🎵 How Good Are They Really 🎵 Prince

Right then, time for one we’ve all been waiting for.

Unbelievable, Queen should be bottom of this list forever. I’m disappointed.

Artist Rating
Aretha Franklin 4.64
Otis Redding 4.34
David Bowie 4.31
The Cure 4.28
Stevie Wonder 4.17
Nirvana 4.15
Radiohead 4.13
The Supremes 4.13
Kate Bush 4.07
OutKast 4.07
Portishead 4.03
Jimi Hendrix 3.93
Joni Mitchell 3.89
Bruce Springsteen 3.84
Blondie 3.73
ABBA 3.66
Kanye West 3.65
Beyoncé 3.54
Bob Marley & The Wailers 3.48
Madonna 3.4
Rihanna 3.19
Jay-Z 3.14
The Rolling Stones 3.09
The Strokes 3.03
Girls Aloud 2.93
Britney Spears 2.85
Oasis 2.71
Queen 2.6
Blink-182 2.21

So here we go then, Prince.

What do we reckon?

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0 voters

Lots of albums to choose from

  • For You
  • Prince
  • Dirty Mind
  • Controversy
  • 1999
  • Purple Rain
  • Around The World In A Day
  • Parade
  • Sign O’ The Times
  • Lovesexy
  • Batman
  • Graffiti Bridge
  • Diamonds And Pearls
  • Love Symbol
  • Come
  • The Black Album
  • The Gold Experience
  • Chaos And Disorder
  • Emancipation
  • Crystal Ball / The Truth
  • The Vault: Old Friends 4 Sale
  • Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic
  • The Rainbow Children
  • One Nite Alone…
  • Xpectation
  • N.E.W.S
  • Musicology
  • The Chocolate Invasion
  • The Slaughterhouse
  • 3121
  • Planet Earth
  • Lotusflow3r / MPLSound
  • 2010
  • Plectrumelectrum
  • Art Official Age
  • HITnRUN Phase One
  • HITnRUN Phase Two

0 voters

And even more singles (taken from a compilation, I’m not typing 102 song names out)

  • 1999
  • Little Red Corvette
  • When Doves Cry
  • Let’s Go Crazy
  • Raspberry Beret
  • I Wanna Be Your Lover
  • Soft and Wet
  • Why You Wanna Treat Me so Bad?
  • Uptown
  • When You Were Mine
  • Head
  • Gotta Stop (Messin’ About)
  • Controversy
  • Let’s Work
  • Delirious
  • I Would Die 4 U
  • Take Me with U
  • Paisley Park
  • Pop Life
  • Purple Rain
  • Kiss
  • Sign ‘O’ the Times
  • Alphabet St.
  • Batdance
  • Thieves in the Temple
  • Cream
  • Mountains
  • Girls & Boys
  • If I Was Your Girlfriend
  • U Got the Look
  • I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man
  • Glam Slam
  • Moonbeam Levels
  • Diamonds and Pearls
  • Gett Off
  • Sexy M.F.
  • My Name Is Prince
  • 7
  • Peach
  • Nothing Compares 2 U

0 voters

  1. Easy.

Just the most ludicrously talented bloke and that middle run of absolute gold makes up for the dreck after.

15 Likes

quite good tbf

IT’S THE BIGGIE!!

Out of Offices on and calendars clear for the rest of the day DiS.

4 Likes

Nah just ‘good’ imo.

Only heard Kiss maybe 2 years ago, could not believe it was from the 80s, the production was so crisp and direct, amazing hook and vocal delivery!

Head is the funkiest track ive ever heard and contains the greatest synth solo of all time.

Purple Rain is amazing despite the bad/overly long solo at the end.

The guy pretty much single-handedly saved an entire decade from being crap.

5/5

15 Likes

Great, great run of albums in the 1980s -5/5

Then SO MUCH SHITE to follow it’s incredulous. Amazing how many of his albums came out in the late 00s/‘10s that nobody gave a shit about. Terrible quality control, so have to bring it down one point.

4/5

1 Like

Weirdly was just sat eating breakfast with the 1999 record I bought from yesiamaduck as this thread came up.

I’m very late to the party with Prince. The production style put me off for years. Purple Rain proved the perfect entry point when I got past that and now I’m slowly working my way through his back catalogue. So much going on on his records, it’s too overwhelming to try and absorb too many at once.

Awesome to have someone as big and great as Prince as yet relatively undiscovered for me to keep exploring - like finding a new continent or something?

5/5

4 Likes

5, all day long. Astonishingly gifted, yes there’s a fair bit of shite, but when the best is some of the best music ever made, it can be ignored. Could have picked about 10 things from the song poll. Starfish And Coffee deserves an honourable mention too. Going to listen to a lot of Prince today.

2 Likes

5

No need to explain.

1 Like

5/5 all day long

So many wonderful moments

Disc 2 side 1 of sign o the Times is a particular highlight for me, check out this run of incredible, slightly wonky pop

U Got the Look
If I was Your Girlfriend
Strange Relationship
I Could Never Take The Place of Your Man

3 Likes

Can’t give less than 5 to someone who wrote purple rain can yah

2 Likes

Or Nothing Compares 2 U tbh.

His version with Rosie Gaines is much better than Sinead O’Connor’s. And there’s Sometimes It Snows In April too. I love Prince.

4 Likes

Not even the best song he gave away

That skinny motherfucker with the high voice was the best ever.

Don’t really want to be dismissive of the stuff from the 90s onwards cos there’s some great stuff in there, but I think everyone’s aware that he was who he was because of what he did in the 80s. And what he did in the 80s was astonishing.

Coming off the back of his first two albums (tight funk/soul/RnB infused albums which are great but clearly a man finding his way through his own influences) he goes on a transcendental run from 1980-88: Dirty Mind, Controversy, 1999, Purple Rain, Around the World in a Day, Parade, Sign o’ the Times, Lovesexy. The fact that a lot of the time he was playing every instrument doesn’t make the records any better, but does make the achievement all the more remarkable. Running through the Minneapolis drum-machine funk sound, to the pop-funk-rock behemoths of 1999 and Purple Rain in the middle of the run, then psychedelic pop on Around the World and Parade, then basically everything on Sign o’ the Times (which is a magnum opus to end all magnum opuseseseses).

On top of that he’s writing/performing/producing material during this period for The Time (the self-titled album and especially the next two, What Time Is It? and Ice Cream Castle are so good), Vanity 6 (Nasty Girl obviously a huge influence on loads of RnB to follow) and others, doing jazz-fusion albums with Madhouse and throwing songs like Nothing Compares 2 U out to The Family.

People often mention the quality control of his output slipping from the 90s, but in truth he wasn’t exercising any in the 80s either - he just never needed to. Songs like 17 Days, She’s Always in My Hair, Erotic City, Scarlet Pussy and Shockadelica were appearing as B-sides, and Sign o’ the Times is a rare example of a double album that doesn’t need trimmed down.

On top of that he was making films (Purple Rain is a hugely enjoyable watch) and becoming the greatest live performer on the planet.

I was lucky enough to see him live twice, and on both occasions he was pulling off stuff outrageous enough to make me burst out laughing during the gig. Walking down the love symbol-shaped stage in high-heeled boots at the o2 playing a bass solo during Black Sweat, or in Glasgow finishing a run of Controversy, 1999 and Little Red Corvette then going up to the mic and starting the next song a capella: “It’s been seven hours and thirteen days…”. Wave after wave of euphoria at those gigs.

Just absurdly, outrageously talented. Technical ability isn’t something I generally care about, but when it’s married to that imagination, then there are no limitations. Incredible voice (him screaming e.g. at the end of The Beautiful Ones is my favourite sound in music), incredible musician (I don’t care for guitar solos generally, but I care for the Purple Rain solo), incredible showman (watch the Sign o’ the Times Live film if you haven’t seen it), incredible songwriter, incredible producer, incredibly prolific. At one stage changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol, which is 10/10 solid gold pop star behaviour. Legendary aftershows where he’d play funk jams all night. An actual locked vault inside his home/studio complex containing mythical unreleased material. Music that could be ambitious, exciting, funny, tender, aggressive and lascivious all at once. He had it all going on, in a way that nobody else ever had it all going on.

What he did between 1980 and 1988 was a creative outburst unparalleled in the history of popular culture.

His name was Prince and he was FUNKY O(+>

34 Likes

Manic Monday?

1 Like
4 Likes

The last chorus of Kiss is fucking astounding in this respect.

3 Likes