Prince..... the exact point where it all started to go horribly wrong.

Lovesexy marks not the first time he sucked (I don't like about 1/3 of it but that's not super-different from, say, Controversy) but the first time he made an album you had to be on the bus to "get"--the first album that was readable only to his hard core of fans, his first all-out cult album. Dirty Mind was a cult-building album, which is much different--Lovesexy represented the beginning of his preaching to the choir, and its insularity turned a lot of people off, as did the one-track structure (or do I repeat myself?).

Actually, one could make an argument that _ATWIAD_ and _Lovesexy_ are seperate facets of the same album.

This is an interesting take, because this is actually the album where I fully got on the bus, if you will -- I had heard the breakthrough 1999 singles, bought Purple Rain and Around the World in a Day but didn't buy Parade and Sign O the Times then, I was content with the singles. But whether it was the flush of getting my first CD player or whatever, I heard "Alphabet St.," loved it, got the album and thought, "Hey, great stuff!" Pretty constant listening for the last weeks of high school and the intervening summer before UCLA.

prince looks in mirror
and for the first time is scared;
so he scares us back

Dan's otm re: Around the World, but circumstances are u+k here--ATWIAD came after the biggest blockbuster of the guy's career, he could have done ANYTHING after that and it would've sold 3 mil. Lovesexy came out on much shakier ground: Sign 'O' the Times may have sold 3 or 4 mil (I think it was around there) but he had undercut its should've-been blockbuster status considerably (not releasing "Housequake" or "Adore" as singles didn't help; "If I Was Your Girlfriend" was a U.S. flop; the concert movie was given a very half-assed releae; he DIDN'T TOUR); and his star was on the wane in a lot of ways (esp. in the black community) with hip-hop ascendant. So putting out a deeply spiritual album written largely in coded language with goofy signifiers like "Lovesexy is the belle of the ball" and "Positivity--have u had yr plus sign today?" (UGH! UGH! UGH! MAKE THE CUTESY LYRICS STOP!) and all-one-CD-track programming deep-sixed him in a way that wouldn't have been the case three years previous.

i don't get the ATWIAD comparisons to Lovesexy at all.

Matos - Prince has always had a penchant for flat out cutesy/corny/ weird lyrics. The stuff on Lovesexy was nothing new. I mean:

"animals strike curious poses/
they feel the heat/
the heat between me and U"

WTF? Cats + dogs doing calisthenics due to human horniness?

I had one.

About the culty thing (the cunty thing I leave to Chaki's fevered imagination) -- to be honest, M., I'm not sure that was consciously or even unconsciously the case. Around that time I was getting into my second wind of really buying music thanks to getting my first CD player, and was picking up a lot of stuff fairly randomly, but a large part of it was to do with The Stuff I Heard on the Radio, not necessarily anything obscuro or obsessive -- I only really got into alt.music as such after I went to UCLA. I don't recall reading into the cryptic lyrics as much as you were (big surprise, me ignoring lyrics!) or at least was perhaps bemused but was more appreciating the music as such (again, big surprise). So I dunno. I haven't listened to the album in god knows how many years.

Actually, Chaki's comment now makes me think of the bassline of the song. He's onto something!

As far as your cult-appreciation and its intersection w/your Prince fandom, I may have gone too far theory-wise but I do think it's a decent larger point.

i know the people love the revolution but they just werent as flexible as this other band. (which is why the revolution worked better on albums probably)

i'm going to have to listen to lovesexy tonight. i've never heard it in the way m matos describes above...that's way interesting. it seems like the general analysis is that the album is just too self-indulgent and maybe he's just gotten progressively more self-indulgent and insular over the years. his world is so far removed from what the public considers every day reality?

truly!!

and most of dirty mind for that matter...head

i'm ashamedly ignorant of anything before then.

Chaki I'm well aware of how non-live the movie is, but I've heard bootlegs too and by itself "Beautiful Night" from the album, whatever its overdubs, make a convincing case. You know the First Avenue April '87 boot, right, the rehearsal one? Wow. And that's just a rehearsal.

chaki -

email me. I have something you will LOVE(sexy). Trust me.

Wow. And that's just a rehearsal.

i would love to see this! is it readily available?

No, man! I have a Lovesexy Tour rehearsal CD that I know Chaki will dig, is all.

I don't know that America was unready for the sincerity as much as the muddledness of the message--and that most of Lovesexy isn't all that hooky compared to 1999 or Purple Rain or SOTT. I like it fine but it's one of his good-not-great albums for me, and the intended depth of its import isn't measured up to by the music.