kleph
16-03-2006, 09:23 AM
When people talk about the best band or best artist of the 1980s, an objective assessment can only lead us to name one person – Prince. No matter who you were and what you were listening to in the 1980s you were under the spell of his royal purple badness and music as a whole was so much better for it.
http://forum.zgeek.com/gallery/files/2/0/1/prince2.jpgThere is a certain amount of disagreement over what is Prince’s best album but it’s kind of a ridiculous argument. So much of his stuff is so far above what anyone else was doing at the time or since that there really is no comparison. But 1999 stands out for several reasons. This record was his first mega-work, one that simply reached out beyond the simple idea of a “record” and was a powerful musical statement. You didn’t just listen to this record, you let it into your life and learned from it.
At heart, this is a dance album, but you would never know it from the sheer craftsmanship at work. A ponderous two disks when you bought it in 1982 it was tough getting past disk one that had “1999," "Little Red Corvette" and "Delirious.” I mean – Holy Shit! – any other band or artist would kill to have a career with three songs that good. And then the man got funky.
I mean, we all knew the guy was a bad-ass. He released his first record at 19, played every fucking instrument on it and then was the youngest artist ever given complete artistic control of his work by Warner Brothers records. But Controversy and Dirty Mind were naughty records that had groovy little tunes on them that we middle-class white kids thought was neat. 1999 was different. This was dead serious musical business and even if you just liked the beat, you could tell it was different.
This was the first time I listened to an album and, even though I was stunned at how awesome the song I was listening to was, I couldn’t wait to hear what came next. Typically, great albums lose steam and just can’t keep up the pace of greatness but damned if this one isn’t whip smart from one end to the other. But while there simply ain’t a bad song on the whole album, there are stretches that smack of excess. At the time you just marked it up to Prince’s peculiar genius but later records would show proof to the evidence here that he was at his most powerful when he reigned in his skills and focused on applying them in a judicious manner.
http://forum.zgeek.com/gallery/files/2/0/1/prince_thumb.jpgBecause what makes this record really important is how Prince finally came into his own as a musical everyman. His grasp of such a broad range of musical styles is only matched by his apparently effortless skill to transcend them and fuse them together. You have to go back to no less than Ray Charles to find another artist with a similar ability and skill. And even he didn’t have the range of styles that Prince evidences here. Rock, soul, R&B, blues, gospel and on and on and on. It’s all there and this is the first album he began to use that skill in earnest.
The list of artists Prince is pulling from is simply breathtaking. It would include Sam Cooke, James Brown, George Clinton, Herbie Hancock and Jimmie Hendrix. Hell, about the only major musical force he left out of the mix were The Beatles, but he got to them later. You have the straight forward rocking sensibility of "1999," the blistering guitar fueled nastiness of "Little Red Corvette," the saucy synthesizers orgy with "Automatic," a new-wave meets funk surprise in "Something in the Water (Does not compute)" and even a piano ballad, "Free."
Prince got a lot of attention for the naughty lyrics but his sexuality was never about abject hedonism. It had a very real spiritual side, which hinted of transcendence. They don’t call it “that little slice of heaven” for nothing. This is important because without that, it’s just pornography like Tipper Gore and all her crowd later thought.
A lot of walls fell with this record. Little Red Corvette put him on MTV (I remember seeing that little dance move he does in the middle of the video and realizing I never would be that cool) making him one of the first black artists to break into the burgeoning video revolution. There were no less than four singles off this record and it became part of the cultural landscape. Which is important to remember given the type of crap you hear foisted off as 80s music nowadays.
http://forum.zgeek.com/gallery/files/2/0/1/prince2.jpgThere is a certain amount of disagreement over what is Prince’s best album but it’s kind of a ridiculous argument. So much of his stuff is so far above what anyone else was doing at the time or since that there really is no comparison. But 1999 stands out for several reasons. This record was his first mega-work, one that simply reached out beyond the simple idea of a “record” and was a powerful musical statement. You didn’t just listen to this record, you let it into your life and learned from it.
At heart, this is a dance album, but you would never know it from the sheer craftsmanship at work. A ponderous two disks when you bought it in 1982 it was tough getting past disk one that had “1999," "Little Red Corvette" and "Delirious.” I mean – Holy Shit! – any other band or artist would kill to have a career with three songs that good. And then the man got funky.
I mean, we all knew the guy was a bad-ass. He released his first record at 19, played every fucking instrument on it and then was the youngest artist ever given complete artistic control of his work by Warner Brothers records. But Controversy and Dirty Mind were naughty records that had groovy little tunes on them that we middle-class white kids thought was neat. 1999 was different. This was dead serious musical business and even if you just liked the beat, you could tell it was different.
This was the first time I listened to an album and, even though I was stunned at how awesome the song I was listening to was, I couldn’t wait to hear what came next. Typically, great albums lose steam and just can’t keep up the pace of greatness but damned if this one isn’t whip smart from one end to the other. But while there simply ain’t a bad song on the whole album, there are stretches that smack of excess. At the time you just marked it up to Prince’s peculiar genius but later records would show proof to the evidence here that he was at his most powerful when he reigned in his skills and focused on applying them in a judicious manner.
http://forum.zgeek.com/gallery/files/2/0/1/prince_thumb.jpgBecause what makes this record really important is how Prince finally came into his own as a musical everyman. His grasp of such a broad range of musical styles is only matched by his apparently effortless skill to transcend them and fuse them together. You have to go back to no less than Ray Charles to find another artist with a similar ability and skill. And even he didn’t have the range of styles that Prince evidences here. Rock, soul, R&B, blues, gospel and on and on and on. It’s all there and this is the first album he began to use that skill in earnest.
The list of artists Prince is pulling from is simply breathtaking. It would include Sam Cooke, James Brown, George Clinton, Herbie Hancock and Jimmie Hendrix. Hell, about the only major musical force he left out of the mix were The Beatles, but he got to them later. You have the straight forward rocking sensibility of "1999," the blistering guitar fueled nastiness of "Little Red Corvette," the saucy synthesizers orgy with "Automatic," a new-wave meets funk surprise in "Something in the Water (Does not compute)" and even a piano ballad, "Free."
Prince got a lot of attention for the naughty lyrics but his sexuality was never about abject hedonism. It had a very real spiritual side, which hinted of transcendence. They don’t call it “that little slice of heaven” for nothing. This is important because without that, it’s just pornography like Tipper Gore and all her crowd later thought.
A lot of walls fell with this record. Little Red Corvette put him on MTV (I remember seeing that little dance move he does in the middle of the video and realizing I never would be that cool) making him one of the first black artists to break into the burgeoning video revolution. There were no less than four singles off this record and it became part of the cultural landscape. Which is important to remember given the type of crap you hear foisted off as 80s music nowadays.