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

I can never understand why Lovesexy *always* gets panned. Must be the cover that just grosses people out to the point where the music inside is tainted. Thing is : hasn't anyone listened to the arrangements on that sucker? A total Sly-meets-Ellington mish mash of funk and groovy horn charts that's heaven itself to listen to on 'phones. And it's Prince's most concrete statement on the unity of God and Flesh. I also think it's his most psychedelic record.

(Having said that, the actual song "Lovesexy" does get on my nerves sometimes.)

He didn't so much lose it as occasionally misplaces it.

I think more people would enjoy "Lovesexy" if SOMEONE hadn't insisted on making this record all ONE FUCKING TRACK. Otherwise, though, yeah aside from "Alphabet St." and a few others, I still stand by my "eh".

*back in the 80s.
also complained that prince used
'flying-monkey' chant

i love these lyrics, too.

"In every man's life there will be a hang-up
A whirlwind designed 2 slow U down
It cuts like a knife and tries 2 get in U
This Spooky Electric sound
Give up if U want 2 and all is lost
Spooky Electric will be your boss"

Call People magazine, Rolling Stone
Call your next of kin, cuz your ass is gone
He's got a 57 mag with the price tag still on the side
Cuzzin' when Spooky say dead, U better say died
Or U can fly high right by Spooky and all that he crawls 4
Spooky and all that he crawls 4

Don't kiss the beast
We need love & honesty, peace & harmony
Positivity
Love & honesty, peace & harmony
I said, hold on 2 your soul, U got a long way 2 go

sho' nuff, sho' nuff, sho' nuff

Don't kiss the beast
Be superior at least

Hold on 2 your soul, y'all, court, sing
Hold on 2 your soul, we got a long way 2 go
Hold on 2 your soul

Just downloaded the 8 CDs worth of "The Work" volumes 1 & 2 which cover demos and outtakes from roughly 1978-1988. Now while there's an absolutely mind-blowing amount of great great stuff in that span that either Prince or WB put on the shelf ("Possession" vocal version, "Rebirth of the Flesh," "Electric Intercourse," "A Place in Heaven," "We Can Work It Out," and the stuff that turned up on Crystal Ball), there is also, again, another ton-barrel of not-so-hot stuff. The difference in the two periods is that now, all this stuff would trickle out of NPGMC at prime rate.

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)