the first album that prince released when his heart was not in it was "come"...filled with sub standard material and very short (compared to his previous albums) it went straight to number one in the uk on the back of his number one single "tmbgitw" .but once people listened to the album and realised it was not up to his normal high standard, his fanbase started to slide..
...there is no doubt this is where the decline started for prince, the start of the warner brothers battle and the start of a series of poor prince albums (the gold experience being the one high point of the nineties)

I disagree with you in too many ways it makes me tired when I think of it, so I'll spare myself the trouble

blackboab said:

I agree with you.'Come' was the first Prince album that disappointed me.You can listen to this album and tell that Prince's heart wasn't in it.He was just "going through the motions" to fulfill his contractual obligations.At the time of it's release,I heard a rumor that Prince was so pissed at Warners that he was gonna purposely create substandard albums,while saving the good stuff for when he was free.'Come' has a few decent songs,but it's one of his weakest albums.See Rolling Stone's review,it's exactly the way I feel.
[This message was edited Fri Nov 14 2:46:44 PST 2003 by DavidEye]

I'm inclined to agree with you...it was ominous in a way. But there are a fair few songs off "Come" that I happen to enjoy. "Come", "Pheramone", "Solo", "Let it Go". It's a very listenable record. Rife with filler, to be fair, but it didn't taint Prince's catalogue that much. It's just an okay album.

blackboab said:

Got to say I personally think this is absolute bollocks.
I have no doubt that if Prince had the"freedom" he was after he would still have released this album, although maybe in a different configuration. He might not have been interested in promoting the album because he was pissed at WB, but he was definitely proud of the songs. For fucks sake, he was doing the Glam Slam Ullyses show with tracks from this for a year before the album was released, not to mention including Pheremone on TBE broadcast. He may well have been bored with the songs by the time the album was released, and cut off his nose to spite WB with the whole orgasm malarky and cover art, but these songs would have been released anyway, and probably sooner. Which a lot of fans would have preferred because the versions of the songs was too overproduced on the released album.
Also, people comment on the album being choc of filler, but let's be honest, except perhaps Parade and TGE that can be said for most of his and every other artist's albums. The stand out tracks are phenomenal, the rest so - so, but still better than most other artists best work though.

Of course, this is all just my opinion, and I could be talking a load of crap.






But I'm not, so there.
G

gsh said:

lol, no i agree with you. i think come is a cool album though id love to hear the original versions fans seem to love so much. but then again i have a feeling alot of fans would love the released versions more if they had been unreleased. if that makes sense! i suppose it did begin his serious commercial decline though. symbol album was a decline from D&P though so...

The slide started with Lovesexy. If you were there, you'd know, as Wham! said...

unremarkable said:

OMG, blasphemy! LoveSexy has many totally wonderful songs on it. Definitely NOT LoveSexy pal!

With Come ... hmmm yeah, I can relate to that somehow ...eventho it was only a temporary slide offcourse.


[This message was edited Fri Nov 14 6:07:51 PST 2003 by SunDance]

If it had been a double album along with the Gold Experience
and the tracks from these projects that ended up on the '98
release of Crystal Ball i.e.

Acknowledge Me
Ripopgodazippa
2Morrow
Hide The Bone
Interactive
Da Bang
What's My Name?

and the original LoveSign and a couple I forgot, it would
have been his biggest ever album. It would have gone
massive, people would have sucked it up their straws like
a big fat shake, begging for more.

It's not like the tracks on COME are sub-par. Far from it
they were all recorded over the same period of time, so
it's not like Prince decided to put some crap songs on the
album.

The only flaw this album is features in the fact that it
has no real decent beginning and no end. Therefore, it
feels incomplete.

If it had opened up with Interactive, had Lovesign in the
middle somewhere and What's My Name? Strays or 2Morrow as
the closing track, it would have gone down much better
with many people imo.

As it is, I love this album. I can see what you mean and
I think it's probably true. There was an enormous amount
of attention and hunger for his next album after TMBGITW
and then it all kind of back-fired on the general public
when he released an album that didn't contain that song
and consequently pulled no real singles or attention.

Then it took ages for Gold to be released with once again
little promotion. All the obscure side-projects muddeling
things up even more.

It could have all been planned so much better, but in a
way, it was nothing but a mere precursor for what was to
come in the good old days of now with the NPGMC.

Chocolate cake, anyone?

Lovesexy is probably my favourite album.
The decline came for me with Batman. He suddenly became so commercially minded and the creativity disappeared.

blackboab said:

Those last albums for Warners were contract fillers. Prince has said it himself. I don't even concider them proper Prince albums ! (Although there are some good songs!!)

Commercially the first great "Purple Bandwagon" decline was quite a massive $ decline (86-88) when he was a superstar. I mean in terms of losses prior to the Batman project.

blackboab said:

His decline started with "Lovesexy" he lost a huge portion of his fanbase with that album...
IMHO, "Come" was a true return to form for a couple of years, then he fucked it up good with "Emancipation"...

Neversin.

