Ronny said:

Um, NO.
PRINCE will NEVER be the artist that Marvin Gaye was.

NOT IN A MILLION YEARS. SORRY.

ButterscotchPimp said:

and so why do you spend so much time here?

AlexdeParis said:

Please. Go up to anyone in the street and ask them to name some Marvin Gaye songs. They will name the songs I mentioned earlier (IHITTG, LGIO, WGO, and SH). Basically all the songs with melodies written by other people. The fact that "Come Get To This" was a Top 10 hit and yet no one remembers it outside of Marvin's fanbase confirms everything I'm saying.


That's not what I'm doing. What I'm doing is pointing out that Marvin wasn't much of a melody writer based on the FACT that his best melodies were written by other people. It's not just the hits I'm talking about either. I always felt that the first half of the Let's Get It On album was flawless. Total perfection. The second half however was nowhere near as good. The only song that was almost on a level with the first half was "Distant Lover". Well, I later found out that Ed Townsend wrote the melodies for the first half of the album and "Distant Lover" was co-written with two other writers. The remaining songs (which had weaker melodies) were written by Marvin himself.

Same thing with the posthumously released Dream of a Lifetime album which contains some of Marvin's best (and overlooked) material. The best songs on it were either written by others entirely ("Life's Opera" by Ivy Joe Hunter), or co-written with others ("Symphony" with Smokey Robinson). Granted, Marvin wrote the title track which was excellent, but his other songs on it like "Ain't it Funny" were typical of the tuneless drones he specialized in.

Also, the Here, My Dear album does not have a single memorable melody on it. The best song on it is "Love", but even that works in spite of it's lack of a tune. I'm not taking anything away from Marvin. He was great, but to put him in the same league as Prince as a songwriter is just pure sentimentality.

eaglebear4839 said:

Because it also collects the songs he recorded that were not on those two albums (mostly soundtrack cuts/covers). One of my favorite D'Angelo songs is "I Found My Smile Again" from Space Jam.

ButterscotchPimp said:

and so why do you spend so much time here?

Ronny said:

because i CAN.
I've been a Prince fan longer than some of you have been ALIVE.
sometimes ya'll piss me off (like on this thread)
but most of the time i get some hearty laughs from ya'll.

mostly because i like to school the youngins.

ButterscotchPimp said:

lol.....u are NOT doing much schooling making comments like Marvin is better than Prince at ANYTHING related 2 music.

AlexdeParis said:

They should have collected ALL the songs he cut for other projects and compiled those instead. Would have appealed to fans.

midnightmover said:

That's such a silly argument, particularly when you claim you don't equate artistic excellence with popularity. I'll take "Come Get to This" over "Sexual Healing," "Human Nature" over "Thriller," "You Haven't Done Nothin'" over "Superstition," "Don't Let Me Down" over "Hey Jude," and "Mountains" over "Purple Rain" -- I don't care what "anyone in the street" thinks.

midnightmover said:

Bollocks!

"When Did You Stop Loving Me"
"Anger"
"A Funky Space"

.... are catchy as the flu.

AlexdeParis said:

The argument was that "Come Get To This", despite your attempts to claim otherwise, is not as well known as Marvin's other songs. And why are you bringing up The Beatles, Prince and MJ when I already said it's only in MARVIN'S CASE that his best known stuff ranks as some of his best work? Talk about moving the goalposts. There are certainly lesser known tracks of his that are fantastic too, but the problem is those ones were mostly co-written too.

The list of solo Marvin compositions you typed up earlier proved my point. I don't think many people would say a song like "Praise" can hold a candle to "Inner City Blues (Makes Me Wanna Holler)". I don't think you could seriously say "Got To Give It Up" is in the same league as "Let's Get It On". I don't think you could say "Heavy Love Affair" is in the same galaxy as "What's Going On". And I'm sorry, but imo "You Sure Love To Ball" does not compare to "Sexual Healing" or "Please Stay (Don't Go Away)".

I'm a big Marvin fan, but unlike some others, I don't let sentimentality cloud my judgement. Marvin was great, but if you want to rank songwriters then Bob Marley, Prince, Stevie Wonder and literally a hundred other writers would all have to go above him. As someone else said, Marvin was an underachiever. Only a raving sentimentalist would argue with that. He was jealous of Stevie for a reason.

midnightmover said:

and you really believe he said that with no irony, straight faced and serious? As if he would come out and admit such a thing. Sarcasm.

Graycap23 said:

says you, youngin.
says you.

Yeah, we can just wrap this up now. We're never going to agree. It's nice that you have an opinion; it's even better if you realize that's exactly what it is.

Shapeshifter said:

I've heard all of those songs several times and I still can't hum a single one of them.

mozfonky said:

You either didn't read Divided Soul (where the quote comes from) or else you know nothing about Marvin. Marvin was one of the most self aware and self critical pop stars EVER. He admitted to all kind of things that you would never expect. When Nelson George put it to him that Midnight Love was a sell out Marvin candidly said he agreed. When talking to David Ritz he confessed everything from his sexual insecurities to his petty jealousies and fears. I don't think anyone who's read Divided Soul would think Marvin was joking.

Shapeshifter said:

That's basically what they did. There are 7 songs that aren't on Brown Sugar and Voodoo. Were you talking about guest appearances?

Shapeshifter said:

I've heard all of those songs several times and I still can't hum a single one of them.

midnightmover said:

Divided Soul is an amazing book (which came about because Marvin loved David Ritz's impassioned defence of Here, My Dear in a letter to Rolling Stone).

