If Prince were just a songwriter, he’d be known as one of the great songwriters of his generation just for the hit songs he’s written for other singers.
He was a great guitar player, no doubt, but he was never going to be a Van Halen like virtuoso. Prince was too busy performing, composing, producing, playing keyboards, launching new talent, and creating his overall persona to put in Hendrix like time on the guitar.
To me he’s overrated. But I haven’t absorbed the major part of the work. If I haven’t, is this the medias, mine, or Princes fault?
The people who dig him should keep posting here, and say what the great tunes are from every era of his career. I’m up to listen and parse it out.
It is possible to be compulsively creative and not be a genius. It is also possible to be a talented facile musician and not be a genius.
The worry I have now is that when one of these people passes on it’s going to be a hysterical gold rush to do a cover and have it reported on the news sites and aggregators. We live in an era where what happened on SNL last week is “news.”
Being the 33rd greatest guitar player of all time is nothing to sneeze at, especially when your musical fame wasn’t even based on your guitar skills.
I would have called him the greatest living pop musician at the time of his death, and a good candidate for the GOAT.
Prince is seen as a genius because he was
This last one doesn’t explain why he’s a musical genius but it does explain his status as a pop icon and his staying power. Prince was unapologetic about his eccentricities and people loved him for that. This love allowed him to be given a pass when he released stuff that sucked. I suspect this loyalty is what kept him going in his craft rather sliding into idleness.
Wow, not many good responses and a few other “yeah, I don’t get it” posts. ETA: a couple of good posts got in while I was typing away. Cool!
As has been stated, he is a brilliant player. I have seen him play guitar, keyboards/piano, bass, drums and sing at the very, very highest of levels. In his DVD Rave Unto the Year 2000. Larry Graham, bassist for Sly & the Family Stone, creator of pop/slap funk bass and one of the faces on the Mount Rushmore of bass players (James Jamerson, John Entwhistle, Larry Graham, and we can debate #4). Prince and Graham have a bass duel, and Prince more than holds his own. We already have the RRHoF guitar work as well
As a producer, he innovated on how electronic instruments were incorporated into music. His use of synths within the context of pop and r&b songs were brand new. Listen to Dirty Mind, his 3rd album which is considered his breakthrough/pivot album, when he fully “became Prince” - it sounds like music today. BUT THAT SOUND HADN’T HAPPENED prior to that. Same electronic drums. Listen to British new wave songs - Tainted Love/Always Something There to Remind. It is a great tune, but the drums? THey sound like someone got a primitive drum machine and set it up like a metronome. And you know why? Because that’s exactly what they did. Prince was an expert drum programmer. As one musician said in an interview I read “Prince could take electronic drums, which no one else knew how to use at the time, and make them sound like sex.” In other words, he was able to tweak the rhythms so they weren’t so metronome like and had a groove. Again, listen to his songs - the drums do NOT sound dated and like primitive machines. Think about that - it means he new how to make electronics sound organic, which is why the music sounds fresh today.
Arranger. The most famoux example is When Doves Cry. Listen to it. It is a huge hit that still holds up strong to this day. But…it has no bass line. It has no bass in it. Prince stripped the bass track off at the last second prior to release. You don’t miss it. Do you know how HARD it is to make a fully arranged song sound coherent without a bass line? This isn’t the White Stripes here.
Songwriter - his lyrics were fun, funny, catchy and poetic
> I guess I should’ve known, by the way you parked your car sideways, that it woudn’t last.
> I was working part time in a five-and-dime
My boss was Mr. McGee
He told me several times that he didn’t like my kind
'Cause I was a bit too leisurely
Seems that I was busy doing something close to nothing
But different than the day before
That’s when I saw her, ooh, I saw her
She walked in through the out door, out door
So many examples.
This is a worthy topic, and if you have any questions, you should ask - I may not know the answer, but plenty other musician Dopers will.
The point is: Prince was one of the very finest musicians of the modern era. If you aren’t sure why, but are interested in music, you would do yourself a favor to dig in.
How’s that for a start?
After typing out the list I just made, I can’t think of anyone who can holds a candle to him. I mean, there are some legends out there that I will sorely miss when they die. Like Elton John. But I won’t miss them like Prince. How many performers can do what he did, for as long as he did, as well as he did it?
There are some rare individuals that are just so good that it’s impossible to be jealous of them. Your ego has no choice but to accept their superiority. Prince was such an individual. That is why so many great musicians readily give him props, with no mincing of words. The man should have hordes of enemies, but I suspect even his enemies feel like they can’t really hate him. That is how good he was and if that’s not genius, I dunno what is.
