinary on the radio), The Greatest Romance Ever Sold, The Work Part 1, Musicology, Te Amo Corazon, Guitar, Dance 4 Me (pretty limited but it was released), Fixurlifeup (hey, it's credited as much to him as all those "and the Revolution" and "and the NPG" albums are), Breakfast Can Wait, Fallinlove2nite (well, a different version released way before the album, as with TMBGITW--so maybe Hardrocklover?), and, for HnR Phase 2--well, I don't really know. None of the tracks released separately from the album seem to have been connected with the concept of an album at the time of their release, so I'm not sure there really is a single "from" the album at all.

So, the best of those, in my opinion is clearly When Doves Cry. Artistically, of course, its unique, startling in its sound, compelling--but since singles are largely a matter of advertising, it was also clearly successful in its goal of selling the larger product (which in this case was much more than just an album, but a film and, honestly, the whole idea of Prince to a mainstream audience--the albums before would have never opened the necessary doors for him to get to all the places he got afterward, and without When Doves Cry I doubt that Purple Rain would have accomplished that feat either.

The worst? A harder question. There are the miscalculations of releases like Gett Off and Sexy MF that couldn't be radio hits and thus couldn't really function well as advertisements (before the internet, unplayable material didn't really work that well to get people's attention. You could push boundaries, but Gett Off barely got played and Sexy MF didn't get played at all in my neck of the woods). Then there was the problem of the frequency of midtempo love ballads after the one-off success of TMBGITW (which didn't really work as a single for an album, just as its own separate thing--and I suppose as an FU to Warners)--I'm not sure, honestly, that any of the first singles after Batdance worked (and Batdance didn't probably work so much in and of itself as it and the album fed off off Bat-hysteria at the time).

In fact, here are the good first singles--the ones that effectively introduced their albums and made it seem like a worthwhile purchase to those who weren't already going to buy it, that didn't feel somehow like a retread of an earlier single (not good in an advertising pitch for the new album), and that were the strongest (or nearly the strongest) cases to be made for their albums:

Soft and Wet (not great--but about the catchiest, most radio-ready thing on the album), I Wanna Be Your Lover (much stronger--and clearly it worked), Controversy (I don't know what its actual impact was, but it's a strong track, and I assume made some difference--at the time, Prince was under the radar for me), When Doves Cry, Raspberry Beret (yes, it's a big shift--but out of the songs on Around the World in a Day, which was a tough sell to an audience that bought in on a different sound, it probably did as well as it could. I mean, it was honest about what was coming on the album, and it's a good pop song), and Alphabet St.

It's not that the other songs are bad--I like (and even love) most of them. They just didn't do what a single, especially a first one, should have done: start an interest in an album that is either strong enough on its own to sell the album, or (more likely) that subsequent singles can build on enough to sell the album. 1999 didn't sell the album as a first single--it only took off as a single in its re-release, after Little Red Corvette's run. Kiss was a fake-out, not representative at all of the album it came from, so interest didn't build beyond it. Sign o the Times didn't get a decent single until U Got The Look (SoTT and IIWYG are brilliant songs--but not good singles). I already talked about Batdance... and there's a lot of very good (and a couple great songs) in the rest of the list--but nothing really worked as a single (except for TMBGITW, which did nothing for the album Prince finally stuck it on, in a less poppy version)--and after Sexy MF, none of them were even among the standout tracks on their albums for me (except maybe Dance 4 Me, and I know many of you here can't stand it--and we're more likely to cut it slack than the world at large). By the end, I'm not sure any of Prince's singles still did what singles are intended to do--but even in the eighties, he often relied on second or third singles to accomplish what should have been done by the first one. And by the time we reached this century, there often wasn't even a push at all beyond that first single.


Oh, and for the record, Thieves in the Temple is a favorite of mine--I just can't see it as a particularly good first single. Maybe that's because the subsequent ones (scattered as they were among three other artists as well as Prince's own New Power Generation) did such a poor job of building on any momentum Thieves started (not to mention the slamming of the brakes of the movie's reception). I might have been unfair in leaving it out of my "good" list, but as I said, I'm looking at these as first singles, not just as songs (or even just as singles)

IamBryan said:

nextedition said:

IamBryan said: In europe sexy mf was a smash. Great first single.

in the US..it peaked at #66..that equals.... shit the bed.... i

Sexy MF is wonderful, excellent leading single (and also, this song was promoted heavily live on Prince's D&P tour 1992).

You americans are weird sometimes and overly sensitive - I guess it was the word Motherfucker that was the problem in the US? Crazy is my reaction, some americans are just too sensitive.


But, yeah true Sexy MF was a smash in Europe. First time I heard the song (studio version) was on danish national radio P3, and I was in awe...

I bought the cd single and also the musicvideo-special on VHS. Wow memories, those were the days.

Sexy MF =

[Edited 12/2/16 22:44pm]

Sexy MF was a smash in Japan too, as was a lot of the late 1980s - TGE period. It is fun listening the excited recognition that the Japanese audience had when they recognized the opening notes of the song. Here in the US, it was mostly treated as an afterthought.