50 Years Old and 2 out of 3 ain’t doing bad?

This year 2008 celebrates the 50th birthdays of 3 music legends

Prince

Madonna

Michael Jackson

Within the 1980’s especially these artists became so influential to the music industry and market and the influence is present in most solo contemporary music acts ranging from Usher, Beyonce, Justin Timberlake, Christina Augerilla, Britney Spears, Nelly Furtardo, Ne-Yo, Rihanna, to other acts from many styles and the opening up of music video and musicians in films.

Music Producers also have been heavily influenced, Timbaland, The Neptunes, Rodney Jerkins, Teddy Riley, Paul Epworth (listen to Sam Sparro’s album to hear what I mean), The Underdogs, Kanye West, Organized Noize, Dallas Austin and even Mark Ronson will perhaps move his sound on to this influence.

The first to celebrate the half century milestone is

Prince-who i think has musically influenced the most out of the three-due to his musical development Madonna and MJ will have separate posts

Prince Nelson Rodgers born in 1958, a multi-talented,instrumentalist musician who has a huge body of work and before the 90’s and Grafetti Bridge
WAS UNTOUCHABLE

Princes first album released in 1978 ‘For You’ had him play every instrument possible, and was not very successful as album sales go-he spent all his advance n this album it was supposed to be for 4 albums, but he had artistic control and showed a glimpse of what he could do, plus he didn’t just do disco/r&B he could play rock ‘I’m Yours’ the last track shows this example.

To ‘Prince’ with the successful track I Wanna be Your Lover having a huge impact on radio and a famous song penned originally for Patrice Rushen who in hindsight rejected a huge track which Chakka Khan later covered in 1984 made her a huge success to the mainstream. That track ‘I feel for you’ is one of Prince best written songs, creeping into the 80’s ‘Dirty Mind’ was released a album with a mixture of new wave, rock and stripped down funk, is my second favourite Prince album due to it’s rawness but critics and buyers at the time were not convinced-he kept an underground flowing which worked in his favour.

At the time Prince supported The Rolling Stones on tour (he always toured to support his albums) and was booed and pelting with objects, also rumored he turned up to a recording session dressed in briefs, high heels,legging and a mac-his look he was sporting at the time, to meet Bob Marley who was shocked just didn’t want to know, or record, not surprising really.

Prince therefore due to the flop of Dirty Mind knew he had to channel his music to commercial means and stay signed and have creative freedom still (nowadays Prince would have been dropped, and that is what is scary about the music industry their is no support for artists) in his Minneapolis home started to construct a group called ‘The Time’ due to his contract having a part that he could manage or be a musician in a group, musicians who were performing in his area and featured many times in his films, Purple Rain noticeably and unsuccessfully in Grafetti Bridge, he went under the writer pseudonym Jamie Starr or The Starr.

Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis became instrumental in the 80’s for Janet Jackson career came from ‘The Time’ before getting sacked by Prince,

Alexander O’Neal was also a singer in one of Princes bands in high school originally was part of the sound too.

Then for Prince came ‘Controversy’ the album the title track was a huge success on radio but yet again the album didn’t do as well as expected but Prince had a new album he was working on which would change music history and the major success to his career.

This album was ‘1999′ released in 1983, 25 years old this year and if this was released before Thriller maybe we would have had a different sales amount, however i don’t think it could have had the huge impact like that though, Prince’s music was still too daring for radio and his lyrical content-in some cases very political.

However the album has been so influential to the cruxis of one Frankie Knuckles and the mid 80’s gay Detroit scene to create the music genre of ‘House’. The genre in it’s peak (during the super cubs era) became one of the most successful music styles for years and still has a following.

The album 1999 sold 2 million copies in the states and sold up to 5 million worldwide (the equivalent now of a Beyonce albums sales), however Princes contract was coming up for renewal and this was very critical of how Warner Bros dealt with this , if they didn’t resign him he may go to CBS who would have killed the music industry flat and only the little unknown success of Madonna was creeping into the Warner Bros executive minds. Prince also now had a official group of musicians (not just backing for touring) which he built up over the years to support him instead of him playing all the instruments called ‘The Revolution

So the deal was being offered to Warner Bros was, Prince wanted to do his own movie and the soundtrack, this pretty much unheard for many years, only Elvis Presley memorably doing music and movies consistently.

Warner Bros gave Prince a new contract and the gamble of a huge success probably of equaling or maybe eclipsing the success of ‘Thriller’ funds to do the movie ‘Purple Rain’ (which he only got when then the film was delivered, the start of the bad business dealing Warner Bros did to Prince, and a huge risk if the film flopped)

Purple Rain by ‘Prince and the Revolution’ became a global smash selling 25 million copies worldwide, and put Prince on super stardom status like Michael Jackson.

Purple Rain however was tame music material for Prince compared to his previous raw work and compromised heavily, which Prince never really did again and never will until the early 90’s and perhaps now in the new millenium.

A whole phenomena of music related films and movies followed, most terrible, even Princes ‘Under The Cherry Moon’ is quaint only the soundtrack saved it being more of a disaster.

During the film and before Prince had been recording/writing for new acts creating more of the Minneapolis sound apart from The Time, Vanity 6 which changed to Apollonia 6 (due to Vanity leaving Princes camp to have a solo career), and many more all with minimal and reasonable success, he also discovered musicians and helped them on their respective career paths Suzanna Hoffs a guitarist in Princes camp went on to form the Bangles with the penned ‘Manic Monday’ under the pseudonym Christopher Tracey a character later used in Under The Cherry Moon.

