Prince started off with Dirty Mind and just grew less and less subtle from there, to the point that he actually went into Author Tract territory by his late career (hi, Rainbow Children).
Prince takes the time to stop his 1994 song about child abuse, "Papa," to say, "Don't abuse children. Or else they end up like me."
Archive Panic: The "Prince wrote more than one thousand songs" from the main article isn't lying. Prince ended up releasing 36 albums of original material during his lifetime, including his soundtracks, with several of these being double and triple albums, altogether netting a total of 448 songs released under his own name, including the symbol years. Then add in his numerous b-sides and remixes, side projects (such as The Time and Madhouse), songs he wrote for his protégés and other bands (like The Bangles' "Manic Monday"), additional web releases and exclusives, and the total jumps much higher. The man would also start band practices at 6:00am and record all day sessions with his musicians, and only some of that material has surfaced in bootlegged form over the decades. The most comprehensive bootleg of unreleased Prince material, Work It 2.0, contains - get this - 578 additional songs, tracks and sketches, sorted over 34 discs. And even that bootleg is sorely outdated. It's rumored that, at the time of his death, he had a huge enough back catalogue to be able to release one album every year for one hundred years!
Audience-Alienating Era: It's easy to just say "the Love Symbol years," aka "the artist formerly known as Prince" years, though it's not quite that simple. Prince briefly seemed rejuvenated when he first changed his name, earning success and acclaim with The Gold Experience, in spite of the poor performance of Chaos and Disorder which is generally understood as a throwaway album. However, these hopes came to a screeching halt with his first independent album: the middling, overlong Emancipation, a three-hour triple album which wasn't quite the commercial smash he hoped for and was criticized for being almost entirely Album Filler. This is when his albums started going mostly unnoticed outside of the fandom, partly because they were largely considered So Okay, It's Average at best. The most notable album between Emancipation and changing his name back to Prince is Crystal Ball, but unfortunately, it's for all the wrong reasons, namely an incredibly botched marketing campaign on Prince's part that resulted in copious amounts of Hype Backlash. Prince became Prince again in the year 2000, but he wouldn't truly get back on his feet as an artist until 2004's Musicology.
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Towards the end of "Pop Life", the music abruptly stops and there's the sound of a bell dinging, fans booing and a man yelling "Throw the bum out!" (as if there was a boxing match going on) only for the song pick up after that as before. No one is quite sure why that moment was in the song, and according to a forum Q&A he gave years later, neither was Prince.
Bizarro Episode: The Black Album. Horrific atonal sounds; an entire verse in a rap song dedicated to licking knees ("What does that have to do with the funk? / Nothing / But who's paying the bills?"); an entire song dedicated to a man who, in a growling monologue, kills a prostitute he attempts to solicit, as well as police in cold blood; and references to bondage, stalking, drugs and squirrel meat. Then there's the entirely sane and tender love ballad, "When 2 R in Love", dropped right in the center of it. Nothing else in his catalogue (including bootlegged material from the vault) comes close to the level of insanity on this album.
Broken Base: No one is going to deny that his run through the 80s was, by any reasonable standard, remarkable, but as we get into the 90s, critics and fans get more and more divided.
1994's Come has this. Some critics and fans found the album to be a dull throwaway, made by an artist who was moving on to projects that he was more interested in - in fact, it was intended to be the last record as Prince before going by the Love Symbol. And yet, it's not uncommon to see Prince fans who like this relatively low-key R&B record for what it is, and consider Come to be a well-crafted hidden gem.
1996's Chaos And Disorder. It's no secret that this quickly-recorded jam session of an album was only released as a contractual obligation to Warner Brothers, and it inspires some hostile reactions as a result, with Rolling Stone even saying it sounds like a half-hearted Prince impression. However, trust Prince fanatics to sift through and dig up some favorites from all corners of his discography, and there's plenty of diehards who like the bluesy sound of Chaos And Disorder and think it has its moments.
Also from 1996: Emancipation was probably destined to be this, seeing as it's a three-hour triple album with a distinct motif to each disc. Depending on how dedicated a fan you are of Prince's craft, it's either an embarrassment of riches, or it's chock full of Album Filler and the best moments of which are few and far between. That said, nearly everyone can agree on the fact that three hours is too much, and Emancipation had the potential to make a first-rate single album.
Covered Up: His songs are often covered, and most of them stay Prince songs First and Foremost. There are a few exceptions:
"I Feel for You", a song from his 1979 self-titled album, became a top 5 hit for Chaka Khan in 1984.
