funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

Only in America! Europe didn't GAF Its a great cover though The design was fantastic in that period Who knows if another cover would really have sold more records Not like there were any other obvious singles on therr

I am not from the USA, but I understand just how important that market is.

US certified sales of the albums immediately before and after Lovesexy show the very real impact.

lmao i cannot believe there are people on this forum who think this cover is anything except pure genius

Bighead909 said:

lustmealways said:

lmao i cannot believe there are people on this forum who think this cover is anything except pure genius

It is not the people on this forum that caused the sales of Lovesexy to be a small fraction of SOTT and Batman.

The cover simply was not pure genius as a marketing ploy. It created no additional sales and it was undeniably a major factor in why the US sales were so poor. Despite this it can be for most of us here, one of our favourites.

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

Why would prince censor himself at this point in his career? Some fans are acting like theyd advise him to cover up his butt before the 91 mtv award show. This cover wasnt even nude or tasteless. It was classy. A gamble sure but this was not a commercially savvy album anyway. It only has one truly great single on there and he released that first. Its not like he was selling major numbers after 84/85 anyway.

Another flip/flop.

First you try to dismiss the impact on sales as only a US issue as if this was not important to Prince. Now the impact on sales is unimportant.

The answer to why he should have considered censoring the cover in the US is clear - and it is why he never released a cover like that again. It would have been OK to have kept the same cover everywhere else that it was released and this would not be the first or last time that US prudeness had seen different covers for albums.

It is very easy to speculate that better sales of the album in the US could have seen more radio plays there with high results for the singles and perhaps more singles - it is not as if the music quality was missing, just the US plays and album sales.

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

Im not in sales and retail, so while i appreciate the impact on the great us market, as a fan, i also appreciate that for much of the 80s, prince was not second guessing the market, which is what made him so exciting. It isnt a flip flop as i dont know whether prince cared about hurting sales at home this much, and never assuned i did, but as a fan, i am saying i dont actually care if American stores were offended, as its a great cover, and it was accepted just fine elsewhere. If he released the black album i suspect fans would also be saying that it was a mistake for other reasons to do with bankability. I.e. that album has even less singles potential.

And yet, following the fallout from the cover and its impact on US sales, he never, ever, ever released an album cover like this again.

A true fan would know that it is so not true that Prince did not want success in 1980s and would not claim that he did not seek to second guess the market to achieve this at different times in the 1980s. There were clearly albums where he did and ones where he did not.

I disagree that Lovesexy did not have "singles potential" . It did. However, achieving the potential in the singles relies on the record company actually releasing singles. With low album sales and radio airplay in the US, the record company simply did not.

Re flip/flop: Are the US market sales irrelevant as first claimed or important? Are you a just a fan who never makes assumptions of single sales potential or a person who has made repeated claims about songs that could be released commericially as singles on Lovesexy and now the Black album?

IanRG said:

And yet, following the fallout from the cover and its impact on US sales, he never, ever, ever released an album cover like this again.

A true fan would know that it is so not true that Prince did not want success in 1980s and would not claim that he did not seek to second guess the market to achieve this at different times in the 1980s. There were clearly albums where he did and ones where he did not.

I disagree that Lovesexy did not have "singles potential" . It did. However, achieving the potential in the singles relies on the record company actually releasing singles. With low album sales and radio airplay in the US, the record company simply did not.

Re flip/flop: Are the US market sales irrelevant as first claimed or important? Are you a just a fan who never makes assumptions of single sales potential or a person who has made repeated claims about songs that could be released commericially as singles on Lovesexy and now the Black album?

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

They released three singles in the us.

Correct.

And as the album did not sell well, the second and third singles failed to get into the Billboard Top 100.

It is simple: Small album sales = Little airplay of the singles = Small sales of the singles. Just as I said. The albums immediately before and after had much better US sales and, therefore much better airplay leading to the record company releasing more singles in more forms and with better chart success.

IanRG said:

TrivialPursuit said:

That seems rather short-sighted and juvenile.

Prince undoubtedly would have been told this at the time - Fortunately he learned from this experience and matured.

PS I know what you meant and the cover never prevented me from getting the album. It is however undeniable that the cover had a serious impact on sales.

I don't even know how much the cover had an impact on sales, though. I mean, if you look back at other albums, did those covers affect sales?

The Black Crowes - Amorica

John Lennon - Two Virgins

Janet Jackson - janet.

Frankie Goes to Hollywood - Relax (single)

Pixies - Surfer Rosa

Ohio Players - Honey

Funkadelic - Maggot Brain

Jane's Addiction - Nothing Shocking

Tin Machine - Tin Machine II

The Cars - Candy O

Lovesexy was certainly more tame than some of those.

TrivialPursuit said:

IanRG said:

Prince undoubtedly would have been told this at the time - Fortunately he learned from this experience and matured.

