The Great One
By
Let’s sample some of the better writing the death of one of the greatest American popular musicians ever has inspired. Annie Zaleski:
This penchant for reinvention explains why every concert or tour he announced was such an event, and a must-see one at that. Fans never quite knew what exactly would happen or what form his songs would take on a given night. And because he was against filming his shows, the concerts took on a once-in-a-lifetime feel: Prince’s unexpected covers or tributes (mostly) didn’t go viral or become fodder for online news posts. They felt like a secret, part of his lore passed from fan-to-fan via reviews, message boards and social media. And when he did do high-profile performances—such as 2008 Coachella, where he turned Radiohead’s “Creep” into a wrenching soul-blues number, or the Super Bowl XLI Halftime Show, which occurred in the pouring rain—he just did his thing, nonchalantly and with no desire for external validation.
Yet if there was a David Bowie era for everyone, there was also a Prince for every occasion. He was the life of the party (take your pick—”Let’s Go Crazy,” “1999,” “Raspberry Beret”) and the voice for the entire seduction continuum, from hesitant flirtation on through bedroom boots-knocking (“Do Me, Baby,” “Scandalous,” “Darling Nikki”). At times, he encouraged people to loosen their inhibitions (“Kiss,” “If I Was Your Girlfriend,” “Erotic City”), but he never lost sight of how vulnerability is a gift (“Purple Rain”) and that being unconventional was perfectly acceptable. And, as has been noted many times, Prince was also a prolific songwriter, as influential as fellow Minnesotan Bob Dylan. In fact, the Purple One was the pen behind Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” The Bangles’ “Manic Monday,” Sheila E.’s “The Glamorous Life,” Chaka Khan’s “I Feel For You” and Sheena Easton’s “Sugar Walls,” to name a few.
In other words, he not only shaped ’80s music with his own productions—he lent his stamp to the overall sound and feel of the decade, bringing playfulness, soul and seduction to MTV and the radio. And few artists have evolved their sound so seamlessly, and were able to write songs that so flawlessly crossed streams. A quick scan of recent concerts playlists reveals he incorporated snippets of songs by Bill Withers, Isley Brothers, Edgar Winter Group, Ray Charles, Muddy Waters, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan and Bob Marley in with his own work. Funk, soul, R&B, rock, pop, blues—Prince conquered them all, and in the process created his own borderless genre. Prince’s music always sounded, well, like Prince, a claim that few artists can make.
Definitely read the whole etc. on that one. And this one, from Ann Powers:
“I’m gonna listen to my body tonight” is the key line in the song “1999,” and Prince gave us a new way into our bodies that was brainy, full of feeling and commitedly defiant of categories. In 1981, just before I got up the courage to fully explore Prince’s bikini-clad persona, the New York Times pop critic Robert Palmer heralded his “genuinely biracial musical approach and outlook,” while noting that some rock fans didn’t seem ready for it: Opening for The Rolling Stones that year, Prince was pelted with fruit and bottles, “the suggestions of androgyny in his fluid body movements and flamboyantly minimal stage costume” proving too much for the band’s white fans, despite Prince’s obvious kinship with Mick Jagger himself. As his star rose, Prince continued to frighten the guardians of boundaries. He was number one on the list of artists censured by the moralistic Parents Music Resource Center in 1985, allegedly frightened his record label with the deeply funky and sometimes troubling Black Album in 1987, and was still reveling in libidinal jams like “When She Comes” in 2015.
Prince overcame such prejudices, first and foremost, by crafting a sound that unceasingly moved among sources, interconnecting funk rhythms with glam guitar, Smokey Robinson-esque vocal flexibility with Kraftwerk-kissed robotics, Cab Calloway’s stylish humor with Eddie Van Halen’s peacock flash. Thirty seconds into a song like “When You Were Mine,” “Kiss” or “Erotic City,” a listener’s affective loyalties begin to fall away. At house parties like the one where I did the twist with Pete and on dance floors where his early hits mingled with those of his occasional lover and collaborator Madonna, punks threw off their leather to play with disco dollies and even the classic rockers in the crowd found themselves reaching for falsetto notes.
