there were the carefully thought out and constructed albums:

for you, dirty mind, 1999 (actually this one i am not sure where it belongs), purple rain, SOTT, D&P, emancipation (say what you want about it!), rainbow children (again i know lots of people dont like this one, but whatever you think of it, you cant deny he really took care with it)

and then you had the albums that he did pretty quickly and took less care with:

controversy, ATWIAD, parade, lovesexy, batman, graffiti bridge, love symbol, come, gold

after 2001, id say everything was in that second category, except maybe AOA.

im not actually saying these quickly made albums are worse, just that he def wasnt a MJ or led zeppelin kind of artist, where everything had to be perfect. he was def an artist who worked off inspiration, rather than getting everything right. maybe just cos he always wanted to spend time on the next thing. but also cos i dont think hes that kind of artist. he was into working fast.

Parade runs so smoothly from one track to the next. It's my absolute favorite Prince album. I'm suprised to see this on the list of ones "took less care with". What are your reasonings on this? Just curious. Not bashing your opinions.

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

there were the carefully thought out and constructed albums:

for you, dirty mind, 1999 (actually this one i am not sure where it belongs), purple rain, SOTT, D&P, emancipation (say what you want about it!), rainbow children (again i know lots of people dont like this one, but whatever you think of it, you cant deny he really took care with it)

and then you had the albums that he did pretty quickly and took less care with:

controversy, ATWIAD, parade, lovesexy, batman, graffiti bridge, love symbol, come, gold

after 2001, id say everything was in that second category, except maybe AOA.

im not actually saying these quickly made albums are worse, just that he def wasnt a MJ or led zeppelin kind of artist, where everything had to be perfect. he was def an artist who worked off inspiration, rather than getting everything right. maybe just cos he always wanted to spend time on the next thing. but also cos i dont think hes that kind of artist. he was into working fast.

That's what I love about music, everybody hears things differently, ATWIAD, parade (the album that got me into prince) Lovesexy and gold are for me, really well thoughtout and constructed albums. These are also the albums I can listen to all the way through, with no skipping tracks like jughead. Lovesexy is the most thoughtout album, and that's why it was all as one track. I guess he wanted us to listen to the feeling you get when you fall in love, not with a boy or a girl but heaven above,

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

Yeah that one I was a bit on the fence about too. It is brilliantly sequenced. But idk, it just felt a bit too breezy? Lol weird thing to say I know, as if that's a bad thing. As if shorter songs mean it's less crafted or developed. But yeah, I agree. Maybe it should be in the other category. I guess I put it in the quickie category as i thought the last few songs didnt quite fit the same vibe.

It's because he created it more as a soundtrack(no songs being performed) than Purple Rain(most songs being performed)

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

there were the carefully thought out and constructed albums:

for you, dirty mind, 1999 (actually this one i am not sure where it belongs), purple rain, SOTT, D&P, emancipation (say what you want about it!), rainbow children (again i know lots of people dont like this one, but whatever you think of it, you cant deny he really took care with it)

and then you had the albums that he did pretty quickly and took less care with:

controversy, ATWIAD, parade, lovesexy, batman, graffiti bridge, love symbol, come, gold

after 2001, id say everything was in that second category, except maybe AOA.

im not actually saying these quickly made albums are worse, just that he def wasnt a MJ or led zeppelin kind of artist, where everything had to be perfect. he was def an artist who worked off inspiration, rather than getting everything right. maybe just cos he always wanted to spend time on the next thing. but also cos i dont think hes that kind of artist. he was into working fast.

Interesting takes on albums

sometimes I see his recording of 1999 like he did Lovesexy

I love Rainbow Children, it's very layered and complex and felt like he was listening to his 1978-1988 albums before recording it.


Controversy might feel more rushed because he was really putting an image together. I don't think it was rushed though. Just working out the picture direction. All those newspaper articles in Uptown

ATWIAD I definately don't feel was rushed. It started in 1984 and the PR tour and the new sounds coming into the camp definately caused this one to take on a different energy. I don't think it was rushed as much as I think he rushed to put it out. He could have taken a little more time.

Parade was more of a real 'movie soundtrack' than Purple Rain. It wasn't going to have movie performances so it moved as the movie did. I think if there were band performances in the movie it would have a different sound/flow.

