Prince: I find him to be a problematic artist

Cafe Society
1

First off, RIP. It’s sad that he died so young and for such a sucky reason.

I was trying to describe why I think Prince is problematic, but then this guy did a good job for me:

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/04/prince-bored-me-rigid/

The conventional wisdom is that you LOVE the music that’s popular when you are in high school–it’s your favorite forever! Not I. My best friend and I despised the music of latter half of the 1980s. We felt it had taken an ugly, ultra-commercial, cheesy turn for the worse. We hated Prince. I hated the music of Purple Rain and 1999.

Looking back, I like more popular music of the time than I did now, but I still don’t like most Prince. I like a few songs: “Raspberry Beret” (can’t say exactly why) and “Darling Nicki.” I actually quite love the latter song, probably because Prince has given up the innuendo he loves so much and just lets it all hang out.

I like some of the songs he wrote for others as well: “Jungle Love,” performed by Morris Day but written by Prince, is one of the better songs in the movie Purple Rain. Speaking of that movie, Prince I think is rather good in it. I don’t have an antipathy to the man himself. I just don’t like his music very much.

I will try to elucidate the reasons:

• As James Delingpole said in the quote above, Prince was an avatar for a bad era of music in which bad style reigned. I don’t like the production or instrumentation of his songs for the most part.

• I’m not a fan of his voice and manner. He seems hyper-confident and -expressive, but it doesn’t seem to go anywhere. It all seems in the service of a song/stage persona that feels superficial and lacking in meaning. Yet it’s also not fun. It’s not goofy fun 80s music; it’s like it’s trying to say something but doesn’t. Prince takes himself too seriously.

• Prince seems to me to be a master of songs that are 3/4 catchy but not quite there. It’s not as though they would sound better to me done by someone else. The vast majority of them just feel boring to me. Yet, because they are 3/4 catchy, I can’t really say they totally suck and I can’t understand why people like them.

• Prince is all about sex but for the most part doesn’t really succeed in expressing sex very well in his music (“Darling Nicki” excepted). It’s as though childish rebellion come through instead of something down and dirty.

I guess that’s mainly it. Btw, someone one bring up the fact that Prince could play a zillion instruments and was a mater guitarist. But so what? John Mayer is said to be a master guitarist as well. The problem with both of them is that neither developed a particularly interesting style or used the guitar in a way that actually made them famous for it. That’s why people end up having to point out that, hey, these guys are good!

Thoughts?

2

I can see what you’re saying.

For me, I was in a small town, a Pink Floyd, Cheap Trick, AC/DC, Styx and maybe some ZZ Top for the more “adventurous” of us. Prince was that shit they did “over there”.

I’ve grown to appreciate some of his music, but at the time, it was foreign and strange.

And that crap motorcycle and clothes he wore in Purple Rain (to paraphrase the Late Charlie Murphy: *You know you didn’t get that off the Men’s rack! That’s all I’m sayin’! *), well, that didn’t help his image with kids where I grew up.

3

It’s far from his first sexually explicit song - for example check out the earlier “Head”, “Jack U Off”, “Sister” (all of which are exactly about what their titles might lead you to believe)

4

[COUGH] - ------ heh[CHOKE] ha ha ha ha ha ha [GASPING FOR AIR] ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha [blood vessels are literally bursting in my eyes] uh, sorry, what was that?

Yeah.

5

Yes, I also didn’t quite get his point in that part of the quote. I should think that the next wave of music that was genuinely good was 90s grunge and hip-hop.

6

Yeah, but have you seen Prince’s crossover dribble?

7

Have you heard of his ping pong escapades?

8

I won’t argue with the OP. Of all the thousands of CDs I own, exactly zero are from Prince. I thought he was cool when I saw him on Night Flight. I saw Purple Rain in the theatre and thought it was good but have never re-watched it. I understand what people are saying when they refer to him as a genius and I think they’re right: he was a musical genius.

I just don’t really like enough of his songs to want, let alone need, an album of his. I love his guitar playing but not most of the songs he wrote so he could play guitar. I got no hate for him, but nothing he did appeals enough to me, I guess.

9

I know very little about the man himself, but to me the music somehow gave me the impression of taking the style of his time to its logical conclusion. J.S. Bach stands out as the ultimate serious musician in a time that was already too serious; Mozart, as the ultimate elegant musician in a time that was already too elegant; and Prince, a pinnacle of insincerity in … well, it was the 80s. :slight_smile:

He may have been a very genuine human being; I’m just talking about the noises he made on stage and my impression of them.

