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

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.

I feel like there are only 2 correct answers to what is the best prince song: doves cry and erotic city with a love bizarre and u got the look in hot pursuit

I am kicking myself for forgetting glamorous life

yeah I've read that before. "Fancy lesbian" thing is lol

xp

- 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?)

i remember reading that the line in "pop life" was supposedly a pointed reference/diss of some ex-bandmate of mpls musician who had a coke problem at the time. also there's a lot of rumors/mythology about a bad experience with ecstasy inspiring him to scrap the black album and make lovesexy.

doves cry and erotic city

agreed

with a love bizarre and u got the look in hot pursuit

wtf

Glad "17 Days" placed - the 13-minute extended version is one of my all-time favourite extended mixes, an awe-inspiring twinkling epic with (IIRC) Laurie Anderson/Kate Bush/Lindstrom/Metro Area vibes.

doves cry and erotic city

agreed

Agreed.

i know it was probably a fluke but "I Would Die 4 U" narrowly edged out "When Doves Cry" in this poll and i'd love if it happened again: Pollple Rain (search terms prince purple rain impossible)

i trust there will be a spotify playlist once this poll concludes

do you Prince people know this?

http://youtu.be/pkKGW_Ir2X8

i kind of threw my list together on sunday thinking sunday night was the deadline and now i barely believe a word of it. hearing '17 days' for the first time just now would change everything alone.

I'm a little confused about all the love for Adore. It's a good song, but in the kingdom of SOTT sexy ballads, Slow Love remains king.

i like "Slow Love" more than most and almost voted for it but surely you realize what a minority opinion that is. "Adore" is Prince's #1 quiet storm radio staple.

i didn't really get into "17 Days" until i heard the 13-minute extended 12" version

adore is fucking massive. i would have expected a top ten placing for sure but oooooh you ilxors you.

yeah i'm still just aghast at that.

I'm distinctly in the Adore-is-just-good camp and proud of it, especially when I've got "Lady Cabdriver," "Strange Relationship," "Do Me, Baby," and "The Beautiful Ones," among countless others, on my side.

my favorie "adore" related story is someone -- matos, i think -- telling me about a ne-yo concert they saw circa 2006/2007. he covered "adore" as an encore. he apparently got to the climax, built and built to the final vocal/high-note freakout, and then cut everything dead. "nah, not even gonna try that." and then picked up immediately, brought it home.

It has to do with programming. Since I'm one of those who owned SOTT, I stopped playing the second disc after "I Could Never Take The Place of Your Man."

*who owned SOTT on CD

"Adore" is so far above and beyond "Slow Love" it isn't even funny

like, I sort of feel like if you don't rate "Adore", yo haven't actually LISTENED to it

Prince is such a genius that he's topped himself several times. I can overlook "Adore" with a polite nod.

i think it is one of the greatest and most perfect album-closers of all time, in addition to its titanic stature as a stand-alone song. and also alfred is a savage.

well yeah

Reading Matos' book in 2004 was my first awareness that "Adore" was so highly considered.

Took me a LOT of listens before I came around on "Adore." The production felt so wrong before it felt so right.

side two/the second half of disc one is the draggy part of sott for me.

U Got The Look-Strange Relationship-I Could Never Take The Place-The Cross is an awe-inspiring sequence whose momentum is killed off by "It's Gonna Be a Beautiful Night," a good groove that isn't really a good song. I lose interest a quarter of the way through, which is why "Adore" remains an afterthought.

Alfred otm

and I even forgot "If I Was Your Girlfriend"! Seriously -- greatest album side ever.

"Adore" hooked me with the hilarious "maybe not the ride" quip and then seduced me with the melody and the emotion that compelled me to put it on my wedding playlist

I wouldn't at all mind slow dancing to "Adore" at a wedding. I guess it'd be more appropriate than "Sometimes It Snows in April."

it's a good wedding song because it means more once you've found someone you want to be with until the end of time

Every wedding I've been to in the last three or four years inevitably ends up playing BEPs. Gonna be a lot of divorces in the next decade.

my wedding was pre-"I Gotta Feeling" (so we played "My Humps," of course)

OK, I was traveling and didn't submit my entry, but here's what it would have been. Note that I haven't really followed Prince closely since about 1996—I got off the bus with Emancipation, really. I should give those recent discs a few more spins. I excluded stuff written but not produced by Prince, otherwise "Manic Monday" would certainly be in my top five.

Top 20:
1. Little Red Corvette (Dance Mix)
2. Adore
3. When You Were Mine
4. I Would Die 4 U
5. Let's Pretend We're Married
6. When Doves Cry
7. Erotic City
8. Vanity 6 - Nasty Girl
9. Pop Life (Extended Version)
10. Uptown
11. Kiss (Extended Version)
12. I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man
13. P Control
14. The Family - The Screams of Passion
15. Sheena Easton - Sugar Walls
16. New Position
17. When We're Dancing Close and Slow
18. Dirty Mind
19. Sheila E. - The Glamorous Life
20. Mazarati - 100 MPH

20 runners-up:
The Time - Get It Up
Head
Delirious
Raspberry Beret
Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?
André Cymone - The Dance Electric
Housequake
Sheila E. - Koo Koo
17 Days
Irresistable Bitch
Let's Work
She's Always in My Hair
Gotta Stop (Messin' About)
Sexuality
Vanity 6 - If a Girl Answers (Don't Hang Up)
The Future
Sister
Papa
Scarlet Pussy
The Morning Paper

(BTW those runners-up aren't really in any particular order -- just the ones that nearly made it onto my list but didn't in the end)

U Got The Look-Strange Relationship-I Could Never Take The Place-The Cross is an awe-inspiring sequence whose momentum is killed off by "It's Gonna Be a Beautiful Night," a good groove that isn't really a good song. I lose interest a quarter of the way through, which is why "Adore" remains an afterthought.

I'm with this. "Adore" has always been a great ballad, but never been on endless rotation for me. I get being totally whacked out on those first four songs, but "It's Gonna Be a Beautiful Night" is a total "you had to be there" cut.

yes baby

20. Sometimes It Snows In April (from Parade, 1986) - 288 points, 12 votes, 2 first place

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBJ0lxBhGDs

19. Sign O' The Times (from Sign O' The Times, 1987) - 292 points, 12 points, 2 first place

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zNTiaAUEcI

What some where saying about "Adore" upthread applies to me and "Sometimes it Snows." It's pretty and all, but I can't sink into it.