Am I the only one who's sick of hearing how Musicology is the only decent album Prince has released since the symbol album?

Personally, I thought Gold Experience had some of the baddest (and I mean that in the funky way) music Prince had done in years. P Control was a masterpiece. And friends of mine who play guitar that don't even like Prince were saying "Turn this up" when I played Endorphinmachine.

And was I the only one that thought Rave had some of the best chances Prince had for pop acceptance in years? I, for one, think that with the right timing and marketing a song like "So Far, So Pleased" has a much better chance of topping the pop charts than Musicology. That's not to say Musicology ain't great, it's just that certain songs are palatable to the pop charts and some ain't.

Maybe it's just me, but I'd like to know if I'm not alone on this one...

mcharkowski said:

You're not alone. I haven't heard Musicology yet so I can't comment on it but I think that with the proper promotion, Rave could have been big. The album a couple of songs that would have hit the charts easily, like So Far, So Pleased, Baby Knows and even I Love You... I remember when I heard that Arista was distributing it, I had a weird feeling about it and I'd find out later why I had it. I wanted Prince to go to Sony then. Now he's with them and I think that he'll get the promotion with this that he should have had with the others. Also, TGE was my last favorite of his. I wish he didn't have the problems he had with WB when it came out. It was dying to be a hit.

GOOD THREAD. It seems cool now to slag P's 90's stuff and feed into this whole "P is back" notion.

Truth is - the man never left. I do NOT love everything he's done. I've been vocal about my negative feelings about TRC, for example.

But he's released some GREAT STUFF. There's a brilliant album hidden in all the fat on Emancipation. The Gold Experience and Come is right up there with the SOTT era as far as P's output, in my opinion. Rave has great moments, especially I Love U But I don't trust u anymore and ManOwar. Even NPS, perhaps his weakest album, has The One - a phenomenal track. Better than Call my Name. Imagine if The One was on Musicology? People would go nuts for it.

What if Musicology was a 2 CD set featuring NPGMC download stuff, only we'd never heard any of it before. In the context of his big "comeback" everyone would be raving about tracks like When I lay my hands on U and The Daisy Chain. That material is as good, or almost as good, as Musicology.

The man is back? The man never left. The general public left him, and are starting to figure out what they've been missing.






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[This message was edited Thu Apr 15 18:44:42 2004 by JonSnow]

Truth be told:

I have found Musicology to be a little bit bland, uninteresting, and hollow sounding. It's almost too simple for me.

This is a very rare thing for me to say, as there are no Prince albums I don't like, but this is near the bottom for me.

I was way more excited listening to Rainbow Children, Xpectation, and N.E.W.S. when I first got them than I am now.

It's unfortunate, because this seems to be the token "classic artist is back" album, due in part to his hall of fame and grammy shows. It was just good timing for this album, and I think any album he's released in the last 5 years would have gotten equal token praise were they released now.

This album might sell okay because of all the recent promotion, but I just don't think it has enough substance or weight to assure future album sales. It's as if all the critics are saying they like this album just because they haven't said it in a long time.

So I agree, I am getting cheesed that people are tossing aside his last ten years of work, which is in my rare opinion, one hell of an interesting decade of music.

I am totally with this discussion. Prince's 90s stuff isn't/wasn't that bad at all.

He basically suffered from three problems IMHO:

1) There was very little musical ground left for him to cover without it starting to sound like he was following trends (Rap and Hip Hop for example) or completely losing mass appeal (like Jazz)

2) He was not supported (properly) by a major label meaning the promotion etc was almost non-existent. I have no doubt that TGE would have been huge (possibly even D&P huge) had it been released in 94 on the heals of TMBGITW with suitable promotion from WB.

3) Without a manager or record label to "answer to" and therefore being surrounded by "yes men" he lacked the ability to edit his output. Emancipation definitely contains an awesome single CD and very good double CD.

Look at Prince's artistic growth and development from 78 to 88 (the perceived "golden years"). It is virtually unprecedented for any artist! As this thread suggests it is questionable whether Prince's growth actually did stop in 88 as you can certainly hear something very different on Batman, D&P, , TGE, Emancipation, The Truth!

ALL (quality) artists have their moment. A time when they are part of the zeitgeist. The Beatles were only releasing songs for 7 years and then split up. Had they continued I really do not believe they would have maintained their "edge" and continued growth (for evidence check out Paul McCartneys solo material during the 80s and 90s)

We cannot expect Prince to produce things that are truly original anymore, what is there left for him to do that wouldn't just make us cynical anyway (such as do a thrash metal album). He is inevitably going to retread familiar ground and all we can hope for is quality if not necessarilly original tunes.

IMHO Musicology is alright. It's not great. It's not a "return to form". However, if it is being pushed by SONY and getting sufficient promotion (as seems to be the case) then it could end up being his most successful album (in terms of sales) for some time. I for one would welcome that as I like hearing and seeing him in the media etc.
[This message was edited Fri Apr 16 9:26:41 2004 by jaypotton]