Only personal opinion, but I think the only guitarist who can touch him is Carlos Santana. Not only does he play over 20 musical instruments, but he taught himself how to play them. Weirdest dude on the planet. not the kind of guy I’d like to have a drink with or see with my daughter, but a musical genius who will be missed
The music industry has influenced (negatively IMO) the way people see musical merit. It’s not an objective, linear competition like a foot race or high jump. A musician can be tremendously talented even if I don’t care for his/her music.
I never cared much for the music I heard Prince perform. But as others stated above, I grew to respect him a lot because of the opinions of many musicians whose work I did like. Including finding out that Prince wrote a lot of songs they performed.
I also gradually noticed how many of those songs were way different than his persona.
Here’s an illustration: I like more recordings by Hank Williams Jr. than I do recordings by Prince. (Although my influences are pretty diverse, I grew up in West Virginia playing a lot of country music). However, IMO, Williams never wrote anything as good and as far from his ‘zone’ as Prince did (many times).
If I were to learn that Williams had written, say, “Nothing Compares to You” (which is pretty far from both of their zones), it wouldn’t make me enjoy “A Country Boy Can Survive” any more than I do now. But it would give me immensely more respect for his talent than I have now.
Like I have for Prince.
He’s a better vocalist, IMO, than a guitar player. What impresses me about Prince is how he put it all together. He wasn’t just an instrument player; he was a producer and conductor, and a live entertainer. That takes genius. Few people are trying to argue that he’s the best who ever lived, just that he’s a genius and an extremely influential musician who influenced and inspired many of his contemporaries and younger entertainers who would perform in the 1990s and beyond.
There’s always a lot of hyperbole in tributes after a major artist’s death. We’ll hear the same tributes when Stevie Wonder, Eric Clapton or McCartney dies. Greatest musician ever is a natural thing to say about any of these artists.
Prince was a well respected musician. Excellent in his genre of funk and R&B. I like a few of his songs, but I don’t put him on the same pedestal as his ardent fans.
Prince was an icon way before his death.
Don’t know why, but this post is the one that sticks out as odd, at least to me. I don’t want to take this thread sideways, but I’m a little surprised at this kind of post from a musician. Granted, I have no idea what kind of musician you are, or what kind of music you are into.
So who does impress you?
This is pretty much exactly how I feel about him. Thanks for starting this thread. I was beginning to think I was the only one who just doesn’t grok him.
So - are you reading the thread and trying to grok him better?
In terms of guitar, Prince was a huge Santana fan, but Prince was a much better guitarist technically. Santana is a very soulful guitarist, but rarely plays anything that a competent player with a couple of years under his belt couldn’t play.
The problem with Prince (if you want to call it a problem) is that he made it all look easy and effortless. People with expertise can recognize the feats he pulled, and his laymen fans (like me) just loved the stuff he made for how it sounded and made them feel.
But I can understand why someone barely paying attention to him would be “meh”. To know Prince is to love him. If you don’t know him then you won’t and that is all there is to it.
Chuck Berry, Little Richard, McCartney, Dylan, Brian Wilson, Stevie Wonder, Neil Young Joni Mitchell, Smokey Robinson Ray Davies, Townshend, Tom Waits, are all still alive.
OK Everyone: Maybe this should be a separate thread but: What are your five greatest Prince tracks?
Welp this post saved me about 2 hours worth of typing. Thanks. Unfortunately Prince had most of his music taken off YouTube and streaming services so it’s hard to provide links to get specific examples to listen to. Live stuff exists but that doesn’t show off his talent as a multi instrumentalist or producer,and often it’s recent stuff so it doesn’t show off his most impressive vocals either.
I asked the same question over 5 years ago, and found the responses (like the ones in this thread) unsatisfactory. I understand he was a very skilled performer, but I don’t understand why he was such a huge pop star, given that such success usually involves having really catchy songs. And I still don’t find any Prince songs very catchy.
I suspect Prince was overrated by the music industry because he was flamboyant, and he was a good black guitarist (ever since Jimi Hendrix, rock critics have thought there “should” be more great black guitarists.)
Maybe because he didn’t just have “catchy” songs? He had a ton of catchy songs, and he had even more songs that were lyrically and musically amazing.
More than that, he was a master performer. He had so much charisma and personality that he made David Bowie (who prior to his death was my imaginary baby daddy) look like a wallflower. He transcended race, gender, and sexuality. He helped launched the careers of so many others–many of them women. He was a genius songwriter. He left a huge impression on the rock, pop, and R&B worlds. No one crossed-over in quite the way that Prince did.
Reducing Prince to a “black guitarist” is just about the most ignorant, offensive thing a person could do in this thread, bro.