"When You Were Mine", a song off 1980's "Dirty Mind" album, performed decently enough to see release as a B-Side and a few cover versions in the following years. And then came Cyndi Lauper's version in 1983, part of her insanely popular album "She's So Unusual".
"Nothing Compares 2 U", originally written by Prince for his side-project The Family in 1985, became a transatlantic #1 single for Irish singer Sinéad O'Connor in 1990.
A cover of "1999"'s b-side "How Come U Don't Call Me Anymore?" was a hit for Alicia Keys in 2002.
Creator Worship: While not all of his work is equally well-regarded, Prince is frequently recognized as one of the greatest all-around music artists of all time, recognized as a multi-instrumentalist, live-performer, prolific songwriter, and more. Therefore, it's usually not wise to criticize him in front of fans.
The full, extended version of "America" is 21 minutes. It was longer, but the recording tape ran out, so a quick fade out was inserted. Fun note: Prince had a chime set up in the studio to ring out at the twenty minute mark of a recording, and that made the final cut of the song.
This one time, Prince recorded a 30 minute version of "I Would Die 4 U." The same fade-out issue occurs here, but you wouldn't know it since the released 12" single only featured the first 10 minutes.
In his live shows, he was known to do something like five or six fake-out endings to "Purple Rain" and "Kiss," to the point where it actually becomes hilarious.
Epic Riff: "Let's Go Crazy," "1999," "Bambi" (from Prince) "Endorphinmachine" and who are we kidding, most of his songs.
Fandom Rivalry: A longstanding rivalry exists between Prince's fanbase and that of Michael Jackson, the other Black musical superstar of the '80s. Many of Jackson's more "mainstream" fans decry Prince as a vulgar womanizer, while many of Prince's more hardcore fans view Jackson as a formidable singer and dancer, but an overly commercialized one who relied too much on other musicians for writing, playing, and producing. Ironically, Jackson and Prince were on good terms with one another, with their rivalry being more musical than personal, and attempted to collaborate with one another on two separate occasions in the '80s.
Fetish Retardant: It can happen. The front cover of Lovesexy didn't fare so well. See also Narm below.
First Installment Wins: The Gold Experience was the first album Prince put out under the Love Symbol moniker (he had adopted it in 1993, but didn't start using it on his records until 1995) and was the only well-regarded album of that era, the ones following it being seen as So Okay, It's Average at best.
With David Bowie fans. The artists are frequently seen as two of the most musically talented and adventurous artists in popular music, both exploring and mixing a variety of musical styles in the course of their career. It helps that Bowie himself saw Prince as doing for the 80s what he did for the 70s.
Growing the Beard: It's debatable on when this actually happened. His mastering the integration of synths on 1980's Dirty Mind; the zeitgeist-defining Purple Rain (album) in 1984; his mature auteur sensibilities crystallizing on Sign o' the Times in 1987: all of these and more points in between work. Prince's run throughout the 1980s made huge leaps forward in terms of artistic growth, from synth-funk to psychedelia and beyond, so perhaps one could go so far as to say the better part of that decade was one long beard-growing period.
"Let's Go Crazy", a song about enjoying life to the fullest because we never know what'll happen tomorrow, contains the repeated line "Are we gonna let de-elevator bring us down?" Prince's body was found in an elevator.
Parade's last track, "Sometimes It Snows in April" is a sad, one-take ballad about the death of a close friend (namely, Prince's character in Under the Cherry Moon). Prince ended up dying exactly 31 years after its recording date of April 21, 1985.
"Sometimes I wish that life was never-ending But all good things, they say, never last..."
The one lyric from his 1985 single "Pop Life" of "What u putting in your nose? Is that where all your money goes?" has a bitter aftertaste to it given his own fatal overdose a little over thirty years later (although it was Fentanyl instead of anything inhaled.)
Disc two of the three-disc Emancipation (from 1996) is mostly devoted to his then-new marriage to Mayte Garcia, with lots of love songs, especially "Friend, Lover, Sister, Mother/Wife" which was written especially for their wedding. A particularly intimate moment is the Heartbeat Soundtrack on "Sex in the Summer," taken from an ultrasound of Prince and Mayte's unborn child. It's pretty hard to listen to with the knowledge that said child died at six days old, due to a rare skull disease, and the whole disc takes on a different tone when you know how badly that affected the marriage - in fact, they were divorced in 2000.
