For some reason I have not listened to this in a goodwhile. So, on a long journey home last night I put it on from start to finish. It's frankly bloody amazing! Truly felt energised, happy & in love with that sound. To come from Purple Rain, to ATWIAD to Parade to SOTT & then land at Lovesexy frankly beggars belief.

Where to begin on this project..a cohesive sound & theme, brilliant production IMHO, beautiful personal / heartfelt lyrics, an incredible new look, a stunning tour, a stunning band. I struggle to find any other artist that would have had the balls to do this.

Lovesexy is indeed the one..say YES!!

Great album. You could sense that he was truly inspired while making it. The tour was something special too, probably my favorite out of the ones I've seen. It had my favorite band.

The one and only quintessential P album.

Simply the best.

BoraBora said:

The one and only quintessential P album.

Simply the best.

Agreed. I hope more people get to discover its brilliance, as they start digging through his catalogue.

SchlomoThaHomo said:

BoraBora said:

The one and only quintessential P album.

Simply the best.

Agreed. I hope more people get to discover its brilliance, as they start digging through his catalogue.

ONE OF THE GREATEST TOURS. I have a number of soundboards (Paris, Milan, Nagoya, Sendai) and although the song list is pretty similar, do to the highly chereographed show, the performances were just BLAZING.

Eric Leeds said recently that he slept walked through the tour but when he watched a vid of the show many years later, he was reminded that the band was on FIRE.

YES, LOVESEXY is THE ONE!!!

'til my dying day I'll be okay 'Cuz 'Lovesexy' is the one 'Til my day is done Hundalasiliah , so true. Means more to me than most albums and my first Prince tour .

It is defenitly an experience. I give it a 8.5 / 10. Its a Prince classic worthy of hearing and in your collection! The B-Sides even give it that extra OOMPH.

I concur!!!

"U want me 2 write my name in your drawers"

Brilliant album

paisleypark4 said:

It is defenitly an experience. I give it a 8.5 / 10. Its a Prince classic worthy of hearing and in your collection! The B-Sides even give it that extra OOMPH.

good lawd, how could I forget to mention the B sides!. I wish u Heaven Parts 1, 2 & 3....teal blue overcoat on ma back....

Lovesex - that's my jam!

This was the last Prince album that had the same first day excitement as most of the previous albums and the last marketing campaign that was truly Prince-flavored. The posters, the in-store appearances, camping out for concert tickets - it all seemed like a yearly cycle that was unknowingly coming to an end after this album. Other Prince albums and tours have been a big deal, but this album and tour cycle was a truly moving experience!!

I can't see what's so great about it, i can't. Besides Anna (which is a masterpiece) and I Wish U Heaven, there's nothing great about this album.

it's the whole experience that makes it so good (maybe why he joined the tracks together for the CD - which i think has hindered it's spread into the masses - it's very low selling on itunes!), I love the cohesive sound and concept. not one i've listened to in a while (as it does demand attention!) but when I do listen i really get into it for a few days.

It is indeed just as he described -- a trip.

Aerogram said:

214 said:

sonshine said:

214 said:

I can't see what's so great about it, i can't. Besides Anna (which is a masterpiece) and I Wish U Heaven, there's nothing great about this album.

[Edited 7/13/17 21:37pm]

From the day I bought Lovesexy back in May 1988, through to today, I have always thought of it as being the perfect example of an album that is far greater than the sum of its parts. For me at least, singling out certain songs on Lovesexy to determine its greatness (or lack of) misses the intended point of its creator. This album was designed to be listened to as one piece of music, and just as Mozart's Don Giovanni isn't riveting throughout, boy is it an amazing experience as a whole if you stick with it.

Lovesexy wouldn't rate in my top 10 Prince albums if judged on a track by track basis, but it rates in my top 5 as an overall piece of work. But of of course it's all subjective and whatever Prince intended Lovesexy to be as a listening experience, you hear his music through your own ears.... not his, and so if for you two there's nothing great about Lovesexy then that's cool. There is love on here for albums like The Rainbow Children and yet I wouldn't even tarnish a good coffee mug on the CD using it as a coaster.

I never fail to be fascinated by the differeing tastes of Prince fans within his own body of work.

thx185 said:

Lovesex - that's my jam!

