The Artist is Born
Prince remains a fan favourite long after his active career peaked in the mid-eighties with his magnum opus, Purple Rain. In fact, if you've never heard of Prince, you've still probably heard half that album. Which is good; some Prince, even that absorbed through mainstream motion picture soundtracks and awkward wedding receptions, is better than no Prince.
What is most interesting about this artist is not so much his childhood - which, though atypical to many, is quite common among artists: a broken home, frequent relocation throughout formative years, isolation broken only through music - it's Prince's ability to write songs in nearly every genre while playing almost thirty instruments. And to do it before turning twenty.
Early Years
Take the first, self-titled song on his first LP, For You. To begin your career with a shy one-minute overdub acapella harmony more suited for a church hall than a record geared towards late 70s funk and R&B charts takes not just boldness, but an uncompromising aesthetic. It would have been easy to kick For You off with a raunchy hit, like those found later on the album, but its opener is the kind of gentle ease-in many artists writing music today might learn from. It's the kind of song that is so rare these days: a showcase of obvious talent holding back. No drums, no bass, no instrumentation of any kind, just an 18 year old in front of a mic. It almost singlehandedly proves the bankruptcy of modern autotuning and overproduction. It's hard to imagine T-Pain or Fergie without their over compressed backing tracks and studio trickery actually sitting down and laying down a track like this. In a single one-minute showcase, Prince beats every American Idol contestant.
Breakthrough
Though For You didn't make too many waves, seeing as it was released in the heyday of funk and disco, for me it's a nice warmup to what I consider his first whole album, the self-titled, Prince. Only a year had passed, but the 19 year old Prince was busy practicing his scales and honing his piano chops for what I still think is his greatest album after Purple Rain. I cannot think of an album where every song is both great and nearly as good as the one before it. That's a weird and exceedingly rare combination, but I will be damned if his second LP is not perfect. Find a bad track and write to me.
Gunslinger
If For You was Prince goofing around and finding his voice, his second album is his proof that he can stand alongside his childhood heroes. As a guitarist, Prince is extremely underrated. "Bambi"
could have been written by Jimi Hendrix, and the final shredding bit down the major scale at the end of "Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad" is one of the most powerful runs in his catalog, a forgotten, but formidable solo that I still cannot figure out.
Crooner
It would be enough if he could just show off his considerable skills as a guitarist or a pianist or a bass player, but what makes Prince an alien is that he does this while singing in a pitch perfect, angelic voice, one that clearly borrows from legends like Smokey Robinson and Stevie Wonder, but one that is in no way derivative. Take "It's Gonna Be Lonely", the dreamy, swirling outro. Just take it. Don't read about it, listen to this song already. To be able to both write, produce, and play every instrument on a track like this would be enough, but not for the ambitious Nelson, a trend that would continue long into his touring career when he had others playing his parts.
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