Here's a fun activity for all. Go on the Internet and read as much as you can about how The Revolution broke up - pay attention to the role Wendy & Lisa played in it. Then go watch Purple Rain, and pay particular attention to what Wendy & Lisa do in the movie.
Prince signing with Warner (Bros.) Records because they offered him the most creative freedom. They throttled the speed and creativity of his career from the third album in 1980 and never let go until his contract with them broke. Prince famously changed his name to a symbol in his last few years with them, believing his birth name had been sullied and demoted to product status by the label. The icing on the cake is that Prince wrote a song called "We Can Work It Out" shortly after signing his first contract, which repeats the line, "Making music naturally / me & WB," a few times at the end.
Hype Backlash: The mismanagement of the Crystal Ball box set is legendary. Might want to sit down.
Prince originally announced that the career-spanning collection of unreleased or bootlegged songs would come out in 1997, in a case shaped like a crystal ball. He later said it wouldn't be released until 50,000 pre-orders were obtained. It would finally be released in 1998 and fans who had pre-ordered got their copies up to a year later than that, if at all.
The case ended up being cylindrical instead of spherical (getting dubbed "the Crystal Petri Dish") and came with a website link to print out the liner notes instead of an actual booklet. On top of this, the album got released in stores (something fans were told wasn't going to happen) and that version actually came with a booklet.
Then came the music itself, which was taken mainly from his 90s phase. All older songs were edited, remixed or re-recorded in his 90s style, which negated the entire purpose of Crystal Ball quashing bootlegs, since fans still needed them to hear unedited versions of songs. The length (50 minutes per CD) was also criticized, with many fans stating the release is actually 2 CDs spread over 3.
In an attempt to calm his pre-ordering fans, he shipped them his orchestral wedding soundtrack, Kamasutra, as well as a T-shirt and/or a cassette of the 25 minute jam "The War". The additional music got shat on by fans as well, and some fans who hadn't even pre-ordered Crystal Ball in the first place acquired some of the bonus material in their mail. Since then, fans knew that if Prince hyped something up, it was either going to be total shit or would never get released at all.
Controversy got some of this, being the follow-up to Dirty Mind.
Some of his latter-day records like MPLSound and 20Ten got brushed off by some critics as being too derivative of his old 80s sound.
LGBT Fanbase: Zigzagged. He has plenty of queer fans, and the way he carved out his own definition of masculinity made him especially popular with black men in the '80s who were either questioning or straight and didn't fit in traditionally masculine roles. Despite this, and despite having two openly gay members of the Revolution (Wendy & Lisa, of course) Prince remained mum on fully acknowledging that side of his base, and, in an interview with Chris Rock, implied that he wasn't comfortable with homosexuality, at least for himself.
Prince, on the failed duet version of Michael Jackson's "Bad": "Now, who is going to sing that ["Your butt is mine"] to whom? Cause [he] sure ain’t singing that to me, and I sure ain’t singing it to [him]."
The opening dialogue to "Computer Blue" – as well as many lines from Purple Rain – are prized by Prince fans. When the Revolution actually reunited for a one-off Purple Rain-centric performance, they catered to this by including a full section of fan-favourite dialogue - which included Brownmark's non-verbal Aside Glance at his wristwatch from the practice scene.
Even though it came from Dave Chappelle and Charlie Murphy's classic skit about The Purple One being great at basketball, this quote will forever belong to Prince:
"Game. Blouses."
Misaimed Fandom: One of the tributes to Prince after his passing was by a butcher who dyed all their sausages purple, apparently missing the fact that Prince had been a vegan for twenty years.
The dialogue between Prince and God in "Temptation", but there's more than just that. Like that time he compares love to surgery in "I Love U in Me", the entirety of "Scarlet Pussy", or the amount of times he crosses from Intercourse with You territory to ball-kneeing idiocy.
Speaking of "Scarlet Pussy", Prince also released another cat and dog-themed b-side: 1987's "La, La, La, He, He, Hee" as part of a bet with Sheena Easton.
If there is anyone who could deliver the line, "I've had dreams of us cuddling on the planet Mars, then when I wake up, I'm all covered in sex," seriously, it's Prince. And he did, on the 1994 song "Space".
For The Rainbow Children, Prince re-used the slowed-down, slurred monologue voice from "Bob George" – the one previously responsible for gems of wisdom like "I'll slap yo ass 2 the middle of next week" and "Bob, ain't that a bitch?", and most definitely not meant to be taken seriously – to deliver long rambling incoherent quasi-religious monologues.
"Friend, Lover, Sister, Mother/Wife" off of Emancipation.
