I like the album. That is what is great about Prince's discorgraphy there's somthing in there for everybody.

it has somewhere here on earth at least.

but yeah, the rest was pretty inessential.

JorisE73 said:

wasitgood4u2 said:

JorisE73 said:

I like the album. That is what is great about Prince's discorgraphy there's somthing in there for everybody.

I know there are those who like the album but the consensus is that it’s one of his weakest. Anyway, if it wasn’t clear, I am obviously sharing my personal impressions and reactions. In this case it reinforced my reactions at the time but far stronger. I was excited to relisten to 3121 and even enjoyed and was impressed by tracks I was less enthused by in the past. I think Lotusflower is among his best work - and am still excited to relisten. I was hoping to be pleasantly surprised by Planet Earth but still found most of it hard to listen to. My question is how can that be sandwiched between two masterpieces? [Edited 7/2/24 5:24am]

I don't know, I think 3121 (and Musicology) are some of his lowest tier albums like Art Official Age and Hit and Run Pahse 1 and Planet Earth is a major step up, so I don't think it's sandwiched between 2 mastepieces.

wasitgood4u2 said:

My question is how can that be sandwiched between two masterpieces?

3121-PlanetEarth-Lotusflow3r is like a trilogy.

There is an underlying cohesion throughout, in that all the title songs were tracked in 2004 by the "New Power Trio"

Follow-up question: How could you not like "Guitar"???

well everything recorded for 3121/Planet Earth/Lotusflower pretty much flowed from
the same few sessions and swaped places on these albums over and over.

Lotusflower being the best imo, 3121 being understandably something he felt would
be a great bag of songs to follow up Musicology and Planet Earth just being a bit of
an oddball album where there might have been various reasons to just throw songs
on a disc and call it an album, either to get those songs that were no longer part of
the Lotusflower tracklist out of his system or to have just another album to give away
with a newspaper, or simply to have a vehicle to put Guitar on, I don't know.

i'm glad we got it though. I consider it to be a bit of an outtake album to Lotusflower,
yet released before the main event, so to speak.

Lion Of Judah & All The Midnights In The World are my favorit tracks here.

Followed by Guitar, The One U Wanna C, Future Baby Mama, Mr Goodnight, Resolution
Somewhere Here On Earth as a bunch of solid enough tracks.

Followed by Chelsea Rogers and Planet Earth which I can't stomach

LILpoundCAKE said:

Lion Of Judah & All The Midnights In The World are my favorit tracks here.
Followed by Guitar, The One U Wanna C, Future Baby Mama, Mr Goodnight, Resolution, Somewhere Here On Earth as a bunch of solid enough tracks. Followed by Chelsea Rogers and Planet Earth which I can't stomach

Just as everyone says and agrees on, "what you like is not what i like".

"Chelsea Rogers" and "Planet Earth" are great songs!

"Lion of Judah" and "All the Midnights..." are skips

It's about the same level as the others you mention. Nothing egregiously "bad" about it.

The only real standout of the post-NPGMC "comeback" era is the 'Elixir' album. I would say the worst of that era is 'Musicology', and 'MPLSound'/'20Ten's cornall attempts as 80s throwback karaoke.

[Edited 7/2/24 7:38am]

nayroo2002 said:

LILpoundCAKE said:

Lion Of Judah & All The Midnights In The World are my favorit tracks here.
Followed by Guitar, The One U Wanna C, Future Baby Mama, Mr Goodnight, Resolution, Somewhere Here On Earth as a bunch of solid enough tracks. Followed by Chelsea Rogers and Planet Earth which I can't stomach

Just as everyone says and agrees on, "what you like is not what i like".

"Chelsea Rogers" and "Planet Earth" are great songs!

"Lion of Judah" and "All the Midnights..." are skips

It's a weird album in totality, but I find myself grabbing snippets and editing down songs to their greatest segments when the album is underwhelming.

I've always loved Chelsea Rodgers, the album is worth it just for that song, and the snippets from the other songs, and Guitar live, especially with 3rd Eye Girl, was a lot of fun.

claudemorton said:

01. All The Midnights In The World
02. F.U.N.K.
03. The One U Wanna C
04. Glass Cutter
05. I Am

06. Touch Me

07. Sunrise Sunset

08. No One Else
09. Guitar
09. Future Baby Mama

10. Mr Goodnight
12. SST / Brand New Orleans
13. Lion Of Judah
14. Deliverance
15. Somewhere Here On Earth



this has been my go-to version of this album for a while now it collects some loose change
from the late 2005 to 2007 period and it just runs very smoothly and delightful.

oh and it rocks

[Edited 7/2/24 11:42am]

nayroo2002 said:

LILpoundCAKE said:

Lion Of Judah & All The Midnights In The World are my favorit tracks here.
Followed by Guitar, The One U Wanna C, Future Baby Mama, Mr Goodnight, Resolution, Somewhere Here On Earth as a bunch of solid enough tracks. Followed by Chelsea Rogers and Planet Earth which I can't stomach

Just as everyone says and agrees on, "what you like is not what i like".

"Chelsea Rogers" and "Planet Earth" are great songs!

LILpoundCAKE said:

erik319 said:

LILpoundCAKE said:

01. All The Midnights In The World
02. F.U.N.K.
03. The One U Wanna C
04. Glass Cutter
05. I Am

06. Touch Me

07. Sunrise Sunset

08. No One Else
09. Guitar
09. Future Baby Mama

10. Mr Goodnight
12. SST / Brand New Orleans
13. Lion Of Judah
14. Deliverance
15. Somewhere Here On Earth



this has been my go-to version of this album for a while now it collects some loose change
from the late 2005 to 2007 period and it just runs very smoothly and delightful.

oh and it rocks

[Edited 7/2/24 11:42am]

I like that. I can see it working well. Apart from track 1 which needs nailing to a frisbee and flinging over a rainbow.

