The Feature Formerly Known As Friday Canon: Prince

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

By a kind of popular demand, here is the hugest Friday Canon yet, dedicated to the Purple One (now on a comeback tip I hear), Prince. Of course because the Friday Canon deals with UK top 40 hits, some of his best songs can't make it here (I'm particularly sad not to see "Dirty Mind") but there's plenty here to be going on with. Inventor of textspeak, and by some reckonings the most talented man of the 80s - by the one-third rule you get THIRTEEN picks across his career: use them wisely.




[Poll #683904]

Comments

[zenith.livejournal.com]

Thirteen is NOT ENOUGH!

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

It's worth pointing out to fans of early prince that the reissue of "Controversy" is tucked away in tranche 3 of the lists.

[umlauts.livejournal.com]

I couldn't tick thirteen. I mean, the ones I ticked I do really love ("Raspberry Beret", "Let's Go Crazy", "Get Offf", amazing), but generally, Prince... meh. Talented, but melodically overrated. Best with Wendy & Lisa, possibly.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

There are more Prince songs I don't know than I thought there were.

Looking at the third section, I wonder why Madonna's slip in quality with age attracts universal derision (even though I don't think there's even that much of a slip) whereas Prince's (which is massive) goes unremarked upon.

Diamonds & Pearls was the first Prince I consciously heard hence emphasis on those singles.

[atommickbrane.livejournal.com]

Dude I totally don't know most of these!

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

I voted in this one. I don't like this "one third rule" tho. Or rather I think the mental exercise involved in POV is better. It was easy to settle on a final 13 in this case.

Have the stats geeks proven by maths that you generate a better consensus with this rule or something?

[jel-bugle.livejournal.com]

Batdance was the first album I bought!

Yet, I only know about 5 or 6 Prince songs on the lists!

[(Anonymous)]

I am shocked and appalled that "Sign O the Times" did better than "U Got the Look." (So was Xgau when he wrote the Pazz & Jop essay for 1987.) But then again, I retitled "Let's Go Crazy," as "Being Prince, Let's Not Go Crazy And Say We Did."

Jacko Spice

[(Anonymous)]

Also, I seem to live in a whole different world of Madonna derision from the one you guys inhabit. Madonna was heavily derided and sneered at by everyone but her fans from the time of her big commercial breakthrough in 1985 up to around '89 or so. Then respect among the writers and critics started accumulating when her fans grew up and still liked her and some of them became writers and critics and some other writers and critics took her seriously etc., this respect peaking (despite various filmic bombs along the way such as Who's That Girl*) with Erotica, which was accompanied by a book and of course by controversy and was lauded everywhere as the work of art it obviously was, DESPITE ITS BEING AN ALMOST TOTAL BORE, as is almost everything she's put out since except for "Frozen" and "Ray of Light" and the sample of "Gimme Gimme A Man After Midnight."

I'm Not Too Hung Up About Remembering Song Titles Spice

(*A movie I like, by the way.)