If Tracks Are Good, Let's Get 2 Pollin - PRINCE TRACKS POLL RESULTS

there are "take me with u" haters?

jesus christ this world

24. Something In The Water (Does Not Computer) (from 1999, 1982) - 251 points, 10 votes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDl9C3ikfvo

23. Uptown (from Dirty Mind, 1980) - 260 points, 12 votes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxRRt8HJdro

purple rain track that may not make this list: baby i'm a star

calling it

it was in my top ten!

uptown is great and all but two placings might be stretching it

^

OH SHIT KIDS. okay so number 50 was actually the UBER TASTY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BNqbphjPUs

(sorry don't know how that happened)

hahaha

Mistrial! Start over!

don't worry abt it too much

btw does reconciling the two "Uptown" entries affect its placement or are there overlaps in the point totals that keep it at 23?

basically all that happened was I saw it was a track from Dirty Mind at 50 and thought 'oh damn yeah what a great album it's also got Private Joy for example, really love that one and especially the 'If anybody asks - YOU BELONG TO PRINCE' bit, yeah' and fingers started typing the wrong thing.

so there was no duplicate Uptown action. I just typed the wrong words.

that is awesome

there are "take me with u" haters?

this is news to me too

there are no bad songs on Purple Rain, 1999, Dirty Mind, or Sign o' the Times imho (almost threw in Controversy too but I can't make up my mind whether or not Annie Christian is bad or just inscrutable)

Nice!--glad to see "Uptown" place higher. I'm giving a lot of songs a second chance after this poll, and it's fun to find out there are Prince fans who hate some of his most beloved songs--maybe more crossover with the U2 poll than anticipated?

this is news to me too

seriously

prince on his motorcycle driving through the countryside while this song plays otm

So happy to see Lady Cab Driver and Something In The Water so high, they are my two favourite songs on 1999.

Surprised some people really don't like Take Me With U it's one of the highlights of Purple Rain for me. I know a lot of people really rate it but Darling Nikki has always been my least favourite song on the album.

okay last 2 for this week. eye will continue with 20-11 on Monday and then the top ten on Tuesday

22. Mountains (from Parade, 1986) - 274 point, 12 votes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2CKCstA8nQ

21. Let's Go Crazy (from Purple Rain, 1984) - 274 points, 13 votes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij-jM8CcQIQ

So glad "Private Joy" made the cut!

Shit, I thought "Adore" was gonna be top 10 for sure. My #1. As for ballads, I guess "Do Me, Baby" will probably be top 10, but tbh the song has never totally connected for me. I get that it's great, but for the most part I don't get off on Prince's ballads (pun intended) the same way I do on his funk stuff - except when they're as lush as "The Most Beautiful Girl" or "One Kiss At a Time." The way "Adore" escalates almost breathlessly at the end - what he'll put up with for her ("well, maybe not the ride") is something else. "The Beautiful Ones," on the other hand, is batshit crazy. I can get off on that.

Also RE Eric H. - very nearly voted for "Private Joy", and v glad to see it here. Not high enough, though.

Gunning for "Beautiful Ones" at #1. We'll see.

basically all that happened was I saw it was a track from Dirty Mind at 50 and thought 'oh damn yeah what a great album it's also got Private Joy for example, really love that one and especially the 'If anybody asks - YOU BELONG TO PRINCE' bit, yeah' and fingers started typing the wrong thing.

ha, but 'private joy' is from controversy!

You just can't trust me to run a poll basically

"Private Joy" and "Mountains" both on my lists.

I never connected with "Adore."

Gunning for "Beautiful Ones" at #1. We'll see.

yeah, this is my prediction.

no way.

btw this thread is very helpful for planning my prince tribute band's next set.

I wish "Mountains" was higher, I love that song so much.

Glad to see "Adore" made it! I'm with Shakey Mo re: no bad songs on SOTT. My complete blanking wrt to voting for "If I Was Your Girlfriend" is unforgiveable.

I voted for "Mountains". In fact, I was surprised that 3 songs out of my 20 came from Parade (kinda not expecting "Anotherloverholenyohead" to place at this point, tho).

i assumed "mountains" would be your #1, dan

(extended mix)

Ha, "Mountains" was my #7!

a lot of the time i think If I Was Your Girlfriend might be his best ever track. every note, sound, lyric is perfect.

so i'm always curious with these polls; any non fans/Prince-curious people out there discovered any tracks they really love so far?

