11. Ovlov "Small Voices"
Originally from 2012's Not The Same Without You.
10. Good Morning "Warned You"
Originally from 2014's Shawcross.
9. Alice Coltrane “Rama Guru”
Originally from 1987's Divine Songs.
8. Midnight “In League With Satan”
Originally from 2015's Summoning the Hounds of Hell: A Tribute to Venom.
7. Helium “Hole in The Ground”
Originally from the A-Side of a 1993 Matador 7-inch. First available on CD in 1997 on the All Over Me soundtrack. Released on Ends With And in 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhDOeyMbrHU
6. Prince “We Can Fuck”
Previously available on bootlegs. Released on Purple Rain Deluxe (Expanded Edition) in 2017.
Unavailable for free streaming.
5. Sheer Mag “What You Want”
Originally from a 2014 self-titled EP.
4. Autumn “Kill My World”
Originally from 1971's Comes Autumn.
3. Hüsker Dü “Do You Remember?”
From Savage Young Dü.
2. Can “Turtles Have Short Legs”
Originally from the A-Side of a German 7-inch from 1971. First available on CD in 1992 on Cannibalism 2 (Germany only). Sampled in the Playstation game Parappa The Rapper in 1997. Released outside of Europe for the first time on The Singles comp in 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxGaC4wzt50
Here are the 10 highest placing Prince songs as they appeared in our "500 Hottest Jams" list originally posted on April 1, 2016:
1. "The Beautiful Ones"
2. "Purple Rain"
3. "God"
4. "Pop Life"
5. "I Would Die 4 U"
6. "Let's Go Crazy"
7. "Take Me With U"
8. "I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man"
9. "Diamonds and Pearls"
10. "Little Red Corvette"
Top 10 Prince Songs
4/21/16 thru 12/30/16
Here are the 10 Prince songs that we listened to the most in 2016 based on the stats listed on our Last.Fm account:
1. "If I Was Your Girlfriend"
2. "The Ballad Of Dorothy Parker"
3. "She's Always In My Hair"
4. "17 Days"
5. "Strange Relationship"
6. "Another Lonely Christmas"
7. "Sign 'O' The Times"
8. "Starfish and Coffee"
9. "God"
10. "Good Love" / "I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man" / "Play In The Sunshine" / "When You Were Mine" / "Anotherloverholenyohead"
Hottest Prince jam to not appear on either list:
"PINK CASHMERE"
1983. I don't remember much. Very little. But it's possible that my grandparents had MTV by this point. Based on the 45s that I still have in my possession, Prince was on my radar, alongside the Thriller singles. I don't know where my "Little Red Corvette" and "1999" records came from, although family members really got a kick out of taking me to Caldor and Bradlees and having me pick out whatever $1.49 records they were down with buying for me. The labels on these records were part of what helped me learn how to read at a very young age.
1984. I must have been a fan of "Let's Go Crazy" because sometime during summer 1984, this record became my third Prince related possession. I had a Fisher Price toy turntable in my bedroom where I frequently enjoyed listening to my collection of approximately 25 records. The cover called the B-Side "Erotic City ("make love not war erotic city come alive"), but I didn't know how to pronounce "erotic." This piqued my interest, and when I flipped over the record, I recognized the word "fuck," but I think my brain processed most instances of "fuck" in rock lyrics as a misheard term that I probably was not hearing correctly.
1985. I was kinda bummed that MTV kept playing "When Doves Cry," but the 45 was no longer available to buy anywhere. However, the video for "Raspberry Beret" got my pumped enough to want this record pretty badly and I probably owned it within a week. At this point, it started feeling like I should just start asking my family to buy me every Prince record even if I hadn't heard the song before, and so a few months later I got the "Pop Life" 45 without ever hearing the song.
I remember seeing "Kiss" at Bradlees and asking my mom to get it for me even though I had never heard the song before. It was $1.67. At first, I thought it was weird that he sang in falsetto for the whole song but it quickly made a lot of sense.
Age 6. "Anotherloverholenyohead" was my last Prince 45 until two-and-a-half decades later. I became intrigued by the back covers of "Kiss" and "Anotherlover" having puzzle piece artwork that seemed to fit together when placed partially on top of each other. After this, I got slightly less interested in MTV and Top 40 for a couple years, so the singles from 87-88 were never really on my radar until many years later.
Age 9. These girls who lived down the street had a tape of songs they taped off the radio and during 2 or 3 instances during August, they played this tape loudly from a handheld stereo while walking around the block with a gang of 9 or so kids that included my sister and myself. The first three songs on the tape were "Batdance," "On Our Own" by Bobby Brown, and "Wild Wild West" by Escape Club.