PS I know what you meant and the cover never prevented me from getting the album. It is however undeniable that the cover had a serious impact on sales.

I don't even know how much the cover had an impact on sales, though. I mean, if you look back at other albums, did those covers affect sales?

The Black Crowes - Amorica

John Lennon - Two Virgins

Janet Jackson - janet.

Frankie Goes to Hollywood - Relax (single)

Pixies - Surfer Rosa

Ohio Players - Honey

Funkadelic - Maggot Brain

Jane's Addiction - Nothing Shocking

Tin Machine - Tin Machine II

The Cars - Candy O

Lovesexy was certainly more tame than some of those.

Amorica - Original cover was clothed and yet it still had a censored cover for the US
Two Virgins - Cover outcry lead to it being sold in brown paper wrapper
Janet - There were two album cover pictures - the prime one only showed her head
Surfa Rosa - Only topless from a distance with a tone - tame. This still meant it took 2 subsequent releases and 15 years for it go gold
Honey - Jusr head and upper side, you can see nothing
Maggot Brain - No nudity on the cover, no top 100 pop sales
Nothing Shocking - Not even real humans and US major outlet sales were still in brown paper bags
Tin Machine II - These are 6th century statues and the US cover had the penises air-brushed out - You are not even trying now
Candy O - It is a pin up girl style drawing

Lovesexy as sold in the USA made no similar concessions for that country's silly prudeness in the way that a number of these supposedly non-tame album covers did. The impact of these tame covers is shown by how readily a person from the USA could rattle them off.

[Edited 5/13/23 14:47pm]

IanRG said:

TrivialPursuit said:

I don't even know how much the cover had an impact on sales, though. I mean, if you look back at other albums, did those covers affect sales?

The Black Crowes - Amorica

John Lennon - Two Virgins

Janet Jackson - janet.

Frankie Goes to Hollywood - Relax (single)

Pixies - Surfer Rosa

Ohio Players - Honey

Funkadelic - Maggot Brain

Jane's Addiction - Nothing Shocking

Tin Machine - Tin Machine II

The Cars - Candy O

Lovesexy was certainly more tame than some of those.

Amorica - Original cover was clothed and yet it still had a censored cover for the US
Two Virgins - Cover outcry lead to it being sold in brown paper wrapper
Janet - There were two album cover pictures - the prime one only showed her head
Surfa Rosa - Only topless from a distance with a tone - tame. This still meant it took 2 subsequent releases and 15 years for it go gold
Honey - Jusr head and upper side, you can see nothing
Maggot Brain - No nudity on the cover, no top 100 pop sales
Nothing Shocking - Not even real humans and US major outlet sales were still in brown paper bags
Tin Machine II - These are 6th century statues and the US cover had the penises air-brushed out - You are not even trying now
Candy O - It is a pin up girl style drawing

Lovesexy as sold in the USA made no similar concessions for that country's silly prudeness in the way that a number of these supposedly non-tame album covers did. The impact of these tame covers is shown by how readily a person from the USA could rattle them off.

You can break down every album all ya want. The fact is it shows nudity or what some entity would've regarded as vulgar or obscene. Doesn't mean I agree with them. I'm citing examples of similar situations. Before and after.

The US DID make concessions. It was covered with a brown wrapper and/or kept behind the counter.

TrivialPursuit said:

IanRG said:

Amorica - Original cover was clothed and yet it still had a censored cover for the US
Two Virgins - Cover outcry lead to it being sold in brown paper wrapper
Janet - There were two album cover pictures - the prime one only showed her head
Surfa Rosa - Only topless from a distance with a tone - tame. This still meant it took 2 subsequent releases and 15 years for it go gold
Honey - Jusr head and upper side, you can see nothing
Maggot Brain - No nudity on the cover, no top 100 pop sales
Nothing Shocking - Not even real humans and US major outlet sales were still in brown paper bags
Tin Machine II - These are 6th century statues and the US cover had the penises air-brushed out - You are not even trying now
Candy O - It is a pin up girl style drawing

Lovesexy as sold in the USA made no similar concessions for that country's silly prudeness in the way that a number of these supposedly non-tame album covers did. The impact of these tame covers is shown by how readily a person from the USA could rattle them off.

You can break down every album all ya want. The fact is it shows nudity or what some entity would've regarded as vulgar or obscene. Doesn't mean I agree with them. I'm citing examples of similar situations. Before and after.

The US DID make concessions. It was covered with a brown wrapper and/or kept behind the counter.

And I demonstrated that the record company made concessions in many of these examples and that some of your examples are wrong or clearly not similar. Only two showed nude photos of people - One was put in a brown wrapper by the RECORD LABEL, the other was from a distance and used a tone filter to largely make this irrelevant but it still reduced sales.