Next on the album map for Prince was the psychedelic, Joni Mitchell influenced ‘Around the world in a day’, this album had little success compared to Purple Rain in the US at 2 million sales but worldwide was not taken up so well, the writing quite ambitious and not so accommodating as the Purple Rain album…

Prince then went onto do his second movie Under The Cherry Moon a film based n 1930’s Noir on a parisian struggling musician based in surprise surprise France. The concept was quite inventive but the execution was hap hazard, the soundtrack ‘Parade’ saved it form being a disaster especially the track KISS in some cases Princes best song, but yet again not so successful as the record label would have liked, and was the last album Prince did with the Revolution who were splitting up due to artistic differences and the like. Wendy and Lisa wanted more credit for writing songs ( which i believe they did more then written on publishing, especially on Around the World and Parade, Prince I don’t think did all the writing as advertised.)

So after this Prince who had finished working with the Minnaepollis sound groups and did some work for artists such as Sheena Easton, George Clinton, Mavis Staples and so on but was mainly working on a masterpiece album under the name The Dream Factory (a bootleg is available but hard to obtain) or The Crystal Ball (which was released in a different format in the mid 90’s) which was to be a mamooth collection of songs and this is where the relationship between him and Warner Bros showed cracks and really was never the same again.

Prince stayed in his Paisley Park complex and wrote most songs himself and again became Insular. By the time he finished the album ready for late 1987 the record company had cut down the album from a three vinyl set to two.

This Album was ‘Sign Of The Times’ an album so ahead of it’s time, and how it didn’t win the Grammy for Album of the year over U2 is beyond me, a stripped down album with the basic element of funk and music influences is eclectic and odd to the commercial ear but nevertheless has some of Princes greatest and most interesting songs.

The title track at the time must have been daring for the time (it was like Prince was waiting to be accepted commercially before springing his political views on everyone, he had done this before Purple Rain) and talked abut subjects which were not present in music AIDS, gun crime, and other songs having interesting subject matters. Nothing on this album is really straight forward, their is always a slight twist.

For Prince to release this album was daring and especially at the time when production was big and brash and this album was so minimal, some tracks just have a drum machine pattern, bass line and him singing but they work. This apart from 1999, Dirty Mind was my most listened to Prince album during my youth and still it sounds fresh to most albums out there to this day in the genre and music generally, The Ballad Of Dorothy Parker (My favourite Prince song apart from Little Red Corvette) sounds like a track Outkast or the Neptunes would do, and so on.

A blog on the album Sign Of The Times alone will be represented later via this blog page

Next came a album called ‘The Black Album’ which Warner Bros wouldn’ t release so instead he recorded ‘Love Sexy’ within 6 weeks, 6 weeks? beat that with musicians from his new band called the New Power Generation or NPG for short, and then to top that a few months later he did the Batman soundtrack and The Sex Scandels in six weeks (this i think is BS but urban myths always help, but while dating Kim Basinger for a while inbetween her filming Batman and before she married Alec Baldwin) when Love sexy was being promoted and he was on tour.

A workaholic always Prince had written a song which would be a huge success ‘Nothing Compares to you’ originally for the family (another group on the roster of Paisely Park)and the NPG performed at concerts but then taken up by a clever A & R man for Sinead O’Connor, was then gearing up for another movie,which his lawyers suggested he did not do, and subsequently didn’t renew the contract when the awful album and film of the same title Grafetti Bridge was released, a movie about two nightclub owners fighting for the audience crowd to the club, yep it was shockinginly bad and The Time was really not the band they were either-it had run it’s course (very similar to Purple Rain but not in the same league at all musically or theatrically )and the soundtrack only had one track I can remember being memorable ‘Thieves in the Temple’

So after this we come onto the 90’s of Princes work also his name change being a issue obviously due to contract issues and being owned, Prince become a prize fighter to do with music ownership, now I only want to mention three albums i think have merit here overall

Diamonds and Pearls-due to some good tracks , but this was not a daring album in the slightest

The Gold Experience-has ‘the most beautiful girl in the world’ Princes only number 1 song in the UK and is a interesting album, due to the musicianship, Gold is another good track but what does spoil this album is the interludes which were not needed, same as Hip-Hop albums too..

and the later ‘Rave unto the joy Fantastic’ which is a return to form which Prince some reason has never managed to carry on musically. My last Prince album I bought and enjoyed immensely.

The albums to avoid of Princes are mainly from the 90’s

Either they are too long, too sh*T or just plain embarrassing

I could list them here so you know when to avoid them

The Symbol Album (two good songs maybe?)

Come (I remember when it came out and took it back to the shop for my money back)

Chaos and Disorder (the title speaks for itself-i heard it and cringed how bad it was)

Emancipation (would be great if only one disc but over three it loses focus-shame as their is some good songs on this album and his covers are Okay)

NPG-again okay

The Vault-avoid

For his 2000 era albums and beyond

The jazz influenced The Rainbow Children is a musically interesting affair but not for everyone, the rest of Princes albums you can make your own mind up, me personally they are not Princes music in respect value, it is like a copyist doing them, but at least he is still performing and will continue to do so until he feels like retiring.

For me Prince’s work with high merit is always going to be from 1978 to 1987 and after that i wouldn’t personally bother as you will be left disappointed in what you hear, however as a music influence he cannot be denied how great he is and one of the last 20th Century musicians to really explore creativity to the highest level possible.