"Batdance" was a pretty huge deal. Based on my VHS of Batman, The Joker really loved Prince.
Age 11. Entering middle school was a horribly stressful experience. During the first week of school, Prince's butt was exposed on the VMAs. Jamie Foxx weighed in.
This thing happened between age 11 and 15 where I ended up rejecting stuff that wasn't "cool" in favor of grunge, and then rejecting grunge in favor of classicrock/prog/hippie bullshit between age 15-16 (resulting in the age 16 "canon" of 400 songs posted 3 posts ago). Prince was very absent from my life during this time.
1997. A few weeks into the summer when I started taping 120 Minutes every week, I saw one episode where Matt Pinfield interviewed Primus and their guitar player admitted his love for Prince in a guilty-pleasure type of manner. Les Claypool and Matt Pinfield were like "dude, Prince kicks ass."
And not long afterwards, it hit me.
Prince fucking rules.
In November of that year, I went back into my records and dug out the small collection of Prince 45s from my childhood. When I got asked to play in my first punk band with 3 of my friends, I suggested that I bring along my Prince records for sampling and an attempt at record scratching. We never actually tried it.
The same weekend I had my parents get me The Hits 1 for Xmas. Got really into "7" and "Alphabet Street."
Within the next 18 months, I had The Hits 2, Parade and Purple Rain. I occurted to me that I had never actually heard "Purple Rain" until I was about 17 or 18 years old. "Take Me With U" became one of my favorite songs of all time for a 3 or 4 year period starting around here.
1999. Napster showed up and I finally got to hear "Erotic City" without skips for the first time in 15 years. My sister thought it was funny that I got really into Prince.
2002. I went to my grandparents' house with my friend one afternoon. My grandfather, who had recently discovered how to illegally download mp3s, emerged from his office unexpectedly and excitedly asked us, "Would you like to hear 'Purple Rain?'"
2004. Prince is back. WBLS started playing "Call My Name" a LOT. Charlie Murphy's story blew minds.
2006. One of my friends got really into the movie Purple Rain and we wondered why everyone got so mad when they played "Darling Nikki." I put it on at my work once and somehow no one complained about the scene when Apalonia's incredible rack was exposed.
2007. I applied for the only job that I ended up keeping for 4 years, but it took them 3 months to hire me. So while I wanted for them to hire me, I worked at a carnival during the day and delivered newspapers at night and used this opportunity to get really into Sign O The Times and peppered WXCI's automation computer with the occasional instance of "Housequake" and "Play In The Sunshine." I heard him play "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man" on VH1 and followed it with the question, "Remember that one from back in high school?"
This is also when Justin Timberlake released "Until The End of Time" which is one of the best Prince ripoffs of all time.
This was probably also the year he did the Super Bowl which I still haven't seen.
2010. I did this thing where my radio show included a set from every one of Pitchfork's Top 100 Albums of the '80s over a 6 or 7 week period, so this is how I got into Dirty Mind. "Yamaha" by The-Dream was the best Prince song of this year.
2012. There's a picture of me singing "Purple Rain" karaoke on my band's facebook page. A few months later my heart got broken, and my bandmate made a sweet attempt to cheer me up by buying me the 7-inch of "Purple Rain" b/w "God," my first Prince record since I was 6. It took me a little while before I got around to hearing "God," but it blew me away enough to play it on my radio show many times over the next year.
2013. Prince played 3 shows in the state I live in, but I fucked up and didn't realize it was happening. A few family members of mine where at Mohegan Sun on the last night he was there. About 10 feet from their car, they saw a huge black helicopter that said the word "PRINCE" in huge letters. That was his last time in CT as he was exiting the last show. Pretty sure I had signed up for a Prince email list of some sort by this point, informing of any nearby shows. But the 3 Mohegan shows still slipped from my radius. I was pretty determined to catch a Prince show by this point. But nah, it never happened.
2015. D'angelo's Spotify session included "She's Always In My Hair" which I hadn't heard since probably the last time I flipped over "Raspberry Beret." Sadly, May was the last time Prince B-Sides were available on Spotify.
2016. Prince is dead and I've been listening to him for the past 4 days very consistently. As of today, I have a new top artist on Last.FM. This is the one that's affected me the most since Michael Jackson, but maybe even more so. I got super emotional about David Bowie, but I didn't feel the urge to immerse myself in him like what's been happening with Prince. This is the first time this has happened to me with any celebrity death, and it feels kinda weird and not normal.
At first I thought I just needed to hear every Prince song that I really like at least once, which I've done multiple times at this point.
So yeah, I don't really get how this is gonna end. I almost don't want it to. I don't get why it matters so much. The psychology of it all. Need more time.
P.S. Now looking through the 500 hottest jams again. Pretty sure he placed 3rd after The Beatles and Radiohead for most jams. Kinda surprised "Diamonds and Pearls" made the cut over "The Ballad of Dorothy Parker" or "If I Was Your Girlfriend." But it's a great song, so whatever.
This entry was originally intended for "Oh Sheila" on its own, but it's difficult to ignore how closely the song resembles "The Glamorous Life," specifically the 3-chord cadence used in every other bar. It's definitely reminiscent of Prince's "Minneapolis" sound as well, which is noteworthy as Sheila E was yet another of Prince's protege's around the time of Purple Rain, an album released within the same year as both singles.
Prince's female protege prior to Sheila E was Apollonia 6, but Prince realized that Apollonia didn't have the singing chops to pull her own weight, and so the project was abandoned. The songs intended for their album included "17 Days" (the b-side of "When Doves Cry"), "Manic Monday" (later released as a single by The Bangles), "Take Me With U" (originally not intended for Purple Rain) and "The Glamorous Life." If Apollonia had the talent, we're guessing this would've been one hell of a record.
Prince designed Purple Rain as the project that would make him a superstar, and, surprisingly, that is exactly what happened. Simultaneously more focused and ambitious than any of his previous records, Purple Rain finds Prince consolidating his funk and R&B roots while moving boldly into pop, rock, and heavy metal with nine superbly crafted songs. The anthemic title track is a majestic ballad filled with brilliant guitar flourishes. Although Prince's songwriting is at a peak, the presence of the Revolution pulls the music into sharper focus, giving it a tougher, more aggressive edge. -- Allmusic http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:h9fpxqr5ldfe
"Little Red Corvette," a slow-burning funk-pop odyssey which is most definitely not about a sports car, is an after-dark masterpiece, aural soft porn rendered with the inextricable combination of perversity and sophistication which defines virtually all of his best work. Everything about the song is suggestive, from its moaning synthesizers to its bump-and-grind rhythm to the orgasmic squeals which punctuate Prince's vocals. Not just Prince's first major hit single, "Little Red Corvette" may be his very best -- only fitting that a song about staying power would have so much of its own. -- http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=33:09frxclaldke
"The Beautiful Ones" is a haunting musical tale of emotional longing and unrequited love. Starting out as a slow falsetto ballad, with Dr. Fink's piano and organ-sounding synthesizers providing a lush backdrop, it gradually builds in volume and intensity, and by the end of the song, Prince is screaming out "Do you want him, or do you want me? 'Cause I want you." The song comes to a quiet close, with Fink's and Bobby Z's drums serving as the closing instrumentation. -- Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beautiful_Ones
One of his most respected classic funk songs, "Controversy" addresses certain speculation about Prince at the time such as his sexuality, religion and racial background, and how he could not understand the curiosity about him. The song has two main verses, a few choruses, with the title repeated throughout the track. Towards the middle he recites the Lord's Prayer in full, which fueled the fire for some to say the song was blasphemous. Toward the end is a repeating chant of "People call me rude / I wish we all were nude / I wish there was no black and white / I wish there were no rules." The song is straight funk with a steady drumbeat, synthesized bass, "chicken grease" guitar and keyboards. -- Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversy_%28song%29
This was a tough one to narrow down... If you'd like, just call this entry "all of the singles from the Diamonds And Pearls and Love Symbol LP's, but that would have been too many songs, so we just chose our personal 3 favorites... which are not normally favorites among hardcore Prince fanatics (especially "7"), being the reason why they fit here for "guilty pleasures."
We especially love the heavy drum fill in "Diamonds and Pearls" just before the "D to the I to the A to the M." Also lovin' the distorted vox in "Money Don't Matter 2 Night..." You'll never hear modern artists leaving something that imperfectly cool in a radio single. And of course, there's the brilliant a cappella intro of "7." These were the final brilliant moments of a fairly consistent 13-14 years, before changing his name to the symbol and losing his genius completely. (P.S. I kinda love that "7" peaked at #7 on Billboard. 20 years or so earlier, John Lennon's "#9 Dream" peaked at #9. Fun stuff.)
Prince pulled the videos from Youtube years ago, but somehow these stuck around...
TASTE MY KIDS is a digital newsletter compiling recommendations for a happier and healthier existence, most often in the form of "best-of" lists, youtube posts, album or movie reviews, and various scribblings. We lived on Geocities starting in August 2000. In January 2009, times got tough and posts were on hiatus until a new host could be located. Geocities eventually died anyway, and now we live on blogspot. True story.
