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

http://img811.imageshack.us/img811/4522/56040024.jpg

Okay i'm off on holiday next wednesday so for revealing the top 50 i'm going to do 10 today, 10 tomorrow, 10 friday, 10 monday and finishing up with the top 10 next tuesday.

We had 40 ballots in total, with 164 different tracks chosen. Thanks to everyone that took part!

I'm mega mega happy that the following track scraped in...

50. Uptown (from Dirty Mind, 1980) - 103 points, 4 votes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxRRt8HJdro

daaaamn the bit where everything drops out for some synthy action before launching back in is ace

Yes!

My #19 - put it in near the end while doing frazzled lower-table chopping and changing - think it finally nicked ahead of Head and Dirty Mind for me while I was listening on bus to work the other morning. Felt tragically inappropriate, mocking even, for sleepy grey bus trip to a London office, but the more vivid for it.

Now I am in same office & I am feeling quite perky since I have the riff for this going through my head.

those fills at the end of a bar to an open high hat on the one, such a sweet feel

our clothes, our hair, we don't care

song makes me think of comic book funky prince utopia and i want to go to there

need startrekman for synth ids

49. Hot Thing (from Sign O' The Times, 1987) - 108 points, 5 votes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwkEbKQRrLM

sorry for quiet video!

Quite shocked this wasn't higher...Prince at his most 'fluid' and funky...love it...

Sorry talking bout 'Uptown'...

Didn't have room left to vote for either of these, but quite happy to see them here. Good work, ILM.

I am reasonably certain every song on this list will be bad-ass

Uptown was my #15; great to DJ back to back with any "Downtown" song. Apparently there's some great edit/remix of it on a Warp offshoot label (Arcola?), but I've never been able to track it down.

i was sure i picked either "uptown" or "partyup" for my ballot, but apparently not. gotta hear it whenever i drive around minneapolis at night.

48. 7 (from Love Symbol, 1992) - 108 points, 6 votes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZ2cAlRNR-o

47. Let's Pretend We're Married (from 1999, 1993) - 113 points, 5 votes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUqEYSaNFZo

oh my god "Let's Pretend We're Married" is a massive, shocking omission from my ballot

All the hippies sing!

excellent image btw

I am reasonably certain every song on this list will be bad-ass

yeah he easily has over 50 great songs so I'm not really expecting anything bad to show up

unless anything from my ballot squeaks in

46. Cream (from Diamonds And Pearls, 1991) - 113 points, 6 votes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VzXO9GQZBc

http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/4596/28535470.jpg

45. The Cross (from Sign O' The Times, 1987) - 123 points, 6 votes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwPwBfBmcmY

unexpected

Damn forgot to vote in this.... well consider this a write in vote for strawberry beret at #1.

Raspberry Fields Forever at #2 (also forgot to vote, would have gone DMSR for the top spot)

always makes me sad to see people saying "oh gee, I forgot about this"

going out for a while, last four to follow when i return later

I thought The Cross would be higher.

xxp Makes me sad to say it! Honestly mistook the deadline for this weekend, somehow. Still, got pumped listening to 5 or 6 lps over the last few days.

7 probably the weakest thing on here so far...? the vocal harmonies are nice but this is one where the nonsensical lyrics really grate. and the finger cymbals. it has a pseudo-mysticism vibe that just doesn't work.

I elevated Uptown all the way to #3, just as well I did. 7 is awful.

meta: I presume noone minds me kicking off voting for the U2 poll while this one counts down? I doubt there's much overlap between the two.

Kick it off.

7 has a pretty massive hook, i feel like it's the forgotten big single (wiki says it peaked at...#7)

Love 7. It just barely missed out on my ballot, as did Uptown.

I fell out of love with "7" a few years ago, dunno why. Probably just became less generally enamored of decent vocal harmonies and more interested in on-the-one dance beats. Prince's early funk stuff is still weirdly underrated, IMO - that includes stuff like What Time Is It?, too.

oh my god "Let's Pretend We're Married" is a massive, shocking omission from my ballot
― PAJAMARALLS? PAJAMALWAYS! (DJP), Wednesday, July 27, 2011 10:07 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Don't worry. I got it.

I haven't figured out why I still like "Cream" (which made my ballot); I'm still stuck on the fact that it sounded nothing like 1991 chartpop.

(which is no reason to vote for it, I know)

Yeah, 1991 chartpop was pretty awesome sounding, so deviating from it wouldn't be an auto plus.