No, you see, that's the beauty of this. It's a total mind fuck

Apart from me having a soft spot for 'Midnights', it works SO SO SO well,
transitioning right into the first heavy bars of "Funk".

It's like a tiny little sweet prequel to an album that is, as londell might put
it 'all gass, no breaks" from there on out.

I ignored this when it came out. But it's become one of my fave later-era albums.

planet earth is my least fave in his whole discog but i can admit there's some good stuff on it. chelsea rodgers... and... uhh... i'm sure i'd like the other ones if i could remember them off the top of my head right now.

3121, however, is a GREAT record start to finish. except beautiful loved and bless which is sickly sweet and over the top

lustmealways said:

WhisperingDandelions said:

The only real standout of the post-NPGMC "comeback" era is the 'Elixir' album.

Really? I still haven't brought myself to listen to a single track from that disc since the day it came out. Am I really missing something?

Chelsea Rodgers alone is worth the price of buying the newspaper to get the album.

There's too much good music out there for me to ever listen to this album again. I just can't do it. It was the last officially released Prince album I ever bought. I did buy the Lotusflower discs before that and since I liked Lotusflower, if not MPLSound and Elixir, I decided to give it a try. I was hoping it would grow on me like Lovesexy did, but nope. Rave and New Power Soul were previous albums I considered weak but at least there were a couple of cuts I liked. This album was just bad top to bottom.

FunkyStrange said:

WhisperingDandelions said:

The only real standout of the post-NPGMC "comeback" era is the 'Elixir' album.

Really? I still haven't brought myself to listen to a single track from that disc since the day it came out. Am I really missing something?

Yes.

It's a sultry Sade-inlfuenced record. Basically a "pop/R&B" version of the kind of elastic jazz The Rainbow Children showcases. TRC is the more esoteric side, Elixir is the more pop side, but they're both similar approaches instrumentally.

and lol why would you not even bother with a single track? It's still written/produced/arranged/per4med by Prince, other than the vocals.

I swear I've never seen another artist make his owns fans recoil when he doesn't sing his own lead vocals like Prince. Like Bruce Springstein fans got no problem choking down Patti Smith's "Because the Night", Kanye fans generally prefer his beats when other rappers are over them, even Billy Corgan fans don't mind those lame Taproot records he made.

But Prince doesn't sing the lead vocals and it's like "WHY would i bother with that COASTER?" I mean I dunno I assumed you were a fan of Prince songs, my mistake.

I feel like the title track was the best track on 'Planet Earth'.

All the love for "Chelsea Rogers", I gotta revisit that, because I swear that was always my least fav on this record.

You can also knock points of "All the Midnights in the World' for being a ripoff of "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town."

"Future Baby Mama" is solid but honestly the older I get the lyrics make me cringe more than "Extraloveable" '82. This is the true worst moment of him "following trends."

[Edited 7/3/24 0:40am]

This thread made me revisit the album. I thought it was weak but I kinda think it is great now

Sure, as an album it is a bit patchy and feels like a eclectic collection of songs intended to be given away for free with an awful UK newspaper However it is a really strong collection of individual songs though, imho it's all quite good except maybe "The Lion of Judah". It takes me back to that era of his band, Shelby J's big voice, the Superbowl performance etc.

I really love Prince pushing his voice on songs like "All The Midnights in the World" and "Somewhere Here On Earth", and with such good ballads augmented with catchy pop/rock numbers like "Guitar", "Chelsea Rodgers" and "The One U Wanna C" and the awesome title track... that's a lot of good music for one record! And "Resolution" is a lovely closer.


I just find "Lion of Judah" a bit unmusical and grating. Everything else is brilliant lol. Sorry I really wanted to slag the album off, I failed. Maybe since Prince left us, I just feel more appreciative of his work, even his late-career stuff.

I still hate PlectrumElectrum though

WhisperingDandelions said:

FunkyStrange said:

Really? I still haven't brought myself to listen to a single track from that disc since the day it came out. Am I really missing something?

Yes.

It's a sultry Sade-inlfuenced record. Basically a "pop/R&B" version of the kind of elastic jazz The Rainbow Children showcases. TRC is the more esoteric side, Elixir is the more pop side, but they're both similar approaches instrumentally.

and lol why would you not even bother with a single track? It's still written/produced/arranged/per4med by Prince, other than the vocals.

I swear I've never seen another artist make his owns fans recoil when he doesn't sing his own lead vocals like Prince. Like Bruce Springstein fans got no problem choking down Patti Smith's "Because the Night", Kanye fans generally prefer his beats when other rappers are over them, even Billy Corgan fans don't mind those lame Taproot records he made.

But Prince doesn't sing the lead vocals and it's like "WHY would i bother with that COASTER?" I mean I dunno I assumed you were a fan of Prince songs, my mistake.

I was guilty of dismissing Elixer on release and only got into it recently. Some of his better sexy clever song-writing. The 'dirty blonde girl in 9 and half weeks' line is funny. Something U Already Know the highlight for me.

.

About Planet Earth, it's definitely the weakest tracks of the bunch from Lotus and 3121. Not a fan of Lion Of Judah, All The Midnights and Resolution at all.

.

And I can't take the title track serious with the Barry Manilow Could it Be Magic interlude.

wasitgood4u2 said:

How did he release brilliant, exciting and masterful (if flawed) records like 3121 and Lotusflower and in the middle record (or release) arguably his most underwhelming and substandard record, Planet Earth.

Planet Earth is a damn good album. Just as good as 3121 and better than Lotus. Every fan has that one Prince album they don't get all the hate for...and this is mine.