Adorecream said:

2freaky4church1 said:

Prince couldn't decide if he was rock or funk or soul or pop. Those shiny pants, the weird looking guitar lookin like some wood project gone wrong. The fake microphone with the wire, Dr. Fink's red jacket. Lisa Chapman lookin foine. What a silly vid. Makes me smile. Naive

I think you are being very harsh, it is from the infancy of music videos and they were very basic and expensive back then. The fact most videos were by huge stars and only Michael Jackson at the time had anything better for his Off the Wall era short films.

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Prince was braely known, he had one hit and it is doubtful that the song had even peaked when he cut the video for WYWTMSB, and even less helpful was that the song was a complete flop and Prince would not really consolidate his chart success until 1983.

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Plus before the Dirty Mind era, WB has pigeonholed him as a "Black Artist" and gave him less consideration than their white rock artists. The fact he got a video was a miracle. He had 3, this, 2 versions of Lover and then the appearances on American Bandstand - so 5.

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I will agree the videos were crappy - okay the music was great, but no real concept videos came until WDC, all the earlier ones are merely stage performances of the songs (Funky as they are, they are hardly Julian Temple type masterpieces).

the Prince album was multi-platinum by early 1980

It was Gold in Jan 1980 and went Platinum in 1984,not multi platinum. I wanna be your lover was a #11 hit, and the album reached #22, but WYWTMSB was a flop failing the Pop chart completely and getting to like 90 or something in the Black chart.

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Compare this to MJ has #1 hits (2) and an album that sold 6 x Platinum in one year. Yes Prince had one hit and a mildly successful album off the strength of it, but he hardly had the impact on music then like he did in the 80s. If anything moving through Billboard in late 79/early 80 Prince is pretty much ignored.

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Just by saying this, I am not bragging or pouring scorn as I love those songs and that album, had a been me it would have been Top 10 smashes, although not #1 as that Off the Wall album was just Godlike.