Marvin was big on self-loathing at the best of times. He was pretty much at his absolute lowest ebb when he sat down with Ritz to do the book. He was in Ostend - no money, no career, no family, no country, no wife, basically living on the charity of a Belgian promoter. Combine the two and you'd get the mindset that would dismiss his crowning achievement and himself as a fraud.

You also failed to go into the context of the quote. Marvin saw himself as a singer first and foremost. He wanted to be the black Sinatra, yet, he felt he'd never achieve this aim because he was viewed as a sex symbol (although that's hardly surprising, when you make an album called Let's Get It On - a bit like D'Angelo hating women screaming at him to get his clothes off after he'd done a video stark bollock naked ... I mean - DUH!). A self-loathing self-defeatist all the way.

Shapeshifter said:

I did read the book, more than once. It was one of the main reasons I became such a Marvin fan, I could relate to him on so many levels. It was one of the most painful books i've ever read. Marvin did have ambivalence, that is why the book was called divided soul. Him saying he wasn't a great artist was like saying he felt "ridiculous" being a sex symbol. He wouldn't have done it if he didn't really want to and if he didn't have what it took. He did want to be the black sinatra and felt demeaned maybe, but he also was a freak. I'm sure he loved all the attention, the women. And also, even if he did believe he was a fraud, that's not really for him to say. That question belongs to his audience and we generally say he was a great artist, in my mind, one of the very best of the last 50 years. They don't make them like that anymore. His singing alone was probably some of the best ever, he along with Billy Holiday and a few others was a master of using his voice to express and also use it like a jazz instrument. Then, his versatility in his voice alone was just plain phenomenal. Prince became a great singer through hard work, Marvin was gifted.

midnightmover said:

my only response, because i'm tired of going back and forth with this is i bet if you talked to the majority of Prince's ex-bandmates, MOST of them would tell you that they ghost wrote a ton of songs over the years.

just because P made everyone sign agreements before even joining the band, basically forcing them to not only give up all of their songwriting credits but to also not be able to talk about him in the press afterwards, i don't think you can assume that Prince wrote most of his hits by himself. That's what he WANTS YOU TO THINK. that's different.

Let me tell you guys something. All of these so called neo soul guys go through this dramatic..I need to find myself before I can make more music bullshit! It's like they are never comfortable with their success and the pressure of reproducing whatever sound got them into the dance..and they go Lauren Hill and Maxwell on us..screw them and all their deepness. Hey it's your fucking job to make music and yeah it can be a little stressful when you are at work...that doesn't stop tables from getting bused, food being served, and babies being delivered....Give me a freaking break!

And another thing..Stevie would have put out 10 albums, James Brown about 30 singles,and Prince would fill another vault in the time that it takes these jokers to put out 1 decent album!!!!! Don't get me started!

ButterscotchPimp said:

-----
Here we go now it has gone from Prince not crediting people who helped (which I don't doubt but that was their stupidity) to he did not really write much at all.
Nevermind that Albert Magoli said P had a 100 songs for Purple Rain and keep writing while they were filming sometimes coming up with stuff as he rewrote the script. Nevermind the musicians and studio engineers who discuss P comments about what the songs were about ( some are just to damm personal and weird to have involvement from others) and were around when he wrote them.

I don't doubt P had help and don't doubt he has stockpiled enough music that he probaly has not written anything new in years but the idea that he has a secret group that helped him the whole of his carreer is ridculous and even if he did he was still more productive than Marvin who had the whole Motown song writing machine and probaly the mob behind him.

laurarichardson said:

It's all perception.
If you want to argue that Marvin didn't really "write" his songs because he had "help", then i'm arguing so did Prince.

AND (and i really wish you kool-aid kids would deal with reality ONCE in awhile) this MYTH of how many "songs" are in the vault is just that. I'm sure that P had "100 songs" for Purple Rain, and i'd guess that 90% of those had THE SAME DAMN MELODY. I'm sorry. But having been a fan of P since the beginning, and having heard a TON of the bootleg stuff that's out there, i don't think there's tons of masterpieces sitting in that "vault". I'd wager a large majority of it is crap that he didn't want out there, because it's simply that. CRAP. When he's doing a Morris impression over a drum loop, i'm sorry that's not a fucking SONG, that's an UNFINISHED IDEA.

Prince is not the fucking GOD OF MUSIC, and i wish ya'll would stop acting like he is.

ButterscotchPimp said:

are you jealous of prince or something? yeah probably. what you may deem as crap others may view as a masterpiece, its all a matter of opinion, and if folks want to believe prince is the "God of music" then so what? you act like children are going to die or the world is going end or something. everyone has their own god of music. if folks believe its marvin gaye or whoever else then so be it. i'm only addressing you because you seem to get upset and resort to childish name calling when people here don't see things your way or when people say things in favor of Prince, on a prince site which is kind a stupid as you choose to continue to come here.
[Edited 8/10/08 10:37am]

wonder505 said:

Couldn't have said it better

I got a question. When are y'all going to start talking about D'Angelo on this thread again? I thought that's who this thread was about, not Marvin Gaye or Prince.

ButterscotchPimp said:

are you jealous of prince or something? yeah probably. what you may deem as crap others may view as a masterpiece, its all a matter of opinion, and if folks want to believe prince is the "God of music" then so what? you act like children are going to die or the world is going end or something. everyone has their own god of music. if folks believe its marvin gaye or whoever else then so be it. i'm only addressing you because you seem to get upset and resort to childish name calling when people here don't see things your way or when people say things in favor of Prince, on a prince site which is kind a stupid as you choose to continue to come here.
[Edited 8/10/08 10:37am]