I think its safe to say most Prince fans feel that the 80's were his best years, but you look at any artists career and most of them follow the same path. They hit that creative peak and lose their spark.

James Brown, Fleetwood Mac, Bowie, the Stones, Stevie Wonder, Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel, Queen, Sly Stone - the list is endless.

Lets hope Prince can break the mold with the new album!

Yeah, it's pretty much a given isn't it.

Prince is a very talented guy, but I feel 90% of his output since 1988 has been a mix of treading water, trend-following and musical masturbation.

His musicianship is not in question here, but his ability to create new and exciting music is.

This is all just my opinion, I know a lot of fans say they prefer his recent stuff.



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[This message was edited Tue Mar 2 11:49:46 2004 by Romance1600]

My two cents is this- Prince did his best (and most successful- not neccesarilly the same things!) work in the 80's. OK fine, we'll accept that. This success created a situation where a lot of people were exposed to his work.

Some of them were just there for whatever was cool at the moment. They went on to NKOTB or Milli Vanilli or whatever came next. You can't expect to keep him.

Some attached themselves so fervently to EXACTLY what he was doing that they related to (be it 1999, PR, SOTT or whatever) that of course they would be dissappointed when he did anything different. Can't expect to keep them, either.

So who is left? Those of us who liked the music and were intrigued enough by the artist who did it to sign on for the ride. The entire ride. Checking in w/ Prince is like running into a cousin you don't see often every couple of years. I might not like everything he does the same, but its fun and comforting to see him just the same. Where is he now? What is he up to?

Will he ever do another LITTLE RED CORVETTE, a song that everyone loves and is a huge hit w/ those people who just surf from fad to fad? Honestly I don't care. Not for myself personally. It would be kind of cool in that it would enlarge his audience and he could potentially turn more people into life-long fans. But other than that it doesn't matter.

People keep worring about "can he do it again" when he does EVERY DAMN DAY. Everytime he picks up his instrument, every time he writes a song he's living the life and doing the work God put him here to do. Cool by me. Outside success? Recognition? They are interesting but they are not the point.

IMHO.

Krebsne-

Your two cents are worth a million dollars. Nice post.

TampaPurple said:

I co-sign that!

Great post, krebsne!