Top 5/Bottom 5: Prince

If you’re anything like me, you love to listen to, talk about, and even argue about music. In that spirit I’ve decided to embark on a little project. Each week I’ll be listing my top 5 and bottom 5 songs from an artist or band that I love, or at least like. Disagree? Let me know, that’s half the fun.

 Prince Rogers Nelson rose out of Minneapolis, Minnesota in the late’70s to become one of the biggest stars of the ‘80s and beyond. His prolific output was unrivalled by any star on his level, and included seemingly endless hits, not only of his own but written for other artists.  

I am not the world’s greatest Prince authority; however, this is a project about my own experiences and opinions of music, and I’ve loved and listened to plenty of Prince’s music over the years, so here we go!

Top 5:

·      “I Wanna Be Your Lover”: This is the best Prince song, I don’t care what anybody says. It’s got everything you could want: a killer groove that feels like it could go on forever, a classic R&B falsetto vocal, and the oddly androgynous and ambiguous lyrics that would become a Prince trademark (“I want to be your mother and your sister too.”). Prince played all the instruments himself, as he would on many releases before recruiting backing groups like The Revolution and New Power Generation. There are times I feel like Prince’s music suffered from his control freak tendencies, but this song is a great example of an artist doing everything the way he wants and getting it just right. If you want me to dance at your wedding, this will do it every time.

·      “Kiss”: Another one that succeeds by being the completely unique product of Prince’s vision. Though it was started with production partner David Z as a demo for the group Mazarati, Prince turned it into the song we all know and love after it was rejected by the group. Nothing about this song should be that special–it’s basically just a funky blues song with some classic R&B guitar and a drum machine, and there’s no bass. NO BASS! Who makes a song this funky and doesn’t put bass on it? It’s one of those genius/idiot moves that only great artists like Prince can pull off, and the result is spectacular. It helps that Prince was one of the greatest vocalists ever, and the layered vocals on this song are what really make it special. Clearly one of the primary inspirations for D’Angleo’s neo-soul vocal workouts years later, among many others.

·      “Purple Rain”: The greatest power ballad in Prince’s oeuvre, and one of the greatest ever for that matter, “Purple Rain” also features one of the greatest opening guitar chords in recorded music history, up there with “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Rumble.”  I have no idea what it would mean to see someone doing anything “in the purple rain,” or why Prince wants to see it so much, but sometimes a song is so great that you can’t question the lyrics. The song is so dramatic and so full of feeling. I love the way it builds into a climactic guitar solo, and ultimately dies down into a sort of end-of-the-night, the romance-is-over, time-to-go-home-alone atmospheric twinkle. You don’t want it to end but you know it has to. Not many 8-plus minute songs feel this short.

·      “Seven”: I don’t know exactly what it is I like about this song, but I like it a lot. Maybe it’s the groove, based on a sample of Lowell Fulson’s version of “Tramp.” Maybe it’s the vocal melody, brilliantly layered and harmonized throughout. Maybe it’s the pseudo-mystical, Biblical lyrics. Ok, it’s probably not that. It certainly isn’t the video, which I just watched for the first time–let me tell you, it is a bizarre thing, featuring children in belly dance and vaguely bondage-inspired outfits, as well as some grownup belly dancing and weird pseudo-Disney castle vibes. Whatever it is, I love this song.

·      “Musicology”: It’s always hard to pick the last of five songs for an artist who has so many great ones, and I’m not sure I’d say this is a better song than “When Doves Cry” or any number of other Prince classics. But this is a list of my favorites, and this song just tickles me. It’s a great piece of classic funk, a sound that Prince could pull off better than almost anyone, but often eschewed in favor of quirkier, synth-driven studio creations, at least in his early heyday. This song just grooves in an organic way that perfectly suits the music it pays tribute to. And what true music lover hasn’t occasionally wanted to shout, “Don’t you ever touch my stereo!” to some fool trying to skip a classic joint on the playlist?

Bottom 5:

·      “Sexy M.F.”: Musically this song is another great piece of James Brown-style classic funk, but have you ever listened to the lyrics? I’m all for sexy jams and finding clever ways to express erotic feeling, but this one is ridiculous. Here is an actual line from this song: “Guard your folks and get your daughter/This sexy motherfucker’s so fine I could drink her bathwater.” I know the idea of bathwater drinking didn’t originate with Prince, but has anyone ever actually been turned on by the suggestion that a lover would drink their bathwater, or by the thought of doing so? I mean, different strokes and all that, but come on. Here is another choice line: “We’re all alone in a villa on the Riviera/That’s in France on the south side, in case you cared.” Geography and romance lessons all in one! What a time!

·      “Annie Christian”: Topical songs are tricky, and it may be a little unfair to judge a song like this almost 40 years later. But some age better than others, and this one is pretty forgettable. The title character is of course a stand-in for the anti-Christ, who apparently “was a whore always looking for some fun” who then “bought a gun” and killed John Lennon and attempted to kill Ronald Reagan. You would think that an artist as vocally sexual as Prince might have known better than to equate being a whore with murder, even in a vague metaphorical sense, but this song is a jumbled list of things that are “bad” or “evil” that doesn’t really take a coherent stand on any issues. Like so many other bad topical songs, it just strings together bad happenings in an attempt to appear “conscious” without offering any specifics or really telling a particular story.

·      “When You Were Mine”: This is actually a good song–my issue is with the recording itself. While the parts all work together and everything is played very competently by Prince, the end result is flat, uninspired, and boring. To me this is the flipside of “I Wanna Be Your Lover”–a carefully constructed recording that ends up feeling safe and dull instead of perfectly crafted. The guitar sound is clean, twangy, and lacking punch, a sound that doesn’t serve such a driving rock song; the synth sounds verge into ‘80s cheesiness; and the drums are dry and lifeless. To top it off, there’s a bridge keyboard solo that feels completely tacked on. Truth be told there are many Prince songs from this era that I think suffer from dated production sounds; in many cases the material and performances are so strong that it doesn’t matter much. This is an exception, a song that’s pretty much ruined by the recording. (As I suspected, there are live versions on youtube that destroy the original studio version.)

·      “Eye Hate U”: I’ve never been much for the slow R&B ballad with spoken interlude, so this song already had a strike against it in my book. Add to that some corny “courtroom of love” lyrics and a title that reads like a bad Korn song, and this is not one of my favorites. How even Prince can get away with singing, “I hate you/because I love you/but I can’t love you/because I hate you” is beyond me. The beginning of the guitar solo sounds like somebody plugging in at Guitar Center.

·      “Planet Earth”: Throughout his career, Prince made a point of delivering killer album title tracks. A partial list would include “Dirty Mind,” “Controversy,” “1999,” “Purple Rain,” “Sign O’ the Times,” and “Musicology.” By the standards he set for himself, “Planet Earth” is pretty weak. I will admit, I haven’t spent a ton of time with the Planet Earth album, but it does contain at least a couple fun songs like “Guitar,” and it came at a time when Prince’s star was riding high again after his incredible Super Bowl performance and a couple good albums and successful tours. Unfortunately, this particular title track is a melodramatic ballad with some sappy lyrics about seeking “balance with the one” and sending children off to war that are as vague as the music is boring. It’s a pretty discouraging album opener that’s best skipped in my humble opinion.