There Is Lonely and What's My Name should have been there.

Wonderful album,

Come is with the Gold Exp Prince's best album off the 90s..



Except Orgasm I love the whole thing from beginning to end..

Put on Lovesign at the end, instead og Orgasm > then it's a pop-funk masterpiece, imho...

I'm giving this thread a bump; recently I've become obsessed with Prince's darker material, and I have to say it caused me to reassess my opinion on Come; "Papa," "Pheromone," and "Solo" are each quite sinister in their own way, the album as a whole is more lonely and dense than dark.

Thematically, I think 1999 and Batman are more consistent in their portrayals of dark themes and imagery, even if the musical arrangements (especially on 1999) are often deceptively bright and uptempo.

Some other songs I think carry an unsettling air:

- The Question of U (for some reason, I always got a weird BDSM vibe from this song, mainly from the crawling rhythm and the aggressive clapping / click of shoes (?) that comes in at points)

- Starfish and Coffee (I know many see this as a sort of Raspberry Beret kind of song, but I think there's a darkness to it. The whole song sounds almost too calm - like there's an underlying darkness to Cynthia's eccentricity that she masks)

- Hot Thing (this whole song is so taut and clinical yet it always sounds, thanks to Prince's sinister delivery, like it's going to spiral out of control at any moment. It's so aggressive in its lustfulness)

- My Little Pill (especially sad and creepy after the official circumstances of Prince's death)

- Anna Stesia (the piano intro is straight out of a horror movie, and the whole song just sounds like Prince is experiencing a real dark night of the soul)

- Power Fantastic (this song is subtly haunting. I can't explain, but there's something ghostly about it)

- 17 Days (Wendy & Lisa's backing vocal sound so spectral and disconnected, and the song in general is just drowning in loneliness)

67Cadillac said:

I'm giving this thread a bump; recently I've become obsessed with Prince's darker material, and I have to say it caused me to reassess my opinion on Come; "Papa," "Pheromone," and "Solo" are each quite sinister in their own way, the album as a whole is more lonely and dense than dark.

Thematically, I think 1999 and Batman are more consistent in their portrayals of dark themes and imagery, even if the musical arrangements (especially on 1999) are often deceptively bright and uptempo.

Some other songs I think carry an unsettling air:

- The Question of U (for some reason, I always got a weird BDSM vibe from this song, mainly from the crawling rhythm and the aggressive clapping / click of shoes (?) that comes in at points)

- Starfish and Coffee (I know many see this as a sort of Raspberry Beret kind of song, but I think there's a darkness to it. The whole song sounds almost too calm - like there's an underlying darkness to Cynthia's eccentricity that she masks)

- Hot Thing (this whole song is so taut and clinical yet it always sounds, thanks to Prince's sinister delivery, like it's going to spiral out of control at any moment. It's so aggressive in its lustfulness)

- My Little Pill (especially sad and creepy after the official circumstances of Prince's death)

- Anna Stesia (the piano intro is straight out of a horror movie, and the whole song just sounds like Prince is experiencing a real dark night of the soul)

- Power Fantastic (this song is subtly haunting. I can't explain, but there's something ghostly about it)

- 17 Days (Wendy & Lisa's backing vocal sound so spectral and disconnected, and the song in general is just drowning in loneliness)

That's an interesting take, perhaps Cynthia tried to hide the emotional pain that some unsaid traumatic experience left on her. She might have created her own world, that was her way to deal with her past.

[Edited 9/28/17 16:52pm]

I've always loved Come... perhaps not all the tracks individually but as a whole I find it incredibly cohesive and used to listen to it beginning to end constantly for the first year or so after it first came out.

I don't believe it is a subpar album and I don't really think Prince did, either. He seemed to like these songs and included them in projects, performed them, and even had that "letter" that Mayte wrote to Uptown magazine about all his great new songs with one word titles.

What it is, imo, is an experimental album. Nothing on here seems to be included with an eye toward the charts which is, again imo, rare for a Prince album at that time (D&P and O(-> before it and TGE after are brimming with hooks, etc...). WB was clearly frustrated by this but I also think it was his intention when he wished to release them at the time time that "Prince" would have the dark, experimental release and would have TGE and all the chart singles.

One of his best 90s albums hands down

jtfolden said:

I've always loved Come...

I listen to this album more than the Gold Experience. I love the vibe and sonic feel.

Cloudbuster said:

jtfolden said:

I've always loved Come...

That too...

TrivialPursuit said:

leadline said:

It's a masterpiece (to me), nobody can dictate what is am masterpiece for another person, nor should they question when one calls something that. Music means different things to different people at different times. For me, this album holds a special place due to the circumstances of my world during the time it was released.

I'd agree. A masterpiece is in one's own taste and perspective. I think The Gold Experience is a masterpiece. A lot of folks don't. (Frankly, I've always said it was the Purple Rain of the 90s.)

I wouldn't say that because PR was PR because it truly managed to be the incarnation of a generation's frustrations and aspirations. There's something very typically Gen X in it (as in most of P's early works, but more passionate maybe on PR), a thin balance between digested utopian hippie fantasies and the nihilistic disillusion of post-Nixon America. I think it may be hard to have been a Western teenager or even someone in their early 20's in 1984, and not to recognize oneself in this album's lyrics and musical energy (not to mention that it was as synched as could be with the music that was hip at the time, merging rock, funk, new wave and pre-EDM). I wasn't "there", being 8 at the time it was released, but it's how I feel given the knowledge I have of this era's culture and atmosphere. And it's, how to put it... a very hormonally charged record, to say the least

.

TGE -and don't get me wrong I was CRAZY about it when it came out, and still think it's a wonderful record- cannot be said said to have fulfilled a similar role in the context of the mid-90's (I was 19 by then, so very much into the zeitgeist). Other musical trends such as indie rock, brit pop, electronica and maybe even more significantly trip-hop were the incarnation of how we felt back then, sonically as well as thematically, and TGE remains the product of a 36 years old millionaire who was beginning to be somewhat disconnected from both the aspirations of the young, and the realities of their everyday life. Not to say that it's an irrelevant record, it's damn relevant in the context of Prince maturing as a person, as an American, as a Black man in America, as an artist and as a superstar, and I'm not saying that ordinary people such as us the fans were not able to recognize themselves in certain songs' lyrics (haven't we all gone through Eye Hate U?, I sure had back then ), or that it sounded outdated in anyway. But there's a margin between a mature rock star releasing a very solid record and a young ascending musicians catching the zeitgeist of a whole era.

.

Saying any post 80's Prince album was "the PR of the [decade]" is a contradiction in itself, because what made PR PR in terms of relevance and impact was very much a matter of context, and the conditions for Prince releasing another work like that could hardly have been reunited again.