A Wrecka Stow choosing to hide Lovesexy in a brown wrapper or behind the counter is simply not the same thing as the record company doing this. Even if it was the same, this act by the Wrecka Stows would have served as a discouragement to sales. Which brings us back to the very reasonable assumption that a major cause of Lovesexy's lack of sales in the USA was down to that country's prudeness. Note: Prince never made this mistake again.

Weird that people are arguing that the album cover was a bad choice because it "hurt sales", when Prince clearly didn't give a shit about sales through most of the 80s. If he really cared about pandering to the widest possible audience, we never would have gotten stuff like ATWIAD or Parade.

If you're uncomfortable with the cover because you don't like seeing a naked dude, just be honest about that up front instead of feigning concern over Prince's business choices

bozojones said:

RJOrion said:

And its not like his dick, balls or ass was showing...all thats showing is chest arms and legs...meanwhile on prior albums he sings about getting head, having sex with his sister, masturbating in magazines, etc...the selective outrage that some Prince "fans" display, regarding that album cover, is totally asinine.

Nailed it. It's kind of hypocritical, because so many fans went through that "Lovesexy saved my life" bullshit. Now all we hear is "the cover was too much." The press made more of it than regular ass folks did. The albums I listed were far more "offensive" than Lovesexy's cover.

Moreover, weak-minded Prince fans tend to change their whole outlook on life based on what he did or said. It's sorta like the Oprah affect in that way. Whatever she was into at the time is what folks did. It's neither good nor bad, but can't folks just make up their own minds at some point in their lives??? Prince gets all ethereal on an 80s album, and suddenly everyone's spiritual. Until the next album when he thinks Crocs are the jam, and every Prince fan buys a pair.

So like you said, selective outrage.

Prince had his near-naked, thigh-burn ass in front of a box springs frame, and folks were okay with that? Naked on a horse? Sure. But sitting on a lily or whatever with a over-zealous stamen is just an afront to everyone's sensibilities?

TrivialPursuit said:

RJOrion said:

And its not like his dick, balls or ass was showing...all thats showing is chest arms and legs...meanwhile on prior albums he sings about getting head, having sex with his sister, masturbating in magazines, etc...the selective outrage that some Prince "fans" display, regarding that album cover, is totally asinine.

Nailed it. It's kind of hypocritical, because so many fans went through that "Lovesexy saved my life" bullshit. Now all we hear is "the cover was too much." The press made more of it than regular ass folks did. The albums I listed were far more "offensive" than Lovesexy's cover.

Moreover, weak-minded Prince fans tend to change their whole outlook on life based on what he did or said. It's sorta like the Oprah affect in that way. Whatever she was into at the time is what folks did. It's neither good nor bad, but can't folks just make up their own minds at some point in their lives??? Prince gets all ethereal on an 80s album, and suddenly everyone's spiritual. Until the next album when he thinks Crocs are the jam, and every Prince fan buys a pair.

So like you said, selective outrage.

Prince had his near-naked, thigh-burn ass in front of a box springs frame, and folks were okay with that? Naked on a horse? Sure. But sitting on a lily or whatever with a over-zealous stamen is just an afront to everyone's sensibilities?

The selective outrage from you pair is all too reliant on your desire to accuse all other fans as being not as good you.

What is the point of the pair of you attacking anyone who has any opinion on the album cover? Apparently it is bad that people found it good, bad that people found it bad, and ultimately bad that people were ever influenced by Prince in any way at all!!!!

All we had here was one person say the Wrecka Stow owner showed his displeasure at them for buying the album and a person saying they did not buy the album becaue of the cover. The rest was about the very real, actual and measured sales drop of this album in the United States of Prudes - A significant cause of this poor sales perfomance can be reasonably attributed to the cover.

Make up your mind. First "Lovesexy was certainly more tame than some of those", then you were only "citing examples of similar situations". Now you want people to believe that all albums you "listed were far more "offensive" than Lovesexy's cover". The one thing that united all these covers is that they were all not offensive. Besides, none of the discussion here has ever been about the Lovesexy cover being offensive to fans - just about whether it discouraged sales. This drop in sales would have largely been sales to people who would not call themselves "fans". It is the people looking to buy an album as a present, the people more influenced by the top 40 countdown and the current songs getting airplay on the radio etc.

[Edited 5/14/23 14:00pm]

IanRG said:

bozojones said:

Weird that people are arguing that the album cover was a bad choice because it "hurt sales", when Prince clearly didn't give a shit about sales through most of the 80s. If he really cared about pandering to the widest possible audience, we never would have gotten stuff like ATWIAD or Parade.

If you're uncomfortable with the cover because you don't like seeing a naked dude, just be honest about that up front instead of feigning concern over Prince's business choices

I have the album and have no problem with the cover as I said above.