Graffiti Bridge was, I don't know. It wasn't an ORIGINAL album outside of Theives In the Temple. It wasn't a rushed album, it was just a pushed album, to get that movie going.

Considering the bulk of The Gold Experience (and Come) ideas were born around 1993 and the Gold album only came out in 1995, it's really a stretch to say it was a quickie.

Prince was a genius and geniuses can either take their time perfecting their work or simply find the right ideas on the first try.

When you look at what he was able to do with Grafitti Bridge, mixing gems from the 80s like Bold Generation (now NPG) and Joy In Repetition with new songs, new sounds and new artists, it's hard to say that was lazy too.

Even the carefully constucted ones weren't done from a perfectionist's POV. Susan Rogers says he just wasn't like that.

You're insane if you think ATWIAD was a quickie album. Do your damn homework. Those songs were being worked on from before the movie was film up through it's final release. That's a good 2-year process. Same with SOTT and those songs just flowing out of him for a while.

Not sure where you got that crackpot theory, but it's time to...

fernandomachado said:

Considering the bulk of The Gold Experience (and Come) ideas were born around 1993 and the Gold album only came out in 1995, it's really a stretch to say it was a quickie.

Prince was a genius and geniuses can either take their time perfecting their work or simply find the right ideas on the first try.

When you look at what he was able to do with Grafitti Bridge, mixing gems from the 80s like Bold Generation (now NPG) and Joy In Repetition with new songs, new sounds and new artists, it's hard to say that was lazy too.

You're insane if you think ATWIAD was a quickie album. Do your damn homework. Those songs were being worked on from before the movie was film up through it's final release. That's a good 2-year process. Same with SOTT and those songs just flowing out of him for a while.

Not sure where you got that crackpot theory, but it's time to...

quickie doesnt necessarily mean the length of time from recording to release.

its just about how the songs were written and recorded.

half the gold album sounds like it was spontaneous and done fast.

prince was genius enough in the 80s that even stuff that was clearly done very fast still had the feeling of inspiration striking (eg lovesexy), and that was enough to make it great.

so a song like ronnie talk to russia is def a lot of fun, and i love it, but RTTR is not delirious (to compare rockabilly style songs).

ultimately though, before you all consult your princevault pages and tell me to eat shit, i think its just about the songs you can tell had a lot of work gone into them and those that didnt.

ultimately that doesnt mean its 'better' exactly, but it just means there are the songs that had a lot of time and effort put into them, and those that didnt.

[Edited 4/16/21 15:08pm]

Prince was into a 'five year plan' back in the 80s. I'm assuming this is the Purple Rain through Lovesexy period, 84-88. So obviously that means AWIAD and Parade were albums he spent a lot of time on. I believe he wanted Michael Jackson stardom during that era, really pushing how far he could go.

And like, Pop Life was recorded 2 weeks before When Doves Cry. And Paisley Park, the song 1 week after. He spent time trying to get these albums right.

To me Prince wss almost as OCD about albums as Bruce Springsteen was. I think he took albums extremely seriously each and every time. The only exceptions was the f*ck you album he gave WB ("The Vault: Old Friends..."). I don't count "Chaos" among them. He crafted that album very deliberately. He just let it die. Prince cared about albums. He had one mode IMO. He just wasn't the best judge and needed the quality control of other opinions.

The Good

With the Bad

The happy

With the sad....

Just know that he had......

U

jfenster said:

File this under ...people who think they know princes mind

actually im not trying to attempt any psychological reading, im just looking at the music that was released.

look at pruple rain and SOTT and how pretty much every song has a lot more detail and changes. even dirty mind, there is not one spare note on there.

then look at controversy, or ATWIAD, or lovesexy, you can see that they just didnt have that same sort of complexity to the songs.

still great, i still like them, but its just an observation.

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

But who really knows how long he took with albums, he many times had these songs for ages and as he said, waited till he had more that fit with the project he was doing. I mean did he take less time on say The Rainbow Children then Musicology or Parade? Take something like the Gold Experience there were so many different versions of what that was going to be, the same for COME. I think with modes maybe we are talking do they seem cohesive and on one idea or does it seem like he threw ten songs together he had laying around and slapped a title on it. In that case we will never know, take Hit N Run phase one and two, to us we feel these are songs from all over, not cohesive to an idea, but who knows maybe that was his idea to make an album that had everything.