I think Prince sort of lost his grip on the zeitgeist not too long after 1991 anyway - he made some not-half-bad New Jack Swing, but some of his other attempts to stay current between, say, 1991 and 1996 just sort of got it wrong. Or they ended up underselling his songs - overreliance on chugging jeep-beat drum loops is one of the things that makes a record like Emancipation a lot less dynamite than it ought to be.

K, I just listened to Emancipation again and it's significantly more rhythmically diverse than I'd remembered. For a better example of jeep-beat fatigue, see Digital Underground, The Body-Hat Syndrome, which does work quite nicely in limited doses.

I do think Emanciaption suffers heavily from not being what people assumed it would be; I think a good amount of the material stands on its own but I can see why someone looking for Sign O' The Times (3 disc edition) would be disappointed.

yeah I referenced this on the voting thread but the biggest problem is he lost his way sonically. a lot of the 90s stuff just straight up doesn't SOUND good, the combinations of instruments + production gear come across as haphazard and lazy.

oddly I think he's largely rectified this in recent years. 2131 and Musicology in particular are both much more pleasing to the ear than a lot of his 90s stuff. (the problem now is that his songwriting has gotten lazier and his lyrics mostly insufferable since he's not interested in sex anymore)

see Digital Underground, The Body-Hat Syndrome,

aw. there is great stuff on this record! but it is way too long and overstuffed.

To be fair, I had no idea what to expect when I bought it for $6.99 in 2002. At the time it sounded quite dated. But era-specific production excesses/gimmicks don't irritate me the way they did 10 years ago, probably because my tastes are a fuck of a lot broader nowadays.

^^xp to DJP

I think Prince has the opposite problem nowadays, actually - lesser songs that might actually benefit from a little production gimmickry. It's easy enough to hear through "dated" production and get to the strong songs underneath with prolongued exposure. It's crazy, but I didn't even like Purple Rain much when I first bought it heading off to college in 2001 - all I heard was bad reverb on the drums.

aw cmon who doesn't love a little gated reverb with their Linndrums!

Funny thing is, the drums sound exactly the same in concert recordings from '84 - did they use electronic pads or what? Records still shouldn't sound as if you're listening from the back row at the LA Coliseum. I guess they thought differently 25 years ago. But I guess people figured, hey, it worked for Phil Collins.

Ditto Come. A strange album because it was almost as if he wanted to remind you that he still had it in him, but it was also obvious that he would never be so disciplined again. I guess the epitaphs on the cover are tip off.

it just bums me out how even the songs that would otherwise be fine (Willing and Able, for ex.) or at least moderately enjoyable on Diamonds and Pearls songs are literally ruined by the rapping. it's the audio equivalent of a chef preparing a dessert for you and then, upon hearing that you are fond of chocolate pudding, serves you a lump of shit. and then complains when you say you don't like it.

it's the audio equivalent of a chef preparing a dessert for you and then, upon hearing that you are fond of chocolate pudding, serves you a lump of shit.

That is exactly what we were all thinking.

thing is even if Prince had grabbed like the greatest rappers of the era it still probably would've turned out awkward at best, it was just a lose/lose proposition for him to engage with hip hop imo

yeah, he shouldn't have bothered

When was the last time Prince directly collaborated with an already pedigreed artist whose pedigree wasn't directly tied to Prince himself? I think his egomaniacal need to find new talent and sleep with them if they're female would keep him from working with known non-facepalm rappers.

yeah i mean he's worked with a few heroes and predecessors, but aside from Mavis Staples it was usually just little one-off things, and very little stuff with anyone you'd consider a contemporary or peer (or near-misses like walking out on the MJ collaboration). i think that's as much about him being a control freak as an egomaniac, though, he doesn't want to show up and be part of a duet or ensemble for a song he didn't even write.

how do Larry Graham and Doug E. Fresh fit in here

or Maceo Parker

larry graham and maceo parker are definitely heroes that he came up listening to

yeah - that was more in response to dan than some dude

some dude's OTM tho about Prince restricting himself to situations where he's firmly in control. and limiting himself to one-offs. he's not a collaborative guy, really.

yeah Wendy & Lisa might be the only really really extensive truly collaborative relationship he's had

lol I didn't even know about Doug E. Fresh, some Prince fan I am

Maceo and Larry are givens but those collaborations happened several years after Diamonds and Pearls (and actually, same with Doug E Fresh now that I look it up), plus with Larry at least I don't know how much of that was tied to the conversion to being a Jehovah's Witness.

