It's a great song. I think it got overlooked by a lot of
people because the majority did not appreciate the first
6 minutes of sermon at the beginning.

I don't know, I guess you have to like that kind of stuff.
Personally, I liked it. It was a borderline affair and it
was sort of the last step of the way I could follow Prince
in his religious/different beliefs before he went over the
edge in recent years.

Anyway, the song itself is very beautiful, but once again
it is a bit of a tricky affair since it's floating around
in many different qualities, ranging from horrible to one
or two that sound absolutely fantastic.

I like the vocals on this track a lot and the subject is a
nice one. It's better appreciated if you know what Prince
was on about at the time, concerning the UNI-Verse, a.k.a.
the One Song.

The bit of the song that stands out most for me is the bit
where the vocals go

"COMPANY COMPANY..." and within that harmony change to
"COME 2 ME COME 2 ME"

I'm also rather fond of the way he sings/screams the

"EYE KNOW" in the line

"Here at the centre of it all, EYE KNOW, the future will
come from me".

It is sung, no 'belted' out with such conviction that it
puts me in mind of some of his other greatest moments when
he sang about his beliefs and cranked his voice up to a
point where he was almost screaming. He rarely delivers a
statement with such force whilst NOT singing it in falsetto
and that makes it quite special.

Nice post. I'd never thought of the Uni-Verse/One-Song wordplay before. That adds a whole new layer for me.

I like this song too. When I played the video for my then-girlfriend (now fiancee), she said 'Why doesn't he release stuff like this to the radio?' She doesn't like a whole lot of Prince, but she loved this one.

Hmm...this thread prompted me to go ahead give "One Song" a spin...I almost never play it because I only have the original Quicktime file that Prince put on his site.

The sermon...I still can't figure out where he's coming from. Knowledge is bad, choosing is bad, just letting God take over your mind is the answer. Sounds like a bunch of fluff...if only there were some reason to think this way, but that would require the use of language to explain it to me, so of course I'm supposed to just accept it blindly...or something. I don't know...it doesn't get any better each time I hear it, but Prince is famous for obfuscating things that are best stated clearly. Anything he disagrees with, he will simply ignore, according to his sermon...such a policy sounds to me like a recipe for staying inside one's box forever. But I don't have my Prince-to-English decoder ring anymore...I outgrew it and gave it away.

The song itself...very nice. Lovely arrangement. Borderline sappy, but I love the "COME 2 ME" bit...yeah Prince still stirs me from time to time.

IstenSzek said:

The singing is indeed marvellous, pure soul. Don't know why Prince doesn't get this out as a single, it should be heard by as many people as possible. What can say, it's B e a u t i f u l.

if memory serves me OneSong did win an award for Best Internet Single.

I can't get past the first line of the song.He sounds like Boy George!!!

teller said:

What makes the speech confusing is that these trees of
"Knowledge" and "Life" represent things other than just
simply "Knowledge" and "Life" which makes the narrative
a bit of a blur.

In fact, some of the speech is quite good in the way it
states some wrongs in society these days. But as usual,
it's rather one-sided. There are always more sides to a
story than just the side of "if surrendered into the care
and keeping of god it would all be fine".

There is a middle ground. But hey, that's why I said
"sermon aside"

IstenSzek said:

True, let's say the man speaks in riddles sometimes. Does anyone really care? I like the lyrics of a song like Sign O' The Times, now that makes sense to some people.



Yep sermon aside, please.

teller said:

Looking back I can see what Prince was thinking here.

Facing a shrinking fanbase, no record company to pay the bills and popular file sharing destroying his attempts at having any kind of decent income as an independent artist, Prince envisioned what he wanted NPGMC to be...

Most people exercising free-will are going to file-share and being on his own, Prince knows he can't do what he wants as an independent artist without money. If he released popular megahit albums with promo videos all over Viacom, he still wasn't going to see the pre-98 pre-file sharing profits that he once enjoyed.

So he slowly started with the social conditioning (and some say brainwashing) of his "fams", the ones who would pay anything, never god-forbid file share and forever follow collective "beehive" thinking. His interesting tactical approach has brought the NPGMC website to where it is today. He now has arrived at the point where he says "surrender your expectations" and tosses jazzy instrumentals out that he knows are going to be file shared no matter what he does.

Already you see Prince wanting to keep and control "one song, one prince community" He couldn't do it with his lawyers, and he isn't going to live to see the day when music isn't freely copied and shared. So as a last resort he has found God to be his answer.

I kinda preferred the prelude to the song.

I thought it was interesting.

I fuckin' LOOOVE this song, almost as much as I love IstenSzek's take on it. And I agree...the whole Company, Company, Company, Come 2 Me, Come 2 Me, PLEASE. Here at the Center of it All, I KNOW!!! the future will come from me...

I am the Universe...

I'm SUCH an incurable Princefuck. Just reading about that part of the song gives me chills, lawd.

Uni-verse = One Song...NICE work, IstenSzek!!!