If Tracks Are Good, Let's Get 2 Pollin - PRINCE TRACKS POLL RESULTS

mine too!

don't not compute

such a great song

i think people are sleeping on that whole vanity 6 album, which is shitloads of fun.

the family album is really good too -- that one's even more obscure.

not sleeping. just hard to find space in top 20. nasty girl and if a girl answers (don't hang up) and make-up come the closest for me

yeah, i had "Nasty Girl" and a Time track on early drafts of my ballot, but eventually i just decided to go with all proper solo work just to make room for more favorites.

now that i've heard all of the '80s Prince albums it's definitely high on my agenda to go through the peak period side project albums.

there aren't really that many great ones. i have to admit i'm not a big fan of the madhouse LPs even though they are fun in small doses. the key ones i think are the vanity 6 LP, mazarati's "100 MPH," andre cymone's "A.C." LP (which is not all prince, but it's still quite good), sheena easton's "sugar walls," the family LP, the time LPs, and the sheila e. LPs (which are spotty IMO).

the family album is really good too -- that one's even more obscure.

― by another name (amateurist), Friday, August 5, 2011

eh, the singing is rather lame, even when you're hearing Prince's guide vocal.

I feel like "777-9311" is the real overlooked brilliancy here.

tbh I couldn't vote for his indentured work -- it's worth another poll.

the family album is really good too -- that one's even more obscure.

― by another name (amateurist), Friday, August 5, 2011

eh, the singing is rather lame, even when you're hearing Prince's guide vocal.

― livin in my own private Biden hole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, August 5, 2011 8:44 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah i guess so but i like the whole gestalt.

Prince is definitely one of those "got off the bus" artists.

It's not that he stopped making decent albums, it's more that after a while, you could conceivably have enough Prince that you need no more.

I remember getting that first newspaper freebie, and smiling at "My Guitar", but feeling that I still didn't vitally need more. Got (but never played) the later newspaper freebie.

Got off the bus at "Diamonds and Pearls", but did got the "get off" and "cream" extended eps.

Oh, is there a chance of having the 'full' list? I know I more than likely was the only voter for "violet the organ grinder" but hey.

I feel like "777-9311" is the real overlooked brilliancy here.

for sure, that definitely on my ballot

there seems to have been some kind of consensus at the time that Lovesexy was a major jump-the-shark moment...? I find this perplexing. Various ex-band members (Bobby Z, Wendy & Lisa, etc.) obviously had a stake in writing him off after they were fired so their comments should be taken with a grain of salt. otoh it was his least successful album since 1982, two of the three singles didn't even chart, and my memory is that critical reception was not all that positive (have a vague memory of Robert Hilburn's Time review). But in retrospect it seems very much a piece of his other peak 80s material - it seems like a logical progression from previous work, and the production/songwriting/performances are all consistently high. It's an album where the quality material outweighs the bad - it's subsequent albums where that split seems to tilt the other way imho.

off to listen to the symbol album & Diamonds and Pearls, both of which I don't remember liking at all outside of their singles.

should say Robert Hilburn's LA Times review there...

christ this rapping is terrible

Basically hate Lovesexy. Don't even like "Alphabet St" because it's on that album.

Lovesexy doesn't go anywhere at all. Apart from "Alphabet St," the jams are undistinguished.

The tracks sound like the most boring parts of "Play in the Sunshine" and "Housequake" pasted together with indifferent singing atop.

well I'm sure having the entire album as a single track didn't help distinguish the songs from one another. but I hear hooks even where there's minimal structure. could've used Bob George on it tho lol

but ugh three tracks in to the symbol album and already all this terrible rapping + sampling is just SO MUCH WORSE

Cat is a better rapper than whoever in god's name he gets in the band on the symbol record.

Lovesexy is inferior to the Black Album (I saw the tour when he did the two together and it was awesome), and the Black Album does have its weak moments. But Alphabet Street is great--if it's an inferior version of "Kiss," it's a superior version of "Cream." And it does have some other nice moments. I've always loved the break in the title track when the whole band sings "This feeling's so good in every single way!" Also "I Wish U Heaven" is a great one. For me I would not say that the shark gets jumped here, but it's in neighboring waters.

