I know this is such an obvious thread, but just wait a minute! Is that really Prince's name on the Billboard charts Top 5? That's about as likely event as seeing Rick James becoming respectful towards women.

I remember I was whining back in 1999 (on the org v1 boards) that "Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic" was probably his last chance to break the charts again and as it was looking back then there was no way of seeing a commercial comeback happening in the future anymore. Hell, it even looked like that with the failure of "Chaos & Disorder" and "Emancipation" in 1996 (mind you, that was eight years ago) there was no way of him reaching his audience ever again. This is something we debated over at Hammer's chat over and over.

Years just passed by, we hardly even noticed it here - all our time was spent pondering whether "The Everlasting Now" was a stinker or the new "It's Gonna Be A Beatiful Night". We were just plain satisfied that the vocal effect used on "Come On" reminded of "Sign "O" The Times" and that his hair looked good in some publicity photos that certainly were not published in The Rolling Stone. Prince was entering the charts at positions like #75 or #104... and now?

How? What on Earth happened?

Was that really such a surprise, Nova?

Even the likes of Santana (a veritable old codger if you want to make age an issue) have been able to pull it off after years of absence from the charts.

Hell, even The Hollies managed a commercial comeback back in the eighties.

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Santana... and who else? Santana's "comeback" record was something completely else. A calculated effort to reach as broad an audience as possible. That's hardly the case with Prince's new record, albeit it certainly isn't his most daring one to date.

Novabreaker said:

Not daring, but it feels like his most cohesive album since... hey, since Lovesexy

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Actually, I meant to say...Batman!

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Prince simply has a lot of things working for him now.
Nostalgia, GREAT promotion, an awesome tour, and in my opinion, a good album.

It's 1989 all over again.

Only this time Prince's record stands or falls without the dubious benefit of promoting a blockbuster movie.

Which is a welcome state of affairs, as far as I'm concerned.

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Besides the new tour and album, the best thing about this resurgance is the great possiblity that the renewed interest in PRince will cause the powers that be to reissue/remaster re-release all of the older material on CD's DVD's etc.

The point is that even his loyal fanbase for the most part thought there was no way for him to hit the highest positions of the charts ever again. And we started that talk already in 1996. That wasn't exactly yesterday.

It's definitley a good time to be a Prince fan. I just wonder how far the album will slide down the charts because Prince is taking a few weeks off the tour.

skywalker said:

Oh man not the "remasters" again! That's become the new "prince should open the vault". Well, I could maybe see WB remastering some of the massive albums in the near future, PR, SOTT, 1999 (but I ain't holding my breath).

As far as everything including the less popular albums, that won't happen for some time, imho. I just can't see that there is much of a market outside of prince.org for Parade remastered.

NOw back to the topic at hand, you're correct. I can't think of anyone predicting that Prince would attain the level of success that he has so far this year.


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[This message was edited Thu May 6 13:49:14 2004 by Universaluv]

Paris9748430 said:

Yes, but watch it fly back up when the tour hits again... people outside the loop will think more people are actually buying the record. Which in turn will make pop music lemmings go out and buy the album.

This is a blast!

The real test will be the next pop (commercial) album. It is already going to be a reasonable hit... can't you just see "The Follow up to the smash, Musicology"

So, do we think this is 1999 and the next one will be like Purple Rain, or is this the Purple Rain and the next will be ATWIAD?

Or is this a fluke?

But this is a great time!

tyme said:The real test will be the next pop (commercial) album. It is already going to be a reasonable hit... can't you just see "The Follow up to the smash, Musicology"

So, do we think this is 1999 and the next one will be like Purple Rain, or is this the Purple Rain and the next will be ATWIAD?

Or is this a fluke?

But this is a great time![/quote]

I hope that the next album is totally different than Musicology. The thing you should expect from Prince is the unexpected.

Novabreaker said:

i guess it DOES take getting back into bed with the music industry to produce this kind of success after all, eh?

I just watched his last two Leno appearances and it's just so hard to see what was supposed to be so much superior about the performance of "Musicology" to "Everlasting Now" with Sheila E. from December 2002. He has had the publicity over the recent years too, but it's almost as if once there is a record company that just presses enough copies of the record and shovels them to the stores and the product will sell.

Just one word:

SONY!

Amen.