To critics, and even many fans, his flirtations with rap fall here (as well as the fact that he dissed it, and then went on to use it for several consecutive years afterward.) Not to say that the other people he hired to do it can't Narm it up as well, as proved by Tony M., Robin Power and Cat Glover. For a re-recorded version of "1999" made in that same year, he even brought old school rapper Doug E. Fresh out of obscurity to So Okay, It's Average results. There is some songs where his rapping gets a definite pass such as "Face Down", "P Control" and "Days of Wild".
Amusingly, "Alphabet St." seems to accidentally lampshade this: Prince chants "Cat, we need U 2 rap!" twice before her rap breakdown begins, and in between them the high-pitched "NO!" squeal from the beginning of the song is played again; it seems as if even the song itself is terrified at the Narm that will ensue.)
See also, Prince's verse from "Push", which was printed in its entirety on the back cover of Diamonds and Pearls (and which conveniently contains half of the track list of that album.)
"It's THUNDER when 👁'm on the mic, DADDY POP is in the house and u're sho 2 like his DIAMONDS, sho 2 like his PEARLS cuz 👁'm good 2 CREAM every boy and girl cuz 👁'm STROLLIN', steadyhippoprockin' rollin', a WILLING AND ABLE horny ponynote The song title "Gett Off" is printed behind "horny pony" and 👁'm pumpin' em from Pakistan 2 Poland, straight into yo town... snatchin' up kiddies like a circus clown."
His wedding soundtrack, Kamasutra.
In the song "The Future" he sings this weirdly specific line: "Yellow smiley offers me some X/like he's drinking 7 Up/I would rather drink six razor blades/razor blades from a paper cup".
The title track from Come climaxes (so to speak) with Prince making licking and slurping noises with his tongue. That's a bit over-the-top even for him.
Narm Charm: The "courtroom scene" on the bridge of "👁 Hate U." It should be utterly ridiculous, and Prince somehow makes it a Tear Jerker.
Older Than They Think: A good chunk of Prince's official discography was written and recorded well before it actually got released. Three notable examples are "Tick, Tick, Bang", a synth-punk song from 1980 that got transformed into a new jack swing-style song for 1991's Graffiti Bridge; "Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic", a song from 1988 that was released in 1999 with absolutely no changes made to it; and "Extraloveable", a funk jam from 1982 that was re-recorded at a slower tempo (and without the nonchalant references to rape at the end) for a 2011 single release.
Graffiti Bridge itself is made up almost entirely of songs that had been written long beforehand:
"We Can Funk" had been started in 1983 as "We Can Fuck", for instance, and it took three years for it to be revisited to feature George Clinton for the first time. "We Can Fuck" eventually got released on the deluxe edition of Purple Rain after Prince's passing.
"Can't Stop This Feeling I Got" had been demoed in 1982 and re-recorded in 1986 for a proposed musical. The Bridge version itself was another re-recording from 1989.
"Joy in Repetition" was recorded first in 1986 slated for the Crystal Ball project (not to be confused with the 1998 compilation). When put on Graffiti Bridge Prince didn't bother to remove its introductory segue (which happened to mention another outtake, "Soul Psychodelicide").
"I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man" was released off Sign O' the Times in 1987. The earliest known recording session of the song, however is from 1979, with a remaster of this early version eventually being released in 2020 as part of a Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition of Sign 'O' the Times.
"Moonbeam Levels" was released in 2016 as the first Prince song to garner an official release posthumously, but it had been a highly acclaimed and sought after bootleg for decades. Most fans already had a copy of it, but in much lower quality than the official release. It was recorded in 1982 during the 1999 sessions and that same recording was considered for Rave Unto the Joy Fantastic, the album Prince was putting together in 1989 that he abandoned to do the Batman soundtrack.
Periphery Demographic: While most of his audience were R&B fans, he was able to cross over onto white album rock radio and even early Alternative Rock stations like Los Angeles' KROQ-FM.
Posthumous Popularity Potential: While a respected artist, it was generally established that Prince's most acclaimed and iconic work was in the 80s and mostly behind him due to an Audience-Alienating Era and generally unexceptional work. His death prompted greater appreciation and reevaluation of his work and made him one of the biggest posthumous superstars of the 21st century alongside Michael Jackson and David Bowie, with several of his albums and songs charting again.