If you knew enough about Prince in the 1980s, you would know that he was complicated and cannot be put in one group. There certainly were times in the 80s when he absolutely cared about sales (DM, 1999, PR, SOTT) and times when he did not (ATWIAD and Parade as you said plus the Madhouse albums and the Black Album). Both this care and lack of care produced albums that were great to us in different ways. I do not think Lovesexy was one from a time when he did not care about sales because it was written as a rejection of the dark direction the Black album took him and presented as a happier version of Prince.

The one thing that no one has addressed is Prince never, ever, ever tried an album cover like that again. This is the business choice HE made. It does not reflect any imagined or illusory discomfort you want to think others have.

RJOrion said:

IanRG said:

The selective outrage from you pair imagine is all too reliant on your desire to accuse all other fans as being not as good you.

What is the point of the pair of attacking anyone who has any opinion on the album cover? Apparently it is bad that people found it good, bad that people found it bad, and ultimately bad that people were ever influenced by Prince in any way at all!!!!

All we had here was one person say the Wrecka Stow owner showed his displeasure at them for buying the album and a person saying they did not buy the album becaue of the cover. The rest was about the very real, actual and measured sales drop of this album in the United States of Prudes - A significant cause of this poor sales perfomance can be reasonably attributed to the cover.

Make up your mind. First "Lovesexy was certainly more tame than some of those", then you were only "citing examples of similar situations". Now you want people to believe the all albums you "listed were far more "offensive" than Lovesexy's cover". The one thing that united all these covers is that they were all not offensive. Besides, none of the discussion here has ever been about the Lovesexy cover being offensive to fans - just about whether it discouraged sales. This drop in sales would have largely been sales to people who would not call themselves "fans". It is the people looking to buy an album as present, the people more influenced by the top 40 countdown and the current songs getting airplay on the radio etc.

4 whole paragraphs...each paragraph longer than the one preceeding it,and yet you still managed to say absolutely nothing... ramble young man, ramble

Thank you - I note that you had no problem with TrivialPursuit's equally long response. It is always gratifying when you pull this stunt because all it has ever shown is that you have no answer to what I said but you feel you have to reply.

[Edited 5/14/23 14:02pm]

IanRG said:

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

You include dirty mind, and sott as albums where he cared about sales? An album of home recordings and risque lyrics, and an album he initially wanted to release as a high manufacturing cost triple?

Yes I do. This is based on facts.

DM - It is common knowledge that Prince knew he needed to perform as the record company was getting concerned about the deal. He marketed this album and tour with a vigour that was uncommonly high. The lyrics were to stand out from the crowd as people scrambled with the disco era ending - He said "Sex is always the most interesting thing to write about. It’s the one subject people can’t talk about without losing their cool … My family, my father and my mother, life and death are far more personal to me than sex". He tried new instruments, different ways of putting the album together. It got critical success more than sales success but it saved his deal and lead to Controversy, 1999 and PR.

SOTT - And instead he made it much more marketable because he knew it had to be a success following him sacking the Revolution.

[Edited 5/14/23 14:24pm]

RJOrion said:

IanRG said:

Thank you - I note that you had no problem with TrivialPursuit's equally long response. It is always gratifying when you pull this stunt because all it has ever shown is that you have no answer to what I said but you feel you have to reply.

[Edited 5/14/23 14:02pm]

Its not a matter of which of you has the longer paragraph....what matters is how you use it...TP knows how to use his paragraphs, while you fumble around with yours awkwardly, with no climax for the reader.

Make no mistake - From me there will ways be no more candy 4 U.

You could address the topic rather than your personal vendettas?

IanRG said:

RJOrion said:

IanRG said:

Make no mistake - From me there will ways be no more candy 4 U.

You could address the topic rather than your personal vendettas?

Ive already clearly addressed the topic...a few times in this thread..."personal vendettas"?...please, dont flatter yourself...i dont have "vendettas" against strangers in a comment box...its not that serious.

And yet you cannot answer a mere 4 paragraphs which followed on directly from your last on topic comment nor give up on your need to reply to that person.

Thank you once again for the on going selective outrage and how it reflects on your inability to address my comments.

Do you really think anyone here said fans were outraged by the cover and it was not the record company, the radio stations, the wrecka stows and the general buying public? Can you point to any post, other than TPs, that blames fans for sales performance in the USA? (Note once again, this was not a problem in the rest of world, I am not in the USA, I have no personal problem with the cover and I have the album)

(4th paragraph added for your satisfaction)

[Edited 5/14/23 15:09pm]

IanRG said:

The selective outrage from you pair is all too reliant on your desire to accuse all other fans as being not as good you.

Dude, pump the breaks. I was speaking in general terms. I've said this before about Prince fans across the board. If you put weight on it for yourself, that's on you, bruh.

Stop being so angsty, man. It's unnecessary.