Prince Album by Album Thread

You can find it here... http://vk.com/video4012092_159808733
It's a great performance (check out Támar and The Twinz on 'Let's Go Crazy' or 'Fury'), until you notice that this was supposed to be the long awaited reunion with Wendy & Lisa... and he didn't even mention their names or looked them in the eye... they were just band members.

 

It was the smallest one I could find and I was too lazy to scan the cover picture myself...

 

I had another listen to the album and "Sunday At The Park" really is a hidden gem there at the end of it, good song. It has a 70s Soul vibe to it that I like, and that Horn part in the middle sounds like Jazz-Rock, and I'm not talking about Fusion, I'm talking about the Blood, Sweat & Tears / Chicago type (maybe it is the title that makes me think of Chicago too). This one and "Redhead Stepchild" are my favourites.

That was cool, think I may have seen it before. Again great live version of "Fury". I like how at an award show with limited time allotted he spends so much time playing guitar (but then I'm a guitarist, so) and generally jamming around, it is a bit unusual, but doing that kind of thing on a TV show is what once upon a time made me seriously interested in him in the first place.

He could have said something during the "Purple Rain" intro. for example, perfect moment, and even Shelia E. gets a mention. That acoustic thing with Wendy linked earlier also seemed really awkward... What was the deal with these get togethers anyway, was there something more in the works, besides it being promotion?

(Kind of weird to have this video as bonus content on Támar's album though...?)

 

3121 is excellent and hands down Prince's best album since his last masterpiece, The Gold Experience. There are a handful of tracks that are a bit boring to me - I recall them sounding a bit like ultra-lite Latin-tinged lounge jazz - but the rest is pretty damn good. His next album felt like the opposite - a handful of excellent tracks and a bunch of others that I didn't like - and I kind of wish he waited a year and swapped out the boring ones with the gems on the follow-up. That would've been an incredibly good album. Anyway, the best stuff on 3121 don't feel so safe and conservative like Musicology - they fit right at home with the contemporary R&B scene. "Black Sweat" alone is a damn fine single that feels particularly modern - it isn't a track he could've cut in the '80s or '90s.

 

No remastering.
Prince posted several tweets recently (and deleted them afterwards) in which he made clear that he´s in disagreement with Warner about the royalties he would get for remasters/reissues.

 

The thing with reissues of old albums is that the old contracts for those albums apply to the new releases, and labels are naturaly not wanting to re-negotiate those. That is one of the reasons why releasing archive material via expanded DeLuxe versions of existing titles is so popular, the "new" material is considered part of the original release and fall under the same contract. If the "new" material is released separately it become a new release with a new deal. I have heard of several cases where bands/artists have vetoed DeLuxe editions because of the bad deal they have on the original album and the low royalties they get on the bonus material (in one case a concert that could just as well have been released on it's own). They can often not stop the label from re-releasing the original album, but if it is changed they might have a say. I'm not sure how it works in Prince's case, and hasn't he recently renegotiated his deal with Warner, so I thought any such problems would have been taken care of in that new deal? Maybe that was more about ownership of the masters and the licensing of the material, and royalties was not part of it...?

But since these are vinyl releases we are talking about they must be remastered, that is in the nature of how LPs are made, you must do a new mastering (unless you have old metal parts from a previous pressing). The "remaster" catchphrase really belongs in the world of digital, where once you've made a master you should in theory be able to just re-use that same one forever, and a new master often is more of a concious aesthetic choice, not just a necessity.

 

The latest tweets reveal that the opposite is the case.
"Reissues would have been ages ago but new people at WB R resisiting paying NPG properly 4 copyrights" ~ Prince tweet 04 Feb 16

Correct. I didn´t mean the technical aspect but remaster options like editing flaws, noise reduction, adjusting stereo width, adjust volume, peak limit etc.

 

I have no desire to see the man gone for a long, long time! With that said, we will never see anything properly reissued, etc. until Prince is long gone. He's just never gonna let it happen, sadly.

 

That's one side of the story.

The other one is Warner Brothers.

We don't really know.

 

What speaks against Warner being the problem is that I can't think of any other of their "catalogue" artists where there has not been any remasters, reissues or archival releases at all. That must mean that either all other artists don't care about their business dealings, or that there is something special in the business relations WB have with Prince. I also always had the impression that looking backwards and dealing with old material and "vault releases" was way, way down the list of his priorities, so maybe he is not working and trying very hard to find a way to make this happen...?

 

Well at least he was ready for the Purple Rain reissue ... even played Electric Intercourse at a gig.

 

Really? Please, do tell more if you know anything. There never was much revealed about what was planned or how far it went.

 

Speaking of 3121, I heard "Get On The Boat" at a restaurant today, I thought that was cool since you wouldn't expect a random ten year old album track from a somewhat forgotten Prince album mixed in with more well known stuff (such as Zeppelin's "Rock And Roll" and Taylor Swift songs)

 

As a stop-gap post, I thought I would share some links to videos of songs that are "recent" in the context of the thread.

