I'm stunned no one has posted this yet:

https://www.avclub.com/pr...rospective

What a super irritating site, with all those popping up ads.

Anyways.

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Had almost forgotten how strange it felt back then reading the "1958-1993", plus that picture inside the booklet. Actually, I thought it was more of an atypical cryptic phat Prince joke. But no way, he was dead serious. Looking back to it all, it was quite a risk he took. Interesting though.

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Sidenote, it was the first Prince album i didn't buy when it was released.

I downloaded it illegaglly via Napster, and acutally purchased the CD a few years later (for a bargain).

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To me, this album was too thin (Race, Space, Letitgo, Loose!, Orgasm...), too simple in ideas and concept, too lacking in content, and too poor deacent songwriting material.

I wish he really made a serious difficult fuck-you “Prince=dead” album. One with which he could have gone much further in just a one 60-minute track for example, where he let his plaintive deep-screaming vocals, his swan-song run the full course in shrieks and darkness, with distorted and scary guitar solos, like the hallway speech version of Comuter Blue's instrumental end part. All confusion and death. Imagine that. Something like "WAR," but not funky at all.

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Also glad that "Peach" and especially "Pope" were not on this configuration tbh. Never liked these two.

On the other hand, all the versions I know so far of "Come" (the song), I find quite interesting. Especially because of the use of horns, the repetitive sample, and the lenght of the song versions, all the different takes.
Admittedly, "Papa" and "Dark" are great classic Prince songs.
But the rest, to me, it has always been méh.

I'm stunned no one has posted this yet:

I guess because it doesn't bring anything new to the table.

The background story is certainly informative to non-fans, but useless to us, and the review basically rehashes what critics said 30 years ago without providing any further analysis or any attempt to reevaluate it from a "30 years later" perspective.

And it actually doesn't "celebrate" the album at all: if anything, most readers will probably think they certainly don't want to listen to it because it's a mediocre record.

.

Those two statements are interesting:

.

"The album seems claustrophobic and monochromatic."

It's true and it's actually pretty cool. Come is probably Prince's darkest record alongside 1999, The Black Album and The Undertaker. Probably even darker because it doesn't have the tongue in cheek humor of 1999 and TBA, nor the high concept approach of TU. There's an uneasy aspect to it which I always liked: it's not made to please or entertain. That alone makes it unique in his discography.

.

"It sounds like the work of an artist who has grown bored with his own creation."

That one always puzzled me, because already at the time, most critics felt Prince was repeating himself and felt he wasn't being very audacious with this material, but contemporary live shows demonstrated that Prince was everything but bored with his then-current catalogue. And for many of us fans, the whole Glam Slam Ulysses/Come/The Gold Experience/Exodus era felt like Prince was trying so much crazy shit he'd never tried before and reconciling with his wild, underdog side after years of being a major superstar (a 5 musicians live unit, playing mostly in small clubs, finding alternative ways to distribute his music, fighting against his label, etc.). And say what you will, but Michael B. Nelson's horns arrangements on Come are absolutely gorgeous; starting a record with a 12 minutes long suite was rather daring for a pop star, as well as putting an a capella song on the record (not to mention his moving vocals on Solo and having a playwright write the lyrics); Letitgo was one of the most intimate song he'd made up to that pojnt, lyrically speaking; and Prince's innovative use of samples (which was entirely different to the ways rappers used them at the time) and those crazy bass and guitar sounds on songs like Loose or Race were some seriously nasty, funky shit. And I could go on with the uneasiness of Pheromone's stalker story and Papa's child abuse story, Prince politically addressing blackness with Race's lyrics (something he'd only done more discreetly on The Sacrifice of Victor and two Tevin Campbell songs the year before), The Hornheadz' wild lines on that same song, the screaming orgasm that was going to annoy every fan's neighbors at the end of the album ( ), etc.

.

Mostly, the problem with Come was that it was labeled as Prince's last album, a throwaway of sorts, when it was, in effect, the first album and should have been passionately marketed as a wild, "pop star goes underground" experiment. This was confusing as hell to non-fans (and, to an extent, even to us). Sure, the music wasn't as revolutionary as it was a decade before, but it was as passionate, and a fascinating turn 16 years into Prince's career. He was exploring much more new territories, musically and lyrically, than he was given credit for.

.

I don't think there was any way Come could have gotten more praise or attention than it did at the time, given the circumstances of its release, but 30 years later, it could be revisted in a kinder manner than this article did IMHO.

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[Edited 9/7/24 5:45am]

Vannormal said:

I think my first induction to the come album or music from it was the tv special. I remember loving that and then really enjoying the album, and how tight and compact it was. It is a guilty pleasure of mine from the get go. As for a SDE , not really needed because you have the Gold Experience to mix with it.

antonb said:

databank said:

Vannormal said:

What a super irritating site, with all those popping up ads.

Anyways.

-

Had almost forgotten how strange it felt back then reading the "1958-1993", plus that picture inside the booklet. Actually, I thought it was more of an atypical cryptic phat Prince joke. But no way, he was dead serious. Looking back to it all, it was quite a risk he took. Interesting though.

-

Sidenote, it was the first Prince album i didn't buy when it was released.

I downloaded it illegaglly via Napster, and acutally purchased the CD a few years later (for a bargain).

-

To me, this album was too thin (Race, Space, Letitgo, Loose!, Orgasm...), too simple in ideas and concept, too lacking in content, and too poor deacent songwriting material.

I wish he really made a serious difficult fuck-you “Prince=dead” album. One with which he could have gone much further in just a one 60-minute track for example, where he let his plaintive deep-screaming vocals, his swan-song run the full course in shrieks and darkness, with distorted and scary guitar solos, like the hallway speech version of Comuter Blue's instrumental end part. All confusion and death. Imagine that. Something like "WAR," but not funky at all.

-

Also glad that "Peach" and especially "Pope" were not on this configuration tbh. Never liked these two.

On the other hand, all the versions I know so far of "Come" (the song), I find quite interesting. Especially because of the use of horns, the repetitive sample, and the lenght of the song versions, all the different takes.
Admittedly, "Papa" and "Dark" are great classic Prince songs.
But the rest, to me, it has always been méh.

Napster didn't start until 5 years later. You didn't even have a friend make a cassette or anything for that whole time?

...Nah, it was some sort of a download, of that i'm sure!

I remember well that I was kinda proud of one of my first illegal purchase (via some site, not a person, nor a cassette).

And, just checked it myself, Napwster indeed was much later.

i'm getting old, and this whole 90s (and even 00's and later) decade(s) becomes more and more blur.

Strange though, I remember exactly all about Prince's 80s.

Probably because I started to lose interest in Prince's output after Grafitti Bridge... And, discovered so much more other music.

-

I like your view on the whole 'Come' album.

It's true, lyrically it's very very dark.

Musically (and songwriters wise), it's very light.

What a strange combination, at least to me.

I took a listen to this album with all your info in mind again,

and honestly, I still don't like this album all that much.

Because of songwriting-shortcomings and lack of musical inspiration.

I carefully took the time to go through all the lyrics.

They are indeed much darker than I remember.

Let's call it a plus.

And yes, I still loooove these great horns in the long 'Come' track.

[Edited 9/8/24 6:34am]

Easier to read version: https://archive.is/4x4xE

Also, holy shit, fix this site already. It shouldn't be this hard to post a link. This version of MCE editor hasn't worked for almost 20 years.

databank said:

What a vastly underrated album this is. Come is awesome, for a "throwaway" album.

SIrSighALot said: