Trivia / Prince

• Acting for Two: Prince distorts his voice electronically to have a dialogue between himself and God in "Temptation". He also sped up his voice on several occasions; many excursions into the upper range were intended to sound like a female alter ego named Camille.
• Ascended Fanon:
  • Prince's shelved follow-up to Sign o' the Times was untitled and featured an all-black sleeve save for its catalog number on the spine, leading to it being nicknamed The Black Album by fans and journalists (doubling as a reference to The Beatles' Self-Titled Album, popularly known as The White Album after its all-white sleeve). When the album finally saw an official release in 1994 to clear Prince's contract with Warner Bros. sooner, a hype sticker was affixed to the jewel case dubbing it "The Legendary Black Album."
  • When Prince introduced his habit of replacing the first-person pronoun "I" with a stylized eye symbol, fans decided to Romanize it as "eye," since the album that introduced the trend, Lovesexy, included songs called "👁 No" and "I Wish U Heaven" (incidentally, the single release of the latter song retitled it to replace the "I" with "👁"). 2004's Musicology nods to the fan interpretation of the symbol by featuring a track titled "If Eye Was the Man in Ur Life".
• Breakaway Pop Hit: The soundtracks to his movies are much better remembered than the movies themselves. Point proven when Kevin Smith made a joke about Under the Cherry Moon (the film that gave us the song "Kiss") during his Evening Harder film and no-one in the audience laughed because they didn't know what it was.
• Breakthrough Hit: Many consider his 1983 hit "Little Red Corvette" to be his breakthrough hit, reaching No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the spring of 1983. Nobody, it seems, remembers his true breakthrough: "I Wanna Be Your Lover", which stopped just short of the top 10 in January 1980, some three years earlier. Additionally, his second bonafide hit, "1999", is considered to have come after "Little Red Corvette" (No. 12 in the summer of '83), forgetting that "1999" was climbing the charts in October 1982 (stopping at No. 44).
• Bury Your Art: The Black Album was recorded in 1987 as a Darker and Edgier follow-up to Sign o' the Times, aiming to rebut criticisms that Prince had lost touch with his Black audience. However, he cancelled it at the last minute after a drug-induced mental breakdown led him to believe that it was spiritually evil; in the wake of this, he quickly recorded and released Lovesexy as a Lighter and Softer replacement album. The Black Album became a popular bootleg in the wake of its cancellation before Prince eventually and reluctantly gave it an official release in 1994 to complete his contract with Warner (Bros.) Records sooner. He still disowned the album, however, and removed it from store shelves again the following January; it remains physically out of print to this day, and didn't see a digital release until after his death in 2016, when it was officially uploaded on Tidal.
• Career Resurrection: After spending The '80s as one of the decade's most critically and commercially successful funk acts, Prince spent The '90s becoming an increasing subject of public mockery thanks to his feud with Warner (Bros.) Records, which led to diminishing returns in his output and him adopting a deliberately-unpronounceable stage name that resulted in the press referring to him with the unwieldy and widely-mocked nickname "the Artist Formerly Known as Prince". However, 2004's Musicology would result in renewed success for Prince, peaking at number 5 on multiple countries' album charts, and it coincided with Prince's induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. With a few exceptions, his following albums would continue to be critical and commercial successes, and he would further rebound as an in-demand live act until his death in 2016.
  • A funny story about Musicology: a significant part of its success was due to Prince finding a loophole in how Billboard gathered chart data. Prince decided to include a CD copy of the album with every concert ticket sold on the Musicology Tour, and keep in mind that Prince spent that tour playing the hits to 10,000 seat arenas, multiple times a week, so the result was Prince's best album sales since 1991's Diamonds And Pearls. In essence, Prince helped engineer his own career resurrection with a sneaky little trick. Billboard were very unhappy about Prince pulling a fast one on them, not to mention other artists (such as The Cure) eager to follow Prince's lead. Henceforth, they immediately changed their rules so that musicians are now required to offer fans different ticket prices in this format, one including the album and one not, with the argument that automatically counting those CDs as sales did not accurately reflect consumer interest in the album. Still, the whole scheme worked, and Prince was mainstream again after many years only visible to his core audience — even if that comeback has a bit of an asterisk next to it.
• Completely Different Title: In Japan, his self-titled album was renamed to 愛のペガサス (Pegasus of Love).
• Creator's Apathy: In 1994, he took the rough recordings of his untitled 1987 "Black Album" (which he originally abandoned due to being unhappy with its quality) and quickly had it finished and released in an attempt to end his contract with Warner (Bros.) Records faster due to their Executive Meddling. To show how little he cared for the album, not only did he leave a brief message to fans in his Alphabet St. music video^note it flashes on screen for a second after the first verse to not buy it, but shortly after its release he quickly had the album pulled from store shelves and replaced it with his more passionate endeavor Lovesexy.
• Creator Backlash: The Black Album. Prince created the album as a response to critics that were saying he was selling out to his white audience. A week before the albums release, he had it pulled. It may or may not had been a response to Prince trying ecstasy for the first time and having a bad trip. Regardless, he had a change of heart concerning the content on the album. The Lovesexy album was created as a direct response to The Black Album. The "Alphabet St." music videos includes a subliminal message saying “Don’t buy The Black Album, I’m sorry”. Though this didn't stop Prince from including "When 2 Are in Love" on Lovesexy and playing "Superfunkycalifragisexy" and "Bob George" on the Lovesexy Tour. Warner Bros. Records paid Prince paid $1 million to release it in 1994 as a means to try and get out of his contract. The discography section on the Musicology website in 2004 even went so far as to have a "Contractual Obligation" stamped over the album art.
• Denial of Digital Distribution: Prince was constantly an infamously vocal opponent of most digital distribution services; like most major artists, he decried the low royalties they provided, and the only platform he did embrace was the paywall-heavy Tidal. Prince's music wouldn't be made available on more accessible platforms until after his death in 2016, with most people darkly crediting it to the fact that him being dead meant that he could no longer object to his songs being on YouTube or Spotify.
• Executive Meddling: Oh boy, strap in for this.
  • Sign o' the Times has a storied history and it all has to do with Prince's declining marketability following Around the World in a Day. There's plenty of detailed info over at PrinceVault for those interested, but here's the gist: Prince had written and configured a double album entitled Dream Factory to follow Parade. That was scrapped after the Revolution broke up. He then written an album for his short-lived Camille alias (basically, sped up female-sounding vocals). Both were combined with new songs for a triple album entitled Crystal Ball. Warner Bros. thought the album could use some editing to be commercially viable, as his sales since Purple Rain had been declining. Hence, we got the double album Sign "☮" the Times in a rare good use of this trope, and Prince started becoming passive-aggressive with his record label.
  • Warner Bros. specifically paid Prince to not be involved in the assembling of the three disc greatest hits package The Hits / The B-Sides. Warner Bros. also thwarted the release of When 2 R in Love: The Ballads of Prince (WB wouldn't license the songs to Prince); and A Celebration (20 re-recorded hits, quashed by WB's own "The Very Best of Prince".)
  • Part of Prince's bid to free himself from his contract in the 90s was releasing as much material as possible at once in the hopes of getting out as soon as possible. As a result, we got clunkers like Chaos and Disorder and The Vault… Old Friends 4 Sale. Prince attempted to have Come and The Gold Experience released right after each other, but Warner Bros. wanted to milk him for all they could and declined. Even the release of the untitled black album was an attempt to get out, but it did not help matters.
• Genre Popularizer: The "Minneapolis sound", which was largely restricted to him and his associates (though often imitated) and didn't survive past The '80s.
• God Does Not Own This World: Due to signing over the publishing rights to the Warner Bros. film studio directly, Prince's soundtrack for Batman (1989) was the one album he couldn't get back the full rights to, and was not allowed to issue any tracks from it on any of his greatest hits compilations. This lasted until his death in 2016, when "Batdance" was included on the posthumous compilation 4 Ever.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • The Black Album was pulled just a week before its intended release, later being replaced by Lovesexy. Since copies were floating about, many unofficial releases were made since people wanted to hear the music. Thus it become one of the most bootlegged albums of all time. Such was the scale of its bootlegging, a contemporary Rolling Stone end of the year list saw The Edge cite it as his favourite album of 1988, despite not being officially released. The album garnered a limited official release in 1994, in an attempt to help end his relationship with Warner Bros. It didn't work. Also, it was only available for a limited time.
  • Some of his unreleased stuff tends to leak out once in a while on bootlegs. Several others tracks were released on the Internet through the NPG Music Club. That shutdown in 2006. Good luck catching them all.
  • Post Prince's death, his music has become more accessible. The Prince Estate has made sure most of his released albums are on streaming and have been reissued physically. There are some exceptions. His 'solo' work under the New Power Generation name are still not available. Everything on Paisley Park Records that wasn't released by Prince is not on streaming or physical. They have released a lot of unreleased stuff through new records or deluxe reissues though. Including tracks that were never bootleged before.
• Magnum Opus Dissonance: Whereas Prince wasn't expecting "Purple Rain" to become his biggest hit, though grew to accept it, he deliberately attempted to have the final song on The Gold Experience, "Gold", to be what he described as, "the next 'Purple Rain'". He worked as hard as he can to have the song be perfect in his eyes, and while those who like The Gold Experience definitely think "Gold" is a really good song, it ended up being one of Prince's lesser-known works in retrospect.
• Missing Episode: The song "Wally" is the only known track that was deliberately erased by Prince. It was a very personal track he made right after his breakup with his fiance. Prince did re-record the song soon after with less personal lyrics, but the original was never saved.
• Money, Dear Boy: Why the Black Album finally saw release: it was part of Prince's unsuccessful bid to get himself out of his contract with Warner Bros. He did get $1,000,000 out of it, though.
• Promoted Fanboy: Much to the surprise of Zooey Deschanel, Prince happened to be a fan of the sitcom New Girl and eventually guest-starred on it.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: In 1995, two Italian songwriters sued Prince for plagiarism over the song "The Most Beautiful Girl In The World". They won their case in 2007. This has all but prevented The Gold Experience from ever getting reissued. The Prince Estate has released The Versace Experience to try and soften the blow, since it does include a number of Gold Experience tracks in edited form. The Gold Experience is still on streaming though, minus TMBGITW. The song finally made its belated debut on streaming services and YouTube in February 2022.
• Shrug of God: When a fan asked him on his forums why "Pop Life" had "what sounded like a boxing match" spliced into the song, and noting they were wondering why for years, he answered, "Good ? - Me 2 :)"^note "Good question - me too :)"
• Throw It In!:
  • Plenty of Studio Chatter and random jamming.
  • Some production accidents even found their way into completed songs. For instance, engineer Susan Rogers accidentally caused some words to be distorted while recording the vocals to "If I Was Your Girlfriend" through a technical error, and recounted to Alex Hahn that she thought Prince "was going to rip my head off!". Upon listening, Prince loved the effect and kept it in.
  • Similarly, "The Ballad of Dorothy Parker" quite noticeably lacks low-end and sounds somewhat thin and muddy. This was also the result of a technical error at his Chanhassen home studio. The Prince Vault has the details, but for TLDR: Prince was recording through a console with two separate power supplies, and did not test it beforehand. During the "Dorothy Parker" session, the house was affected by a power cut, and lost one of the power supplies. Susan Rogers noticed that the music sounded flat, but she didn't want to interrupt recording to point it out, and only discovered the problem after the song had been finished. Prince liked the recording, and did not attempt to re-do the song with the fixed console.
• Vaporware: Prince being the hyper-productive, opinion-flip-flopping perfectionist that he was, created a metric ton of this, which are chronicled in detail here. Some of the more notables ones are Roadhouse Garden, announced as a return of The Revolution before he even asked the other members to rejoin; and A Celebration, a re-recorded greatest hits that was quashed by Warner Bros. releasing The Very Best of Prince. Many were announced in press conferences or in tourbooks. This also doesn't account for the various track configurations of the albums he did release.
• What Could Have Been:
  • "Computer Blue" was originally a 14-minute suite with additional lyrics, a section of solos, and a finale of three full minutes of guitar feedback. Another version includes a passage nicknamed the "Hallway Speech", with a shorter amount of feedback. It was planned to be included in its complete form on Purple Rain and was edited a few times to fit into the album, eventually setting on a 7-minute version. However, "Take Me With U" was added to the album's tracklist near the end of production. In order to fit into the album's running time, "Computer Blue" was hacked down to 4 minutes, removing the third section of the song  – the one with the solos – entirely. The result was great because Prince had the good sense to pull an Adaptation Distillation and only keep the best parts of the song with each edit. The third section of "Computer Blue" was included in the film Purple Rain during a rehearsal scene, and the drastically abridged feedback outro was used to transition into "Darling Nikki". Four versions of the song have appeared on bootlegs, with varying degrees of quality (the 7 minute version got as far as the mastering stage, so it stands out.) The "Hallway Speech" version (even officially titled as such) of the song was finally released on the 2017 remaster of Purple Rain.
  • Michael Jackson's "Bad" was originally conceived as a duet with him. Prince even went to visit Michael's home to discuss it in person. After some talks with Quincy Jones in attendance (which Jones described as "not going well"), Prince ultimately declined, saying the song was good enough without him (plus, he thought the line "Your butt is mine" was too cheesy). He was right, but still. On top of this, apparently, upon hearing the demo tape, Prince may have recorded his own version of "Bad" the way he thought it should be done, just to send Michael a message. When's the Prince Estate gonna dig up that one?
  • Sign o' the Times was initially planned to be a Revolution-featuring album titled Dream Factory. When Wendy & Lisa decided they were done with Prince, he shelved the project, instead focusing on an album of sped-up, female-sounding vocals for an album titled (and credited to) Camille. Both projects got mushed together into a triple album named Crystal Ball, which Prince actually wanted to release, also under the name Camille. He eventually had to cut it down to what we hear today. Emancipation kind of proved that the Warner Bros. had a point in nixing the idea.
  • The soundtrack album for Batman was envisioned as a collaboration with Michael Jackson. According to Prince, the idea was that he'd provide funk songs in character as the Joker, while Jackson would sing ballads in the role of Batman. Ultimately, however, Jackson declined Prince's offer due to his prior concert commitments.
  • In 1990, Prince offered "Wonderful Ass", one of his most sought after rarities, to a band that was recording their new album in a studio adjacent to his, with his favorite engineer. Believe it or not, that band was the acoustic folk-punk trio Violent Femmes. The band considered including it on their album, but never even wound up recording it.
  • The Love Symbol Album was meant to be a Concept Album with a story told in segues throughout the album^note In a nutshell: Mayte (Prince's future-wife, girlfriend at the time) plays an Egyptian princess who takes refuge with Prince while being hunted down by her bodyguards turned vigilantes, who are after her, her fortune and the Three Chains of Turin (the "3 Chains o' Gold" referred to on the album proper, which takes the shape of Prince's symbol). After a Missing Scene, the two marry and raise a child, who in the album's prologue uncovers the Chains of Turin when digging outside in his backyard – in Minneapolis. In 1997. During a recession., but Prince had to chuck out most of the segues due to space constraints to fit the whole album on a CD after deciding to add the song "I Wanna Melt With U"^note the final, 18-song CD stands at 74:58, so the 24-song configuration with all the segues would have clearly pushed it past a CD's 78 minute limit, and only two survived (the ones featuring Kirstie Alley). A deciphering of the narrative can be found here.
  • In addition, Miles Davis' album Tutu was originally going to be made in collaboration with Prince, but this role ultimately went to Marcus Miller. The closing track "Full Nelson" liberally borrows from Prince's late-80s playbook and really offers a glimpse as to what could've happened there. Prince did try to donate a song, "Can I Play With U?", but pulled it out because he felt it didn't fit with the sound of the album.
  • The producers of Luke Cage (2016) hoped to get him to make a cameo appearance in the Season 1 finale, among several black singers who appear as themselves in the series. They even gave the title character a dislike of profanity and his mentor a "swear jar" knowing Prince's own policy of fining people who cursed at his shows. Sadly, he died before they actually asked him, so we'll never know if he would have agreed.
  • Prince was a fan of @Midnight, and nearly appeared on the show alongside comedian Jake Fogelnest, who had been operating the parody @PrinceTweets2U Twitter account, which Prince also liked. However, the appearance never came to be before his death.
  • He was asked to perform at Live Aid, but declined, as he was busy touring. He did send a pre-taped video of an acoustic version of "4 the Tears in Your Eyes", which was played during the concert in Philadelphia.
  • He was asked to take part in "We Are the World" and he and Michael Jackson would have sung to each other. The reason given for his absence has varied. One newspaper claimed that Prince did not want to record with other acts. Another report suggested that he did not want to partake in the session because organizer Bob Geldof called him a "creep". He did, however, donate an exclusive track, "4 the Tears in Your Eyes", for the We Are the World album.

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