The Must Listen List: Kiss / Cream / Diamonds and Pearls/ Raspberry Beret / 1999 / Little Red Corvette / Delirious / Gett Off/ Sign o’ the Times/ I Wanna Be Your Lover/ U Got the Look/ My Name Is Prince / Batdance / The Most Beautiful Girl In The World / I Would Die 4 U / Nothing Compares 2 U / Manic Monday / The Most Beautiful Girl In the World/ Sign ‘o the Times/ My Name is Prince / Thieves in the Temple / Musicology / Hot Summer / …….

Somewhere in the basement of Paisley Park, there’s a vault. Not a metaphorical vault – an actual walk-in safe with a combination lock built into the door. Combination known only to Prince. And inside Prince’s vault are between Fifty and One Hundred fully produced albums. Eight Thousand songs. Unreleased, just sitting there.

Why?

Because Prince Rogers Nelson couldn’t stop making music. The kid who played every instrument on his debut album at age 20 just didn’t know how to slow down. He fizzed music 24×7. He recorded entire albums over weekends. And the music industry – even with a $100 Million contract – simply couldn’t keep pace with him.

Let me show you what I mean. After “For You”, Prince spent three years finding his voice with songs like “I Wanna Be Your Lover” gliding across dancefloors and “Dirty Mind” shocking everyone with its sexual frankness. Then in 1982 he cracked the code – releasing “1999” on an unsuspecting world-wide audience with three massive singles including “Little Red Corvette” that blew through the Billboard Hot 100. His trademark “Minneapolis Sound” had crystallized, as had his ability to write pop songs about anything – from Nostradamus’ prophecy that the world would end in 1999 to a one-night stand in a red convertible.

Then came Purple Rain in 1984. And he went supernova – hopefully you got enough about that in Part 1! And, after that? An incredible creative explosion that just never stopped!

Ten months later – “Around the World in a Day” hit #1 with the smash single “Raspberry Beret”. A year after that – “Parade” with “Kiss“. I remember seeing “Kiss” on the Grammys show in the White House common room at IIMC – the song just blew me away. And it still does to this day. The funky beat, the falsetto, the synths…and those lyrics: 

“You don’t have to be rich to be my girl
You don’t have to be cool to rule my world
Ain’t no particular sign I’m more compatible with
I just want your extra time and your kiss”

“Kiss” is such a timeless hit! In 1986, twenty years after it came out, the director of “Happy Feet” (I love that movie!) wanted to use it in the opening sequence and have Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman sing it to each other. Prince refused point blank. The studio then showed him a cut of the movie. Prince loved it so much, he immediately said yes. And then, completely unsolicited, wrote a new song “The Song Of The Heart” for the end credits of the movie. ( I’m really fighting the urge to say “Awwwww!” ) Heart of gold, that man!

A year later – “Sign o’ the Times“, widely regarded as his best album, even better than Purple Rain, believe it or not. Three Top 10 singles including “U Got the Look” and then the Batman soundtrack with the manic “Batdance” going to #1.

OK, Ok. Yes, you can sit down. Catch your breath. Go on, put your head between your knees. And focus. Are you starting to see the pattern? Between 1984 and 1989, Prince released seven studio albums. Seven albums in five years. And every single one had at least one Top 10 hit. The man was a creative volcano.

But here’s the thing – for every album Prince released, he was simultaneously recording three more. While touring “1999”, he was already writing “Purple Rain”. While filming “Purple Rain”, he was recording other complete albums. The vault was filling up faster than Warner Brothers could empty it. They literally couldn’t move fast enough to get everything out into the world.

And that brings us to 1989. As you guys know I always stop at this point – my “lakshman rekha” is the year 1990 since my blog is about the music we heard in the 70s and 80s. But with Prince, I’m going to break my rules and peek into the 90s. You could say I’ve been inspired by the lyrics from the brilliant “Cream” from his 1991 album “Diamonds and Pearls”. What a song! His last #1 hit, a magnificent funky rocker with a fabulous bass line – written – according to Prince, while looking at himself in the mirror! 😎 Ego? What Ego?! C’mon simple statement of fact – he simply was the Best 😌

“You’re so cool / Everything you do is success
Make the rules / Then break them all ’cause you are the best”

By 1990, Warner Brothers were fighting with Prince. Not ‘cause he was one of those lazybones artists that never deliver the albums they contracted for. Oh no! The fight between Warner Brothers and Prince was about too much music! 😳  

Prince wanted to release, in real time, all the incredible music he was making. The label was terrified of flooding the market with too much fantastic music – nuts, right?! They’d given him a $100 Million contract to make music , but they wanted to throttle the raging torrent called Prince!

Prince was, of course, furious. 🤬 He changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol – album #14, “Love Symbol”, was the first to feature it. He became TAFKAP – “The Artist Formerly Known As Prince”. He went to meetings with “Slave” written on his cheek to troll the label. Of course, it didn’t work – Prince was still Prince – and it was his signature on the contract! 😀

So, Prince made a choice. If Warner wouldn’t release his music fast enough, he’d preserve it. For later. For us. For the future.

He kept filling the vault. Song after song. Album after album. Recording for 72 hours at a time. Falling asleep, exhausted, and, waking up with fully formed albums running through his head. Not just his usual amazing funk and rock masterpieces, but albums with chart-topping tender ballads like “The Most Beautiful Girl In The World”. (He wrote that one to serenade Mayte Garcia, his fiancee, though in true Prince style he said it was his “love letter to all womankind”).

Genius , I tell you, sheer genius!

And while he was cranking out his own albums at superhuman speed, he was also writing massive hits for other artists. Chaka Khan’s Grammy-winning “I Feel For You”? Written by Prince. The Bangles’ biggest hit “Manic Monday”? Written and produced by Prince for his then girlfriend, Susannah Hoffs, the lead singer. Sinéad O’Connor’s megahit “Nothing Compares 2 U”? Written by Prince. Song after song for the likes of Stevie Nicks, Madonna, Sheena Easton, Cyndi Lauper, Alicia Keys, Patti Labelle, Kenny Rogers and Kate Bush. The creative gusher just wouldn’t stop flowing. If he didn’t have time to record it himself, he gave it to friends who he knew would make the most of it.

Let’s put Prince’s genius in perspective. Prince released 39 studio albums over his career. Thirty-nine. That’s a humongous legacy for any artist. But the majority of the music Prince ever produced – could be as much as 70% of it – was never released. At least 30 of those albums are valued at an estimated $200 million!

Now, Michael Jackson is legendary – 10 studio albums in his career. The Beatles are legendary too – 13 studio albums. Prince released 39 studio albums in his lifetime… and has the equivalent of another entire Michael Jackson + Beatles + Pink Floyd + Doors+ Eagles catalogue, just sitting there, unreleased in a vault.

I trust your minds are well and truly blown! (am I allowed to say “Genius” again?!😁)

Prince unexpectedly passed away in April 2016. In the weeks that followed, 19 Prince albums were on the Billboard 200 at the same time, with 5 albums in the Billboard top 10 simultaneously. The only artist – ever – to achieve that. 

Since his death in 2016, his estate has been carefully releasing material from the vault, and they’ve calculated that at this rate, they could release a Prince album every year for the next century. Maybe longer. The. Mind. Boggles. And Warner Brothers were worried about flooding the market in 1993 🙄

Every time I hear “Hot Summer” – a single from “Welcome 2 America” posthumously released from the vault in 2021, I think back thirty years to 1991, watching MTV in our little flat in Delhi, singing along to the fantastic “Diamonds and Pearls”. And that was just the music Prince managed to release. Imagine what else is in the vault. What incredible songs are we going to discover in 2035? 2055? 2125?  

Now that’s a good reason to want to live for another hundred years!