To me that record is absolute brilliance

What is near to impossible to grasp is what is was to be an adolescent and live through these extraordinary episodes that the Prince albums were.

In times where digital was not yet central to our daily life existence, and time was not strangled by the useless urgencies that pollute us all day, all night, every Wrecka arriving at the Stow was a surprise. The minutes spent marveling at the atwork, reading the lyrics wondering for what music they were written for, the religious moment when you dropped the needle for the first time on your pristine polyvinylacetate.

It was kind of easy, not to mention unescapable, to get flooded by the Purple Storm. The first Reagan term brought conservatism, prudeness, puritanism, super-egoes and the "free" stock-market that enslaved us 99% of us in relentless productivism, with consumption as the main religion, and still very much enslaves us today (pretty soon, the internet as we know it will be gone too).

The cold war was at its worse since the cuban missile crisis, and "1999" (and "Free", and "Moonbeam Levels") struck a real chord to which we all could relate, even as kids: the threat of massive mutual destruction felt very real ("Wargames", "The Day After", "World War III", "99 Red Ballons", "Russians", the list goes on).

Afro-americans were slowly creeping into white folks home, but in order to achieve that they still had to adhere to standards where they wouldn't be considered as threats, and had to show submissive traits to be accepted by the mainstrem: Michael Jackson bleached his skin and music, "Diff'rent Strokes", "the Cosby Show"... but mavericks were at work, and considered getting their fair share of the pie did not have to go with stripping down their culture.

"Purple Rain" finished the vision Prince started to have with "Dirty Mind": a melting pot of suburbians, striving for freedom of expressions in all shapes and colors: freedom of speech, freedom to dress, sexual freedom, freedom to make it big as the American Dream initially promised.
What appealed to the world is that Prince hid all of this big, serious political and social agendas behind pure fun and joy, revealing the hypocrisy of the times.
He constructed a phenomenon in the same vein of the explosion of Elvis, the Beatlemania, the Summer Of Love, the Disco, all massive, ubiquitous, hedonistic movements. But they look like unexpected, cosmic accidents, whereas "Purple Rain" looks like it has carefully been built on the bold approach Quincy Jones took for "Thriller", that a black artist could embody not only his roots, but steal white music and make it sound better. The major difference with Prince, was the thrill was real.

There is this major paradox with Prince: Usually, hedonism comes with giving up of constraints of all kind, including work. The sixties witnessed a total rejection of the capitalistic system, and promised to bring back calm to humankind, the time to wonder, a zone where the human being could be something else than productive. Prince promotes this everywhere in his art, and yet here's someone who does nothing but work, with a discipline only to be found in the military.

By 1988, the world was shifting towards extremes, that grew into the unbearable ones we live in today. "Wall Street" showed us what would happen to a society who gives up it destiny to greed. Gorbachev started what would end in making communism "just a word": Ronnie ended up talking to Russia. The mirage of freedom brought by "Purple Rain" vanished, as puritanism kicked harder than ever, with AIDS held up as a global menace, and "Explicit Lyrics" stickers signifying the common people some expressions were more socially acceptable than others. Black America was still strangled by the system, and soon Public Enemy would bring the harsh truth to MTV: things only changed on the surface, but the reality after a decade of Reaganomics was a very bleak one.

The eighties made every artistic intention marketable. Only "indies" were seen as carriers of honest statements. The rest was just mass-production entertainment, where sex was either clean as can be and seen as provocative only by the tight-ass majority (Madonna, "Dirty Dancing", George Michael, INXS), or plain unexistant (Tiffany, Belinda Carlisle, Phil Collins, U2, etc.).

During these years were pop music was subject to commercial cynicism, where we had to actually wait for stuff to come out, the Prince albums were creative oasis, each one a surprise bigger than the previous: ATWIAD took everyone off-guard. UTCM and Parade were unexpected. When SOTT came out, it was clear for everyone that had placed his hopes in Prince, that he was the star that offered the greatest rewards.

Lovesexy is a swan song. It concludes ten years of constant research, pushing limits, artistic ethics, and sheer fun. It's also the death of a certain spirit, and that is why GB feels a bit like a zombie. The melting-pot, the American Dream promised in "Purple Rain", was nowhere to be seen by the end of the decade. People lost the faith Prince had briefly brought to them. The black man was now a "gangsta", way worse than the blaxpoitation caricatures of the previous decade. Respect came from uzis, heroes came from South Central. AIDS made homosexuality look like a worse threat to society than it ever was.

There was no other way for Prince than to go fully spiritual. After ten years of incredible, astounding and unmatched creativity, his influence and inspiration slowly fading away, relationships made impossible by the very nature of his daily life, the ecstasy incident revealed the depressive state Prince was in.

So he dived into full abstraction. A concept, not grounded in reality, even though "Dance On" and "Positivity" reveal a Prince way too conscious of the irreconcilability of what the world had become, and his hippy hedonistic views. His last brave move would be to remind the world that the sexual act could be something that enlightens, that brings real visions of beauty, that can elevate the soul beyond mere sweaty minutes followed by a few seconds of spasmodic contractions. Much more that relieving nervous tension. It had always been this way for Prince, but this time it made for a whole attitude, a complete vision. Lovesexy is the birth of the New Power Soul, that turned into the New Power Generation.

We would never seen this universal flower power ambition from him again. Lovesexy and the tour that followed is like "Purple Rain", a once-in-a-lifetime cosmic event. But it was far from being as ubiquitous, and for good reasons. Good taste and love for craft had become too rare a quality, after a decade of brain-washing, the acceptance of obsolescence in all things, and the spread hypnosis of speed as the only way to live. In such a world, we could only assemble and gather into a tribe. A universal feeling forced to be seclusive. Talk about controversy.

Of course we Prince fans look at other people kind of from above. We experienced our personal growth with a fantastic mentor: one with an indefectible love for honesty. Recognition of the flesh, mistrust of the system, and the pursue of a higher plane of existence.

Heaven, oh yes.

bonatoc said:

What is near to impossible to grasp is what is was to be an adolescent and live through these extraordinary episodes that the Prince albums were.

In times where digital was not yet central to our daily life existence, and time was not strangled by the useless urgencies that pollute us all day, all night, every Wrecka arriving at the Stow was a surprise. The minutes spent marveling at the atwork, reading the lyrics wondering for what music they were written for, the religious moment when you dropped the needle for the first time on your pristine polyvinylacetate.

It was kind of easy, not to mention unescapable, to get flooded by the Purple Storm. The first Reagan term brought conservatism, prudeness, puritanism, super-egoes and the "free" stock-market that enslaved us 99% of us in relentless productivism, with consumption as the main religion, and still very much enslaves us today (pretty soon, the internet as we know it will be gone too).

The cold war was at its worse since the cuban missile crisis, and "1999" (and "Free", and "Moonbeam Levels") struck a real chord to which we all could relate, even as kids: the threat of massive mutual destruction felt very real ("Wargames", "The Day After", "World War III", "99 Red Ballons", "Russians", the list goes on).

Afro-americans were slowly creeping into white folks home, but in order to achieve that they still had to adhere to standards where they wouldn't be considered as threats, and had to show submissive traits to be accepted by the mainstrem: Michael Jackson bleached his skin and music, "Diff'rent Strokes", "the Cosby Show"... but mavericks were at work, and considered getting their fair share of the pie did not have to go with stripping down their culture.

"Purple Rain" finished the vision Prince started to have with "Dirty Mind": a melting pot of suburbians, striving for freedom of expressions in all shapes and colors: freedom of speech, freedom to dress, sexual freedom, freedom to make it big as the American Dream initially promised.
What appealed to the world is that Prince hid all of this big, serious political and social agendas behind pure fun and joy, revealing the hypocrisy of the times.
He constructed a phenomenon in the same vein of the explosion of Elvis, the Beatlemania, the Summer Of Love, the Disco, all massive, ubiquitous, hedonistic movements. But they look like unexpected, cosmic accidents, whereas "Purple Rain" looks like it has carefully been built on the bold approach Quincy Jones took for "Thriller", that a black artist could embody not only his roots, but steal white music and make it sound better. The major difference with Prince, was the thrill was real.

There is this major paradox with Prince: Usually, hedonism comes with giving up of constraints of all kind, including work. The sixties witnessed a total rejection of the capitalistic system, and promised to bring back calm to humankind, the time to wonder, a zone where the human being could be something else than productive. Prince promotes this everywhere in his art, and yet here's someone who does nothing but work, with a discipline only to be found in the military.