Seasonal Rot: Prince began The '90s by ditching every shred of his previous backing band The Revolution, creating The New Power Generation instead, which focused more on a live band and '90s R&B tropes. Prince was growing increasingly embittered by his record contract, which led to a lot of quickly released cash-ins to end his contract. As a result, critics and fans don't love his nineties work as much as his eighties. The "Love Symbol" years in particular tend to receive the brunt of criticism, as these are commonly believed to represent Prince at his most insular and self-indulgent, and the period between him returning to the "Prince" moniker in 2000 and the release of his Career Resurrection album Musicology in 2004 tend to be lumped in as well. Barring Come, the 90's albums before Prince's use of the Love Symbol on his albums tend to be consistently well-regardednote the untitled black album is a special case in that it was recorded in 1987, but not officially released until 1994, just before Prince began putting out albums under the Love Symbol title, but with the exception of 1995's The Gold Experience, the latter era is considered Prince's creative nadir.
Shocking Moments: His surprise cameo at the 1999 MTV VMAs. By then, the man was a Reclusive Artist, so needless to say his appearance caught a lot of people off-guard.
Signature Songs: Multiple candidates here: "1999", "Little Red Corvette", "When Doves Cry", "Purple Rain" and "Kiss."
Although "1999" is more fondly remembered now, "Little Red Corvette" is pointed to as the moment when Prince became well-known in the mainstream.note It was his first US top 10 hit and an inspiration to both Phil Collins and Stevie Nicks, directly causing "1999" to climb back up the charts; originally not breaking the top 40 in the US, "1999" peaked at #12 on its second try.
"When Doves Cry" is arguably Prince's highest-praised song and was the best-selling single of 1984 according to Billboard, and "Purple Rain", being the Title Track to his best-known film and its soundtrack album, was not only a very successful and acclaimed single but can be thought of as the "Stairway to Heaven" of the 1980s. No surprise that said soundtrack album and parent album to both of these songs, Purple Rain itself, is considered his most definitive LP.
As for "Kiss," well, even casual fans know all the words to that one, as it's usually the go-to song on North American radio stations. It defines his loverman persona as well as any other song of his.
Since his death, "Nothing Compares 2U" has become one, though the best-known version was the cover by Sinéad O'Connor.
So Okay, It's Average: Sometimes his latter-day stuff tends to inspire this reaction. A particularly notable example is 1999's Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic, which was poised to be Prince's (or rather, The Artist Formerly Known As Prince's) big comeback after his independent releases were going mostly unnoticed, outside of diehard fans. His label, Arista, thought the album would revive his career the same way that Supernatural had done for labelmate Carlos Santana earlier that year. To that end, Prince did tons of interviews, and had multiple big-name special guests on the album, including Gwen Stefani, Sheryl Crow and Ani Difranco. While "The Greatest Romance Ever Sold" got some half-decent airplay, it only peaked at #63, and the album itself met a lukewarm reception from critics. Prince's real comeback was 2004's Musicology.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Around the World in a Day, the follow up to Purple Rain, had a lot to live up to as it was, but critics were significantly colder to his new, psychedelic direction. A couple of particularly Narm-tastic tracks didn't help.
Tough Act to Follow: Prince managed to get hit by this twice with Purple Rain and Sign o' the Times. The former album catapulted Prince into superstardom and set high expectations for his following material, which factored into the underperformance of both Around the World in a Day and Parade, which leaned into his Psychedelic Rock influences to audience confusion. Sign o' the Times meanwhile consolidated the approach of Purple Rain with that of its follow-ups and became seen as the "true" follow-up to his 1984 megahit, but also cast a large shadow over his following material thanks to its high sales and acclaim. Many fans consider Sign Prince's last truly great album, while Purple Rain would maintain a greater foothold in pop culture than any other release from the man. Tellingly, the years after Sign would be marked by declining fortunes for Prince, which wouldn't be reversed until Musicology in 2004 and especially his death in 2016.
Win Back the Crowd: While the soundtrack to the 1990 film Graffiti Bridge actually did go gold and spin off a successful single in "Thieves in the Temple," the film itself bombed commercially; turns out no one really needed a sequel to Purple Rain. A year later, Prince shook that failure off in one fell swoop with the platinum-selling Diamonds And Pearls, released in conjunction with the New Power Generation. It has his fifth and last #1 single in America, "Cream," as well as several other fan favorites, and it's still considered some of his best 90s material.
": The titular "Partyman" is the mysterious "guest of honor" who hosts a party where hundreds attend. Pretending to be a comedic, fun-loving host, it is then revealed he has been poisoning the drinks, and watches with sadistic glee as his victims slowly die from the poison.