Innovative and groundbreaking. These terms are thrown around a lot on this website. Some claim "Musicology" is not groundbreaking or innovative, while "The Love Below" is. Some don't even care.

In any case I want to know what you think makes an album "groundbreaking". To me there hasn't really been a record in the pop scene last few years that I would call groundbreaking-as in something that has never been done before. All it is is people re-doing stuff that's already been done. People/bands like Outkast, Norah Jones, Jet, The Strokes, NERD- they are refreshing and talented, to be sure, but groundbreaking? No. They are, to quote Aerosmith, "a new version of the old scene."

So is Prince still innovative? When compared to himself, no. When compared to most others I think he still is. Some people tend to think that every album he did from 1980-1988 was earth shattering world changing. The fact is, when first released, many of them weren't. Look at the chart success of "Parade." Read some old reviews about "Sign O' The Times". No one recognizes it as "The greatest Prince album ever." Some even call it messy and uneven and inferior to "1999". The point being that only now, upon retrospect, are those albums being viewed as "innovative". "Emancipation", an album that often gets disrespected, is the longest pop album ever-seems innovative to me. What I am saying is that "Musicology" might not be groundbreaking, but it sure doesn't sound like anything else on the radio, and it doesn't sound like anyone but Prince. Kinda like Andre 3000.

(Yes I quoted Aerosmith )
[This message was edited Tue May 4 11:02:50 2004 by skywalker]

skywalker said:

Andre 3000 is playing the "safe Prince" role. Any old school Prince fan can spot that a mile away. Innovative? No. I agree with you on your thread.

While i'd say MUSICOLOGY isn't groundbreaking, but can be considered groundbreaking, because songs like...MUSICOLOGY aren't a usual type of song you'd hear on the radio these days...its PRINCE re-introducing the old school funk to the new power generation who don't know anything about Earth wind or James Brown!

PRINCE is charging fourth in a market today(2004) with real instruments and hard funky-pop!

I think albums like RAINBOW CHILDREN would be considered...innovative also, because no one is doing it!
I LOVE MUSICOLOGY!
I've been listening to this album non-stop since march 29th...honestly!

www.newpowerdetroit.com
BIG PRINCE PARTY -5/7/04

I don't really consider "Emancipation" ground-breaking OR innovative...hard to see that album has holding either quality. It's more or less a straight-ahead R&B for the most part, more an echoing of what the R&B music landscape looked like at the time than pushing that genre forward...

I'd say Radiohead comes close to being innovative with their CDs...

I just love hearing songs like The Marrying Kind using chords that I last heard on Ozzy Osbourne songs and actually working. Experimentation is where it's at.

Byron said:

I understand why you think Emancipation isn't groundbreaking musicwise, all good points. However, I disagree that it reflects what R&B was at the time. Emancipation, like most Prince albums, sounded not like anything else at the time. It didn't sound like R.Kelly,etc. Plus who is so bold to release a triple album like that?

A good argument can be made for Radiohead being groundbreaking-but why would you consider them groundbreaking? I am not disagreeing, just looking for what you thinks make them innovative.

Byron said:

Yeah, right.

Nothing can really be groundbreaking anymore in music as their is nowhere else to go musically! U can still be innovative but not groundbreaking! I hope I will be proved wrong as i hate being cynical about anything!

To me "Thriller" was groundbreaking and i don't even like that album much! That album sounding pretty much like NOTHING else in pop back then! It was also very,very slick for 1982! The production as pop songs is practically unrivaled!

That same year, Prince's "1999" came out, again groundbreaking, but not as much as Thriller though! The minni sound was now complete and the sound itself for pop music was very different lyrically and musically too!

Grondbreaking does not mean good in my book by the way!


"Lovesexy" was innovative and very odd sounding 4 1988! No Newjack influences, no clear, hard base drums! Just very full,complex sounding that sounded like nothing in pop that year!

Same with "Parade" too! To me "around the world...." is innovative but it is also messy,unfocused and rather dull as a whole album (for me!)

That is Prince and MJ covered (or some of Prince anyway).....now theirs Bob dylan,Stevie,Beatles,Hendrix,Run DMC and hundreds more.....

skywalker said:

I can't view Emancipation as innovative for its length. But I agree that some music is seen as innovative only after a certain amount of time has past, and sometimes you can hear it in the context of the influence it has on the zeitgeist - or not (check out Van Morrison's Astral Weeks).

Some people act like Prince needs to prove himself as an innovator every time he releases something. It's unrealistic to expect that of anyone who has such longevity, it's just not humanly possible to be innovative ALL the time. And some people seem to think that innovation is only something that sounds completely unlike nothing else, something done for the first time. Innovation isn't created out of a vacuum, everything in music is derived from something (even if what was derived is minute in form).

Funkadelic wasn't the first group to merge rock and funk, but their method of execution of that merge was sometimes innovative. And then there's the Banjo added to the arrangement of "One Nation Under A Groove." It's not in your face, but listen close enough and you'll find it in the mix.

Parliament wasn't the first group to play funk, but their method of execution of the genre was many times innovative.

Not to mention the studio techniques in general that have been innovative, and technology being the ever evolving thing that it is, there will always be new ways to come up with different tricks and techniques in the studio.

thesexofit said:[quote]Nothing can really be groundbreaking anymore in music as their is nowhere else to go musically! U can still be innovative but not groundbreaking! I hope I will be proved wrong as i hate being cynical about anything!

To me "Thriller" was groundbreaking and i don't even like that album much! That album sounding pretty much like NOTHING else in pop back then! It was also very,very slick for 1982! The production as pop songs is practically unrivaled!

That same year, Prince's "1999" came out, again groundbreaking, but not as much as Thriller though! The minni sound was now complete and the sound itself for pop music was very different lyrically and musically too!


I agree that it's going to be very hard to make something groundbreaking. There'll always be room for new possibilities but not much. Innovation, as I said before, can be groundbreaking or just using existing ideas in new, unique ways. I consider using a "new" sound/sound effect on record-- one we're unfamiliar with in our limited experience-- to be groundbreaking. So in that regard I don't consider Thriller nor 1999 to be groundbreaking. Both were innovative but 1999 on more than just the production level. That's why it doesn't fit that pop album mold that Thriller does. Of course that says nothing about the quality of the two records because they are both top notch albums.

Musicology is not very innovative in that Prince and many others have done everything done on this album already. When I first heard it there was nothing to surprise me and it still hasn't. The fact that it can be considered commercial and pop without hesitation tells you it's a "safe" record into which little risk, emotion-- and dare I say effort -- were invested.

That's my take on it. I didn't look the terms up in Webster's so I'm taking liberties with this.

skywalker said:

You know it always strikes me as odd that Prince is one of the few artists out there who gets criticized for "sounding like Prince".

Anyway, I think alot of folks can get too caught up in whether an album is "innovative" or "groundbreaking" and lose sight of whether or not the songs are any good. Whatever it is, "Innovative" is not always synonymous with "good music".

Sometimes nobody else is doing it for a reason.


Very innovative post skywalker!

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[This message was edited Tue May 4 13:28:37 2004 by Universaluv]

skywalker said:

ey watch it! ain't nothing wrong with Aerosmith.