I think with Larry the music collab came first, then the conversion...?

yeah Wendy & Lisa might be the only really really extensive truly collaborative relationship he's had

this also very OTM from everything I've read

Maceo and Larry are givens but those collaborations happened several years after Diamonds and Pearls

if we're talking pre-D&P yeah he wasn't interested in collaborating with anybody he didn't have control over

he did kick MJ's ass at ping pong tho

lovesexy is awesome; wtf @ you guys

welcome to ILX, Brad!

i think i said in the voting thread that i started listening to come because of all the prince action on ilx, and that record rules too, glad everyone can agree

shakey's whole revive post outlined how little the world at large thinks of Lovesexy, don't act like it's just people here

the world at large aren't music fanatics who pour over the minutiae of an artist's catalog, so yeah it's true that the most people don't think very much about Lovesexy

everyone who does should love it, tho, because it owns

i love it because i found a jukebox at a shitty college bar that would do the whole album for one play. i've always meant to pop back in and just ruin everyone's selections for an hour.

you may recall that this thread is the result of music fanatics pouring over the minutiae of Prince's catalog and deciding that the single was the only thing from Lovesexy worth holding up as one of his 50 best songs.

lol 'pore over' i repeated your typo, now i really don't want to get any mental images of pouring anything over Prince's anything

re: collaborations, I totally forgot about this:

In 1989, Prince appeared on Madonna's studio album Like a Prayer, co-writing and singing the duet "Love Song" and playing electric guitar (uncredited) on the songs "Like a Prayer", "Keep It Together", and "Act of Contrition".

WAHT prince plays guitar on "like a prayer"!?!?

I didn't even notice that typo

I'd be more embarrassed had I not read that Zelda review, I don't think anything I am capable of writing could be as embarrassing as that

also I didn't know that re: Like A Prayer, wau

well it is wikipedia so I dunno, grain of salt

No, it sounds right. That guitar tone sounds an awful lot like his.

there are references to Madonna confirming this in an interview floating around the internet, but I can't find the original source

read a lot of the prince books and none of them mention that...?

i found a convo on prince.org that makes it sound like Prince played on a remix of "Like A Prayer" but not the album version and also has an unreleased cover of it

If you want to hear Prince on the song Like A Prayer... you need to get ahold of the "Remixed Prayers" CD. The 12" Club Version has him on Keyboards & Guitar, and the 12" Extended Mix has him on Guitar, including the solo that they edited out of the LP Version. Act of Contrition is mainly made up of backwards parts of the Club Version. There is also a promo mix out there called "Dub Beats" which has instrumentation from Prince, and a sample from Bob George.

there are references to Madonna confirming this in an interview floating around the internet, but I can't find the original source

Yes, Madonna herself mentions it in Paul Zollo's book of songwriter interviews.

Should have placed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGlVSMtB-Hg

HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGy0QRXvjgU

Anyone curious what 61-100 are? Was there a link that I missed? I'm wondering if there's anything since 1995 besides "Guitar," "Black Sweat" and "The Most Beautiful Girl In The World" that made the top 100.

ctrl+f "scandalous"

:(

Dorothy Parker is a funny song... it doesn't have anything to do with the actual Dorothy Parker, did he just like the sound of her name or something?

― Richard Nixon's Field of Warmth (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, August 2, 2011 7:39 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I guess so - it's full of peculiar, slightly puzzling details like that - lyric's such a good fit for the wobbly, dreamy sound.

― you don't exist in the database (woof), Tuesday, August 2, 2011 7:50 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I was lying in bed this morning and it finally struck me that it's her nickname.

we could do this again, probably get twice as many ballots

Nickname? Dot? Dottie?

my hypothesis is that the waitress has been nicknamed dorothy parker - most likely by Prince, but perhaps by another patron of the place on the promenade - because she makes sharp/witty remarks to the customers, ie she's a real dorothy parker.

xxpost:

Yeah, it may be well worth running this poll again at some point in the future!

This one needs a redux imo.

seconded

Firsted.

When You Were Mine is nowadays my favorite Prince song. So glad it won this.

Controversy used to be my favorite Prince album and Dirty Mind a close second. I'm not sure anymore.

I think it would likely still win even if we redid the poll