Really glad to see 'Something In The Water' finishing so high...to me it's quintessential Prince...also glad to see that the 'Uptown' mix-up sees it finishing in a higher place and let's 'Private Joy' in...an underated Prince Jam...

some personal quirks of Prince's that come up in his lyrics that I've been thinking about:

- his sexuality. There are a few coy nods to him being something other than just a hetero-horndog (Controversy's "Am I straight/am I gay"?, Diamonds and Pearl's "would you be a happy boy or girl") but ... well frankly I have a hard time thinking of Prince as actually being bi, was this just some Bowie-style subterfuge or did people really think he was some kind of polymorphous ambisexual? I'm asking more for how he was received/perceived at the time, how this stuff was interpreted.
- his drug use. drug references in his music are both clumsy and odd. did anyone really think he was on smack prior to Lovesexy? there's the coke reference in Pop Life, and given Prince's position in the 80s, the prominence of the drug, and his own behavior it seems like a natural conclusion to think he must have gotten into it... on the other hand he really does seem like a milquetoast that drinks banana daquiris til he's blind. I find a lot of his stuff genuinely psychedelic, and he has some sort of interest in hippies, but it seems like a drug-free psychedelia. he seems too uptight to be into acid or weed. Then later on there's ecstasy, which seems like a more natural fit for his personality (and I recall people theorizing at the time that "squirrel meat" was a reference to E, but um... waht?)

Obviously he's on the straight and narrow now, but his public persona was much more interesting/provocative when there was some ambiguity about these things.

i think he just wanted to give the impression of being an all around freak/freakier than you.

persona games within persona games etc.

"Mountains" was my #4.

My Prince knowledge is basically the 80s hits plus Parade. I haven't really found anything in the 90s/00s albums yet that grabbed me by the short hairs.

I look for queer subtext in everything and everyone and never believed Prince's winks were anything but sensationalism (never believed Bowie either tbh).

i still find it hard to imagine prince even having human sex tbh.

I think he just takes a lot of baths

like i can imagine him sharing his apricot essence through a princely mindmeld or something.

Shit, I thought "Adore" was gonna be top 10 for sure.

yeah seriously, what the fuck

gonna be sitting here with my arms folded going "that's not better than Adore" for almost every song from here on out

http://www.emotty.com/images/emoticons/1043.png

am happy at how high my ballot helped "Mountains" and "Something In The Water" and "Uptown" get, and that "17 Days" did just fine after i cut it

seriously though, i feel like i'm gonna get drunk and listen to "Adore," blubbering to the song "yo adore what they do that for, why they do you like that, what's wrong with them"

from that wendy & lisa interview in out:

That must’ve been a shock after what you’d experienced in the Revolution. How conscious was Prince of assembling for the Revolution that racial and sexuality rainbow you described?
Wendy: He was incredibly conscious of it. Look at the way he looked during Dirty Mind and Controversy and 1999. He was so androgynous. He didn’t care if you were [paraphrasing Prince’s “Uptown” lyric] “black, white, straight, gay, Puerto Rican, just a freakin’.” That guy wanted fans. So anyway he could get them -- and a more interesting way he could do it -- appealed to him. The Sly and the Family Stone mentality, that whole black/white/freaky thing on stage appealed to him.
Lisa: I’ll give you an example. We had a photo shoot for the Purple Rain poster. We were all in our different positions and he at one point walked over to me and Wendy and lifted my arm up and put my hand around Wendy’s waist and said, “There.” And that is the poster. That’s how precise he was about how he wanted the image of the band to be. He wanted it to be way more obvious. We weren’t just the two girls in the band.
Wendy: We were the couple.
Lisa: We were the gay girls in the band. It was very calculated.

...

Did you first think Prince was gay?
Lisa: He was little and kinda prissy and everything. But he’s so not gay.
Wendy: He’s a girl, for sure, but he’s not gay. He looked at me like a gay woman would look at another woman.
Lisa: Totally. He’s like a fancy lesbian.
Wendy: I remember being at that “Sexuality” video shoot and him on stage with that little black jacket and that tie thing around his neck and his black pants with white buttons on the side. And we looked at each other for the first time and I thought, “Oh, I could so fall in love with that girl easy.” It doesn’t matter what sexuality, gender you are. You’re in the room with him and he gives you that look and you’re like, “Okay, I’m done. It’s over.” He’s Casanova. He’s Valentino.