I will say that he was always reliably fresh in a way that even the most talented non-genius musicians aren’t — after I stopped paying close attention to him in the glyph era, every so often a new AFKAP/Prince tune would pop up and suddenly all would be funky and right. I’m listening to HITNRUN Phase Two now, and with its rock-solid pop values — not just in the way it’s written but in the way it sounds, the way the stings and squeals are placed, the reverb on the flute, the twist of the stomp-box dials — he could have written it 30 years ago. Who knows, maybe he did. But it has no smell of the basement or the retro vault; it’s as new as today. And so is everything he did from I Wanna Be Your Lover onward. Even the cheesy 80s synthesizer and drum pad sounds on the old stuff don’t chain his music to the past. That’s because of his gift, but also because he was always down in it — though he was a great guitarist his real instrument was the recording studio, and he played its variations obsessively and revealed them to be limitless. That’s good to remember at those moments when you get sick of pop music or feel too old to participate and start to believe that what the withered scolds of the past hundred years say is true, that it’s just cheap crap for children; Prince always proves them wrong. We didn’t get tired of him because he never got tired of music. He believed in jazz, rhythm and blues, and this thing called soul; he believed in rock ‘n’ roll.
Every Prince fan has a song that sums up his genius, and for me it’s “The Ballad of Dorothy Parker,” one of the tormented strange-relationship soul laments from his 1987 masterpiece Sign O’ the Times. There aren’t any other songs like this one. Prince is fighting with his girlfriend, so he stomps out and goes to a restaurant to sit by himself and sulk. (“Yeah, lemme get a fruit cocktail, I ain’t too hungry.”) The hipster boho waitress working the night shift picks him up. “You’re kinda cute — wanna take a bath?” For a girl in a Prince song, this is the subtle approach.
They decide to spend the night together but not have sex, so he keeps his pants on in the bubble bath while listening to Joni Mitchell. They trust each other, which is a new and scary experience for him. Hanging out with Dorothy teaches Prince how to be a friend to his girlfriend, so he goes back to her and takes another bath with his pants on. All the fighting stops. Next time it happens, he’ll know what to do.
This song fucked me up in 1987, fucks me up now, never will stop fucking me up. No other male songwriter of his or any other generation wrote songs about women like this. In an alternate universe, Prince retires in 1987 the day after he writes “The Ballad of Dorothy Parker” and he’s still the coolest man who walked the earth.
Prince spent nearly 40 amazing years on the frontlines, as the most maddenly brilliant and unpredictable artist in the game. He built his own pop gospel out of his sexual and spiritual concerns, yet with a voice that was full of intimate affection, pushing farther emotionally than anyone else. When he sang, he came on like kinda sorta your best friend. He made the Eighties’ best single, “Little Red Corvette,” and the decade’s two best albums, 1999 and Sign O’ the Times. He changed how music felt and sounded. The news of his death today, at just 57, is truly heartbreaking because he seemed built to thrive into his golden years, an artist we all expected to remain prolific and independent and stubborn and gloriously himself for years to come. We all deserved a chance to hear Old Man Prince. This is what it sounds like when doves cry.
The sheer breadth of his talents is central to virtually every memorial about him, and for good reason — he was a master of funk grooves, his voice impossibly flexible and soulful, a great songwriter, a remarkable producer, and a guitar virtuoso so hooky whether he was showing off or not was beside the point. His best material combines all of these points — I don’t know how many hundreds or thousands of times I’ve listened to Sign O’ The Times, but moments like the unfathomably ecstatic solo that culminates “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man” will never stop seizing my attention and giving me intense pleasure.
If you’re unlucky enough not to own his stuff and don’t subscribe to Tidal, you can acquire anything between Dirty Mind and Diamonds and Pearls with the exception of the Batman thing and get something excellent-to-great; I guess Times is my very favorite but the whole period is a treasure trove. The Hits/The B-Sides is a pretty well-selected introduction. R.I.P.