By 1988, the world was shifting towards extremes, that grew into the unbearable ones we live in today. "Wall Street" showed us what would happen to a society who gives up it destiny to greed. Gorbachev started what would end in making communism "just a word": Ronnie ended up talking to Russia. The mirage of freedom brought by "Purple Rain" vanished, as puritanism kicked harder than ever, with AIDS held up as a global menace, and "Explicit Lyrics" stickers signifying the common people some expressions were more socially acceptable than others. Black America was still strangled by the system, and soon Public Enemy would bring the harsh truth to MTV: things only changed on the surface, but the reality after a decade of Reaganomics was a very bleak one.

The eighties made every artistic intention marketable. Only "indies" were seen as carriers of honest statements. The rest was just mass-production entertainment, where sex was either clean as can be and seen as provocative only by the tight-ass majority (Madonna, "Dirty Dancing", George Michael, INXS), or plain unexistant (Tiffany, Belinda Carlisle, Phil Collins, U2, etc.).

During these years were pop music was subject to commercial cynicism, where we had to actually wait for stuff to come out, the Prince albums were creative oasis, each one a surprise bigger than the previous: ATWIAD took everyone off-guard. UTCM and Parade were unexpected. When SOTT came out, it was clear for everyone that had placed his hopes in Prince, that he was the star that offered the greatest rewards.

Lovesexy is a swan song. It concludes ten years of constant research, pushing limits, artistic ethics, and sheer fun. It's also the death of a certain spirit, and that is why GB feels a bit like a zombie. The melting-pot, the American Dream promised in "Purple Rain", was nowhere to be seen by the end of the decade. People lost the faith Prince had briefly brought to them. The black man was now a "gangsta", way worse than the blaxpoitation caricatures of the previous decade. Respect came from uzis, heroes came from South Central. AIDS made homosexuality look like a worse threat to society than it ever was.

There was no other way for Prince than to go fully spiritual. After ten years of incredible, astounding and unmatched creativity, his influence and inspiration slowly fading away, relationships made impossible by the very nature of his daily life, the ecstasy incident revealed the depressive state Prince was in.

So he dived into full abstraction. A concept, not grounded in reality, even though "Dance On" and "Positivity" reveal a Prince way too conscious of the irreconcilability of what the world had become, and his hippy hedonistic views. His last brave move would be to remind the world that the sexual act could be something that enlightens, that brings real visions of beauty, that can elevate the soul beyond mere sweaty minutes followed by a few seconds of spasmodic contractions. Much more that relieving nervous tension. It had always been this way for Prince, but this time it made for a whole attitude, a complete vision. Lovesexy is the birth of the New Power Soul, that turned into the New Power Generation.

We would never seen this universal flower power ambition from him again. Lovesexy and the tour that followed is like "Purple Rain", a once-in-a-lifetime cosmic event. But it was far from being as ubiquitous, and for good reasons. Good taste and love for craft had become too rare a quality, after a decade of brain-washing, the acceptance of obsolescence in all things, and the spread hypnosis of speed as the only way to live. In such a world, we could only assemble and gather into a tribe. A universal feeling forced to be seclusive. Talk about controversy.

Of course we Prince fans look at other people kind of from above. We experienced our personal growth with a fantastic mentor: one with an indefectible love for honesty. Recognition of the flesh, mistrust of the system, and the pursue of a higher plane of existence.

Heaven, oh yes.

OMG bonatoc, what a gorgeous, generous , gift...you have me weeping...or maybe I'm just drippin', drippin' on the floor...will you marry me?

sonshine said:

214 said:

I can't see what's so great about it, i can't. Besides Anna (which is a masterpiece) and I Wish U Heaven, there's nothing great about this album.

[Edited 7/13/17 21:37pm]

Am gonna whip your asses (joke)

[Edited 7/14/17 8:06am]

Bodhitheblackdog said:

OMG bonatoc, what a gorgeous, generous , gift...you have me weeping...or maybe I'm just drippin', drippin' on the floor...will you marry me?

Would that be cool?
U... U want me to swivel in your love seat, d-don't U babe?

Wit all the new agey lyrics.