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Tone....don't ban me....lol
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Prince is 55 - and here are 5.5 reasons why the birthday boy is the greatest pop star ever
http://www.mirror.co.uk/lifestyle/going-out/music/prince-55---here-55-1938581
The greatest pop star of all time celebrates his 55 birthday today. I speak of course of Prince Rogers Nelson, although he’s familiar to most of us just from the first bit of his name.
Will he be blowing out 55 candles from atop a purple cake? Maybe. Will he get 55 bumps from the other members of his current band, 3rd Eye Girl? Perhaps.
Why am I dubbing him as the Greatest Pop Star Of All Time? Here’s why – one reason for every decade of his magnificent life…
1: The Songs
The songs, the songs; oh my god, the songs. I could just trot out a huge list at this point and the argument will have been won hands down.
The truth is that you could tattoo the names of all of Prince’s greatest tunes on to the side of a hippo in very small writing and still have enough left over to cover the side of a additional rhino.
Let’s just stop for a moment and think about When Doves Cry, Kiss, Sign ‘O’ The Times, Mountains, Gett Off , 1999, Raspberry Beret, Little Red Corvette, Alphabet Street. There’s plenty more.
All genres are covered in the great man’s oeuvre – pop, rock, funk, soul, ballads, psychedelia. And there’s lashings of filth as well. Great pop needs filth – and not the sort that Mumford & Sons look like they’re caked in.
2: The Proficiency
Part of the reason why Prince has got such a vast array of incredible songs is the fact that he was churning them out relentlessly in the mid 1980s, in what might well have been the ultimate ‘imperial phase’ – a concept coined by Pet Shop Boys, and a period when everything an artist does goes right.
Between 1982 and 1989, Prince released SEVEN albums that were dripping with tunes, grooves, funk, wit, style and sex. An album every year, from the double 1999 through to the Batman soundtrack. Not a duff release among them.
These days, the biggest stars think nothing of taking half a decade between their albums, few of which could touch Prince’s output with barge pole.
Okay, so it went a bit awry after that 1980s purple patch, and he lost his mojo majorly when he fell out with his record company in the early 90s but no one can be expected to be at the top of their game forever.
3: The Guitar Playing
I’m no expert in the complicated world of guitar mechanics. That kind of thing is for serious rock writers, with their furrowed brows, faded denim and slightly unpleasant smell of dampness and real ale.
All I know is that when Prince does his guitar widdly-diddling it sounds as though a rainbow of actual liquid sex is spewing out of his contraption.
Imagine Jimi Hendrix with all of the boring stuff removed. That’s Prince for you – one of the most underrated guitarists of all time.
4: The Influence
It’s list time again. If you took each of the artists who have cited Prince as an influence or heralded his genius and laid them all end to end, they would almost certainly stretch to the Moon and back. Probably.
They haven’t all followed in his tiny footsteps either – take the likes of Little Richard, Pete Townsend, George Clinton, Elton John and James Brown, who have all praised the little fella to the hilt in spite of the fact that they’d been around the block a few times before he pitched up.
Today’s charts are littered with acts that have acknowledged that they owe him a massive debt too – Daft Punk, Beyonce, Jay-Z and Robin Thicke wouldn’t be what they are if Prince had never existed.
That’s a GOOD thing, in case you weren’t sure.
5: The Weirdness
Pop is always at its very best when its proponents are being weird. Again, I refer to the non-odd Mumford & Sons, the polar opposite of Prince and the antithesis of entertainment.
The shy young fledgling Prince found it easy to appear more fascinating by doing less, shunning interviews and letting various rumours and -myths fill the void where self-publicity should have been.
Has he REALLY had a rib removed so that he can, ahem ‘enjoy himself’ more when he’s alone? Who knows.
Does he throw his underpants away after wearing them just once? Probably – he isn’t short of a bob or two.
Did he decorate his bedroom with mirrors and rabbit fur as a teenager? Hey, back then, who DIDN’T?
If none of that is weird enough, how about the time when he became The Artist Formerly Known As, changed his name to a squiggle and wrote ‘Slave’ across his face.
You’d never get that kind of brilliance from Olly Murs.
Read what happened when the Mirror went inside Prince's secret world...
5.5: He is TOO WEE.
As shown here, from one minute in…
GOAT of his era......long live Prince.....God is alive....
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