Published: April 19 2004 18:46

Music: Prince

By Ludovic Hunter-Tilney

http://news.ft.com/servle...9420440602

After a decade-long career trough during which he fought his record company, renamed himself as an unpronounceable squiggle and sang jazz fusion songs about being a Jehovah's Witness, Prince is back with a new album, Musicology, whose vintage funk and soulful ballads are an overdue return to form.

Like courtiers welcoming home exiled royalty, younger stars have been queuing up to pay their respects to the 1980s pop maestro.

In February, Beyoncé performed a show-stealing duet with him at the Grammy awards ceremony. Last month Alicia Keys and OutKast introduced him at a ceremony marking his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

But the warmth isn't entirely mutual. Musicology finds Prince in a grown-up mood, singing about marriage ("Did we remember 2 water the plants 2day?") and waxing nostalgic about the pop songs of his youth. "Don't u miss the feeling music gave you back in tha day?" he asks on the opening track, before reeling off some of the stuff he listened to as a youngster: James Brown, Sly and the Family Stone, Earth, Wind and Fire.

He sounds even more like an old fogey (albeit an unusually funky one) on his current tour of the US. Rave reviews of his shows report him saying things like "this is real music played by real musicians" and "we don't believe in lip-synching". Prince may look as trim and delicate as in his heyday, but by more or less dismissing modern pop as artificial rubbish he shows himself to be every bit the 45-year-old.

His pairing with Beyoncé at the Grammys was a record executive's fantasy: music for all the family, parents and kids united in one synergistic groove. But his scorn for her era's pop suggests that something more complicated goes on when old stars return and come into contact with new ones.

An extreme example is offered by Madonna, who locked lips with Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera during an attention- grabbing routine at an awards ceremony last year. It was meant to symbolise the queen of risqué pop anointing her successors; but she looked more like a vampire desperately replenishing itself with young blood.

Justin Timberlake's breast-exposing dance with Janet Jackson at the Superbowl caused such fevered controversy that it would require a Sigmund Freud to untangle its meaning. But the fuss obscured the main point of the exercise: to show that Janet could still run with younger stars.

Such moments show that pop music, despite a demographic reach ranging from baby-boomers nearing retirement age to young sprouts barely out of nappies, can still generate incomprehension and conflict between generations. The nature of succession, of handing over power, can be simple - such as when Jack White of the White Stripes reverently joined Bob Dylan on stage at a concert last month. But it can also expose rivalries.

It cuts both ways. When Alicia Keys spoke about Prince at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony, she announced: "There are many kings. King Henry VIII, King Solomon, King Tut, King James, King Kong. But there is only one Prince."

All very respectful. But there was an unfortunate subtext to her words: Prince, you are history.
[This message was edited Mon Apr 19 21:44:19 2004 by July]

Damn. I might nitpick here and there, but Financial Times broke it down.

Pfffff! Prince's criticism of lip-synching is on point. Let's see who's "history" in a few years : this smart-alecky writer or....

great stuff, cracked me up, dead on!
".....but she looked more like a vampire desperately replenishing itself with young blood."