"U Make My Sun Shine”:
U Make My Sun Shine - Prince ft. Angie Stone - SAPO Vídeos »
Clip Prince, U Make My Sunshine, vidéo et Paroles de chanson »
”The Daisy Chain”:
The Daisy Chain - Prince - SAPO Vídeos »
Clip Prince, The Daisy Chain, vidéo et Paroles de chanson »
”Musicology”:
Musicology - Prince - SAPO Vídeos »
Clip Prince, Musicology, vidéo et Paroles de chanson »
”Call My Name”:
Call My Name - Prince - SAPO Vídeos »
Clip Prince, Call My Name, vidéo et Paroles de chanson »
PRINCE //CALL MY NAME | Video Musique | Wat.tv »
”Cinnamon Girl”:
Blastro Optimal Quality Detector »
Cinnamon Girl - Prince - SAPO Vídeos »
”Te Amo Corazón”:
Te Amo Corazón - Prince - SAPO Vídeos »
Clip Prince, Te Amo Corazon, vidéo et Paroles de chanson »
”Black Sweat”:
Prince - "black sweat" - SAPO Vídeos »
Clip Prince, Black Sweat, vidéo et Paroles de chanson »
”Fury”:
Fury - Prince - SAPO Vídeos »
Prince - Fury - clip video | Video Musique | Wat.tv »
(I included the last three again, since the "official" videos I linked before had that wavy thing going on in them.)

I guess the next album would be Ultimate, unless I'm mistaken...?

 

Planet Earth


(From www.princecault.com)

Tracklist:

1. Planet Earth (5:51)
2. Guitar (3:45)
3. Somewhere Here On Earth(5:46)
4. The One U Wanna C (4:29)
5. Future Baby Mama (4:47)
6. Mr. Goodnight (4:27)
7. All The Midnights In The World (2:22)
8. Chelsea Rodgers (5:41)
9. Lion Of Judah (4:11)
10. Resolution (3:41)

Released:
15 July, 2007 (Mail on Sunday covermount)
24 July, 2007 (US retail release)

Length: 45:00 minutes

Charts:
USA billboard 200: #3
USA billboard R&B/hiphop: #1
The Netherlands: #3
UK: -

Singles released:
Guitar / Somewhere Here On Earth
Chelsea Rogers / Mr. Goodnight (promo)
The One U Wanna C / - (promo)
Future Baby Mama / - (promo)

 

Not a fan of this album, but those first three singles - Guitar, The One U Wanna C and especially Chelsea Rodgers - are damn fine tracks. Again, wish he put off 3121 another year and slotted those tracks in place of the three duff ones.

 

Are we skipping over Ultimate? I wanted to complain about missing 12" versions...

Here is another release that also came in between Ultimate and Planet Earth:

Happy Feet (soundtrack)
Contains "The Song Of The Heart"
(31 October, 2006)

There was also a different ("demo") version of "Guitar" released as a download (4 February 2007), and A Tribute To Joni Mitchell (24 April, 2007) which contains an edited version of "A Case Of U" previously released on One Nite Alone...

 

Now we're talking. I love "Planet Earth" and for years it was the only later career album by Prince I enjoyed.
A few of my favorites include Planet Earth,Somewhere Here on Earth,Future Baby Mama and Lion of Judah.

 

I love the album, but it suffers from lesser songs in the middle, not a fan of "Future Baby Mama" and "Mr Goodnight" at all. The album doesn't flow very well, although I love most songs.

 

planet earth was a real winner too. that was 2 in a row at this late stage in his career

 

I don´t care for "Planet Earth" at all.

Easily one of his worst albums.

"Guitar" and "Somewhere Here On Earth" are OK ... don´t remember the rest.

I got the CD for free entering the O2 arena in London 2007.
As a matter of fact they gave out two on the first night so I drove home with four CDs.
Sold them on eBay.

Low point for me.

 

Oops, you're correct. My mistake

Let's do Planet Earth first now that I already posted it and do Ultimate after that.

I was about to do the same
... and the strange sequence.

 

I don't think its the colossal abortion many Prince.orgers think it is, but after Musicology and especially 3121 it did feel like autopilot again after how hard Prince worked to re-establish himself as a vital artist again.

It's okay but I do think much like 20Ten down the road that it would be sandwiched in between far superior projects.

 

Absolutely.
Planet Earth was a big disappointment after the relative upswing of 3121 I thought. Only the first three tracks interest me really, the rest doesn't let off any sparks.
I got into "Somewhere On Earth" because of the great Montreux 2009 performances of the song.

 

I'm still not sure if I like this song. It depends on my mood, I guess. It is a cheerful song that fits the movie, so in that respect it was a success.
On top of that the song won a Golden Globe Award in the category of "Best Original Song - Motion Picture" in 2007. Prince's first.
Bria Valente does the background vocals on this song.