I read a post by someone (don't remember who) that said they'd cut up the N.E.W.S. songs into the sections they are because they didn't need to be 14 minutes long.

Hmmm... Interesting. It got me to thinking. When Wendy and Lisa joined his band, they helped Prince see that music could have colors and introduced him to the world of classical music. Lisa was a classically trained pianist, right? So she apparently brought Prince Mozart and others to listen to.

I'm not an expert at classical music, but there really aren't "songs" in classical music. There are movements and sections, and they can be really long. I have Henryk Gorecki's Symphony No. 3, and the first movement alone is over 26 minutes long. Each movement can have fast parts and slow parts, loud parts and soft parts. (That's a really technical description, isn't it?) Even at 26 minutes long, it's all related to the theme of the movement.

Then it occurred to me. N.E.W.S. seems to be Prince's version of creating the structure of classical music. It contains jazz, funk, blues and experimental styles, but it's all related to the theme of track. It's his version of jazz fusion in a classical structure. He could have easily titled it Symphony No. 3, Opus 5, given the tracks Italian names and he'd would've have a classical music album. Well, maybe not that easily, but you get the drift.

Whether you like the music or not is one thing, but I think Prince is stretching himself musically with the release of N.E.W.S. It's going to be interesting to see where he goes from here.

I gotta agree with you on one thing: I am interested to see where Prince goes next. He is never boring.

This is a very astute thread that definately has me thinking about the possibilities, I'm just pleased that you were courageous enough to post it here.

Cool, but I still call it improv preshow tracks...


I think the stuff is really nice from the first listen, but he's got a long way to go if he's in that mindstate..