You could also point out that this is the point where the 12" mixes start to nose dive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzHrQFl5JZ8&feature=related

always dug this video

and the 12" mix too!

Ooh. I never saw the video OR heard the 12" mix. I will have to czech it out. Thanks!

I love Lovesexy and think the first four songs especially are all amazing. I also love "When 2 R In Love" and "I Wish U Heaven"

yeah that's about how I rate it too. altho I mostly lol at the lyrics to When 2 R in Love... Prince is REALLY into taking baths

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuOn1jC9ALc
^12" mix

I was listening to Lovesexy earlier this week and kind of marveling that the ILM 'biggest quality drop off from album to album' thread doesn't mention this from Sign O The Times once. "I Wish U Heaven" is the only song I really like (and even that I tend to imagine being done better as covered by someone else), "Dance On" is just barely almost cool but not quite, and "Alphabet St." is easily my least favorite of his 80s singles. this is really the point where his choice in drum machine sounds started to get ghastly, too.

Thanks for the 12" link -- not bad! Drums are nicer there than on the Lovesexy track.

it's the kind of "early sign of falling off" album that doesn't even seem much better when you compare later albums to it either, i prefer a lot of the 90s/00s flailing to Lovesexy. (xpost)

That's just insanity to me, I had a long car drive over Labor Day during which we played both Diamonds and Pearls and Love Symbol and both of those albums sound way, way, WAY more dated and incoherent to me than Lovesexy.

Then again, I also love Around The World In A Day and see Lovesxy as a spiritual successor to it.

i prefer a lot of the 90s/00s flailing to Lovesexy.

this seems insane to me. especially if yr complaining about his drum sounds! I can't think of a single album that's at all consistent after Lovesexy. maybe musicology or 3121.

xp

Diamonds and Pearls and Love Symbol and both of those albums sound way, way, WAY more dated and incoherent to me than Lovesexy.

yeah listening to these right now and man this is so OTM

those are not among my favs of the 90s/00s stuff but their highs are higher than Lovesexy's imo

there is NOTHING on Lovesexy as full-on embarrassing as "Jughead" or "Blue Light"

i didn't say the lows were higher

(then again I'm in the small minority that thinks "Cream" is super overrated)

there was a quote at the end of the Per Nilson book from Bobby Z about how he felt Prince basically lost interest in songwriting, which seems very apparent to me on this 90s stuff (and to a lesser extent Lovesexy and Batman). it's like he cranked out so much material and got used to such endless jamming he became unable or unwilling to focus on the nuts and bolts of how good songs are structured, how to edit things down. he just didn't care. even Get Off, for example, is really aimless. there's the drumloop and the one guitar/flute riff, but that's it - the rest is just various odds and ends thrown on top (some shitty rapping, oh here's a James Brown sample, the "let a woman be a woman and a man be a man" diva warble, etc) with no rhyme or reason. and that's one of his BETTER songs from the era.

in the past he was able to make that approach work because of the quality and inventiveness of the sounds he would draw on - songs that were super minimal and basic still worked because of the sonic details. but by the 90s he was following other people's shitty sonic choices, and it just sounds bad...

some dude otm.

I suppose on some conceptual level Lovesexy isnt as distasteful as Love Symbol, but damn if the latter doesn't boast more songs I care about (besides boasting more songs, period, which is why it gets a bum rap).

As far as Prince's excellent to great nineties albums, The Gold Experience and Emancipation have stronger ideas and sounds than Lovesexy or even ATWIAD.

I speak for myself when I aver that I'd rather be offended than bored.

I love "Blue Light," by the way.

i wonder how much of that might have been the influence of dance music and hip-hop, and prince going "oh, well i can do that shit"

xp to shakey

yeah one of Lovesexy's virtues is that it's one of the last times he had to fit an album onto one vinyl LP, but once his consistency rate went way down and arguably none of his albums were front-to-back classics anymore, the longer albums at least offer more buffet options for playlists and mixes

i wonder how much of that might have been the influence of dance music and hip-hop, and prince going "oh, well i can do that shit"

oh it's this – he was quite offended by the interest in rap.

yeah, and it shows in the material he churned out. it was beneath him. there are instances where people make great material despite their contempt for it, but Prince is not one of them.

I like The Gold Experience and Emancipation as much as I like Lovesexy.

(Come is better than all three tho.)