10

That’s almost exactly how I feel about Prince, (I don’t mind his expression of sex per se but it would be more impressive if the music were better.) I’m totally with you on the 3/4 catchy thing: I’m impressed with his musical talent since he was able to create 3/4 catchy songs in so many styles, just none that ever caught on with me.

He was successful enough at being unique, however, that I’d almost quibble with the bullet point about style, excepting in his integration of guitar with pop which totally did embody the worst of the 80s. While I can’t think of a specific example, I’m imagining the typical solo for a Prince song and it sounds like a homage to a post-Gilmour 80’s light metal video featuring fighter jets, but without the tiny modicum of actual feeling the real thing had. It sounds more like a study in guitar than possessing any immediacy.

11

We don’t hear Prince’s influence today?

Don’t tell Janelle Monae: Janelle Monáe – Make Me Feel [Official Music Video] - YouTube that’s her latest single. :wink:

“Prince doesn’t influence today’s music” is a stupid statement. The “fallow period at the end of the 80’s” is a stupid statement. Why read this person.

Prince’s fusion of stripped down New Wave synths and urban funk was revolutionary, not just as a sounds, but as a breakdown of barriers as important as Michael Jackson getting on MTV. It set a template that is used throughout music.

Google “Prince’s Influence on Music”, and you get Think Pieces across publications and genres trumpeting his importance. You quote your article and there’s two or three that can be quoted back.

Folks are welcome to not like him or personally dig his songs. But there’s nothing “problematic” about it.

I don’t like The Grateful Dead. And yet they have a massive fanbase and influence that I would be a fool not to acknowledge. That’s not problematic; that’s simple preference.

12

You know what you remind me of? :stuck_out_tongue:

13

[quote=“Isamu, post:12, topic:811571”]

You know what you remind me of? :stuck_out_tongue:

[/QUOTE]

That is so Prince-iful.

14

You are correct. I was thinking more about his most popular stuff. He had a bunch of albums before that, but none of it really seems to stick.

15

Yes. I think it’s one big reason why it has to be pointed out that Prince was great at guitar instead of people simply knowing that from his music: what he did with the guitar doesn’t really make much of an impression, and what impression it makes is not positive.

16

That wasn’t the main point I was arguing. I quoted the passage because it encapsulated why Prince doesn’t work for me.

I suppose Prince’s style lives on in some artists, but I don’t think it’s a good style to imitate.

Well, I do agree with him here. I think 1985-1991 (dawn of grunge) was the worst period ever for post-War pop. Though pure rap and hip-hop from this era was often great.

That seems like an academic point to me. Sounds reasonable enough. But then 1990s music took a totally different turn… I mean, is Cobain’s influence felt today per se? I guess I don’t care about that aspect of things as much.

I said “problematic” because I don’t think he sucked but I don’t enjoy him in proportion to how big he was, and I think there are some specific things that diminish my enjoyment of him. Just exploring that a bit.

That’s actually a good example in my view. The Dead are a “problematic” band, I think, in that the songs seem quite secondary to the overall experience. Growing up in the 70s and 80s, I never got the Dead at all, why anyone was following these aging hippies around yet never talked about specific songs they liked. (Their music strikes me as having that same sort of 3/4 quality that Prince’s had, albeit in a vastly different genre and with different problems. It’s sort of half-baked in composition and performance, likable enough in the moment but forgettable later. Again, not the same problems as Prince’s works!)

17

A period you don’t like.
A sound template you don’t think folks should follow.
A guitar style you find wanting.

Totally fair - I just don’t get why it’s a problem. He ain’t your guy. Are trying to assert he should be *no one’s *guy and isn’t worth the respect?

18

Right. I, too, am not a fan of Prince. I just never felt the need to think about it and figure out why. The list of singers and songwriters I don’t care for would fill a truck.

For the most part*, I can accept that other people enjoy things I don’t.

*there are exceptions, not relevant here.

19

Nope, just wanted to explore the topic.

20

The Purple Rain clothes were part of a delusion that he was Hendrix reborn (and, as technically talented a guitarist as he was, he wasn’t anywhere near the seminal influence that Hendrix was). Nor was funk/rock all that new; Earth, Wind, and Fire, the Commodores, Dr. Hook, even Zappa were doing it in the decade before.