Best Prince B-side? "Seventeen Days."
Ethan Rayne ,'Potential'
Buffista Music 4: Needs More Cowbell!
There's a lady plays her fav'rite records/On the jukebox ev'ry day/All day long she plays the same old songs/And she believes the things that they say/She sings along with all the saddest songs/And she believes the stories are real/She lets the music dictate the way that she feels.
ION, check this out: [link]
A letter from Mick Jagger to Andy Warhol about the album cover art for Sticky Fingers (which Warhol did).
My favorite bit: "...and please write back saying how much money you would like."
Thanks everyone. I hadn't even thought of "Let's Go Crazy". It's a good suggestion though. I'd mostly been bouncing between "1999" and "Kiss", though if it were for myself, "Little Red Corvette" all the way. (So to speak.) I think, though, that "When Doves Cry" has to be the winner. (But I like Tom's point about the apocalyptitude of a lot of Prince's early stuff, I'd never noticed that before.)
What this is for: while we were on our cruise, Biyi joined the ship's Christmas choir. Reading through their playlist was an instructive experience:
"White Christmas", good choice... "All I Want For Christmas Is You", cheesy, but fair enough... "Eye Of The Tiger"? The Hell?
Leaving aside the unanswered question of what Survivor was doing in there (and whether a choir with a median age of 60+ can credibly pull off the slow fist-pump), the more important point is the Biyi really liked this song. The most important point is that she'd never heard it before. So, resolving that it's about time Biyi was introduced to the music of the 80s, I've been pulling together some playlists to record for her. Categories:
Rock
Ballads
Pop (2 CDs)
New Wave
For the most part, I'm trying to limit any one artist to one song, and it's still been extraordinarily difficult to get the list down to just five CDs. (It was originally supposed to be four.) Prince was one about which I was dithering, hence the question.
Well now, that context actually changes my answer. "When Doves Cry" is it from a musicology perspective, but if you're introducing someone to Prince and one taste has to represent the whole buffet, I think it's "1999."
The opening chords, the musical intricacy, the very Prince vocal style, the apoclyptic-ness, the percussion track, the funk rhythm, it's the whole package.
Plus, it captures the "one minute to midnight" aspect of life in the 80s that is so impossible to explain to people who didn't live it.
Now for some reason, I want to say "Delirious" because it's so fun.
Damn, but I'm awfully suggestible today. Those are solid arguments for 1999.
...How about Whitney Houston?
I love "1999" but I think I'd go with "Little Red Corvette".
For Whitney, probably "Greatest Love of All".
I wanna dance with somebody
Who doesn't?!
I'm with Lee, that's my fave. So joyous and fun.