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“Musicology” left me cold.
Every David Bowie LP since 1983 has been hailed by someone or other as a comeback, and every time it’s untrue. The same can be said of Prince.
In 1985-1987, Prince was at the top of his game, but too much time has elapsed since then, even though he’s apparently become much more convincing at acting like himself. He let the landscape get pulled out from under him when Warner Bros. stopped automatically saying yes to his successive whims (although it would have been for the best if they’d acquiesced to his triple-LP Crystal Ball). John Fogerty had a much better motive for being bitter—he gave up all CCR royalties just to be freed from his Fantasy contract, but he didn’t let his bitterness overshadow his own standards of quality. Centerfield and Blue Moon Swamp are as good as anything credence. But no NPG Prince album is listenable or exciting.
Parade and Sign O The Times were great LPs then but they point to a future that didn’t come true. John Lennon said that Elvis died when he went into the army. Prince died, at his own hands, when he killed Dream Factory, and when Warner Bros. subsequently blocked its successor Crystal Ball. I know he wants this present period to be his 1968 Comeback but I didn’t hear it in the song, which is all that counts.
At the time it didn’t seem this way, but when he broke the Revolution the shrapnel eviscerated the careers of his collaborators. Wendy and Lisa made a fatal mistake in being dishonest with themselves, the way Paul McCartney refused to write like a Beatle from 1970. They abandoned the craft they were good at in the Revolution and alienated, I think, most of the fan base that identified with the music they created with Prince. All the potential of Dream Factory was wasted all around; the key songwriters all refused to have anything to do with their unreleased creations. Prince, perhaps, was justified in walking away, but Wendy & Lisa had no reason to abandon the style of the work that they were primarily responsible for instigating. Instead, they just sort of rode on the wave Lenny Kravitz later made his own for their first three LPs. I had wanted to believe that they had continued the same stream of consciousness, but they didn’t, so apparently it never meant as much to them as they said it did in 1986. Now they do themes like “Theme from Single Female Coroner”.