Come is a great album. Prince's decline came when WB stopped promoting his record's around the time of the
album.

joyinrepetition said:

I can agree here to some extent. However, everyone is referring to Prince's decline, but he is the architect of his own downfall, if you will. He doesn't seem all that interested in "commercial" success, although financial success does appear to be a priority. I'ts the same argument all the time, WB stifled his creativity. Not really, as his post WB output shows. He hasn't released the 4 albums a year he used to tote in interviews and press releases. Don't get me wrong, I'm not criticising his output, but the wave of unreleased material hasn't surfaced (although that could be because his contract with WB gave them "ownership" of all songs produced under that contract, wether released or not. I don't know). Now he has to foot the bill for his own production etc, he seems to be a little more cautious than when someone else was picking up the tab.
Prince was an amazing breath of fresh air when he "broke through" with Purple Rain. However, in real terms, he doesn't make commercial records. Emancipation was possibly his most commercial collection of songs, but a 3CD set priced at £30 isn't going to sell to the casual consumer. The core of fans like us have kept him from fading into total obscurity.
Now, on the other hand, I love his new mature output such as Xpectation and NEWS, although detest the rhetoric inTRC. I am quite happy to be one of the select few who still appreciate his talent, and couldn't care less if the masses ever hear his work again. They weren't in it for the long haul in the first place.
I'm off to work now.
G

His "commercial" decline came with Around The World In A Day...coming so quiclk of the heels of Purple Rain with much less power and a different direction. His sales were never huge as they could have been if he would have done what the machine expected etc.

antoon said:

Me three.

The title track is one of my all-time favorite songs.

rdhull said:

Au contraire. Wasn't that album a #1 smash despite being too out ther even for the most die-hard Prince fan?

Anyways, that's an awesome album even with its flaws. So is Come. There's just this darkness and sexuality to it that I like about it. "Space" is probably its best track.

NWF said:

Im just sayin it was a commerical decline..only sold what, 2-3 mil at the height? Back to 1999 numbers when he was just "discovered" so to speak by the populace. His numbers never picked up after that...it took D7P workin like a 9 to 5 to raise him up again..had he come outblazing once again and waited to do it as Purple Rain follow-up, who knows what would have happened...integrity compromised yes, but that's not what this subject is about.And Im not saying th e product that he DID release was substandad either.

gsh said:

I agree with most of what you said. But I have to take exception with the notion that TGE did not have filler. It most certainly did. P Control is filler. And could have been bumped from the album and replaced with Acknowledge Me (sans the goofy rap). And 319, Now, or We March could have been easily replaced with Interactive.

james said:

...and continued with Graffiti Bridge, Diamonds and Pearls brought him back a bit, but in hindsight i think it's a poor album in many ways, as was

Strange, i kind of enjoy Come, it's a dark kind of album all the way through.

no one has mentioned the "piss poor" album that was chaos & disorder.
much worse than the come album.

chris210972 said:

Get your head out of your ass. The decline started with Diamonds and Pearls and continued through that weak-ass Love Symbol garbage. Come was the foreshadow of better times ahead. Gold, Chaos&Disorder, Emancipation, Rave, NPS, TRC. I think he only really dropped the ball for two albums, which coincidentally are around the same time as his battles with Warner Bros.

Its more obvious if you lived the years, but the golden period has to be:

1999
Purple Rain
ATWIAD
Parade
SOTT
Lovesexy

Each was unique, different, and thought provoking at the time. They sounded like nothing else on earth.

Batman sold out, and from there on, he never recovered. His ego got the better of him and he felt quantity was better than quality.

Come was a low point. Some great tracks, but probably the least "whole" album, good or bad. Come did have some killer tracks, but for some reason, the album didn't work as a whole. many fans said it, all the critics said it.

Sure some people will love it, particularly thoses who got into Prince in the early 90s, but they are a small minority.

For those of you who say Prince is only getting better. Can you honestly say that the last 6 albums are greater?????




.
[This message was edited Fri Nov 14 16:16:38 PST 2003 by SquirrelMeat]

SquirrelMeat said:

His last six don't compare to the material during the undisputed creative peak, but they sure do kick the arse of D&P and Love Symbol

antoon said:

AfrigginMEN.

I agree with a couple others here. Something happened after Lovesexy. He got distracted big time and took a different path.

rdhull said:

I agree with u RD. The masses were not ready for direction that Prince went with ATWIAD(including me). If it is the same musical style album after album would we really be satisified?

I'd rate Come in the same league as Controversy. They're not awful and both albums have standout tracks (Space and Do Me, Baby).

I don't think that the Batman album was overtly commercial at all... Would any other act have included jokes about the size of a woman's vaginal cavity (Vicki Waiting) and demand that he wants to skip foreplay (Scandalous) on the soundtrack album of a movie marketed at kids!!!

No... His most commercially-minded albums are Diamonds & Pearls and Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic.

I think that Graffiti Bridge was the touch-paper for his commercial decline. I can't listen to it even now. The Question Of U, Joy In Repetition and Still Would Stand All Time are wonderful songs but the rest is shit!

I actually saw Come and The Gold Experience as being glimmers of hope. I hated the symbol album and Diamonds & Pearls. Emancipation was too over-produced and very "of it's time".

I hated the whole N.P.G. band during the Nineties. I hate his new jazz-funk kick that he's on now.

One Nite Alone should have been given a general release.

I hate Larry Graham.

chris210972 said:

Truth