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Soul Train BOTB's Sweet 16 (1980's to early 90's) - #2 Prince vs #3 Whitney Houston
YellowSnow
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Soul Train BOTB's Sweet 16 (1980's to early 90's) - #2 Prince vs #3 Whitney Houston 22 votes
#2 Prince
90%
20 votes
#3 Whitney Houston
9%
2 votes
Comments
One of my best friends runs a top Prince website. As such, I know a lot about Prince even though I'm not a HUGE fan.
Here's a bit of a Prince history lesson.
Prince's run from "Prince" (1979) to "LoveSexy" (1987) was fucking great and he had tons and tons of bangers. Basically after LoveSexy Prince became self-indulgent and reflective of trends rather than setting them, which he'd done on 1999, Purple Rain (which is a great fucking record) and to some extent Around the World in a Day.
In '86 he made Under the Cherry Moon which is a personal favorite movie, but is really self-involved and BS (though it has an early Kristin Scott-Thomas in it). It's funny, but not amazing. The record was not the most amazing.
Right around this time he made an album called 'The Black Album' that has never been released that kind of ruined his career. It was a suck-dick collection of 'club songs' that weren't really well crafted. His strength WAS song writing. When he abandoned serious song-craft for 'club bangers, 1986 style' he just kind of went to shit. A lot of the songs from the Black Album got re-worked and put onto later releases, but just really aren't that great.
People think the BA is cool because it's 'unreleased' and sounds cool and rare, but it was mostly total shit. Hence why it wasn't released.
He had one last real spurt of genius with Sign O' the Times, but again - fucking self-indulgent BS. It has like 30 songs on it or something. The most awesome pop single (I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man) has a fucking 2 minute low energy middle part in the fucking album version. JFC PRN!
Here's the short version, which is dope:
If you cut that record down to 8-10 songs it's great, but he was already too far gone.
LoveSexy in '87 has his last good 'Prince' single (Alphabet Street) and is generally a good record, but kind of suffering from overly sappy 'concept' and 'philosophical' detritus. This was the equivalent of our 2002 season. Some good stuff, but you can see shit wasn't going right.
After that he hit his 2004, which was Batdance. That record didn't produce one fucking decent song and he was getting really into making 'club bangers' but he missed house and he missed (and dissed) rap. So he was way behind by this point.
Then he had Graffiti Bridge in '89 which was absolute shit.
He came back in 1991 with Diamonds and Pearls, which only spawned hits because they were songs and there was tons of PRINCE IS BACK promo and payola to radio to make it a hit. He was a big property at Warner's and they wanted some pay-off. The record was not remarkable in any way, shape or form. It was just kind of form without content.
However, this 'we need some fucking hits if you are going to have the deal you have' issue with Warner's led to him changing his name to a symbol and starting on his own. After that, it was just all shit. The best songs he's had sense then have been pseudo-religious claptrap hitting at the low-points of LoveSexy and he hasn't had a good original song released probably since Alphabet Street in '87, despite having released countless embarrassments like 'My Name is Prince' and 'Sexy MF' and whatever else.
So, while I think it's fair to give him shit for hitting a wall post-Purple Rain (Around the World in a Day is really good from '85), his song-writing before that was really fucking good.
What has, of course, endured (and improved) is his ability to play guitar. He is a fucking master. I guess when your fingers are little like that they move fast. But he's just a fucking musical genius.
His best later in his career was always just going out and playing and dropping the BS. Him playing hits in a style that wasn't self-indulgent was fucking unreal to witness.
But his run from '79 to '85 was fucking legendary and that's why he's Prince and not Huey Lewis.