Music

It may not seem like it, because the music is so polished, but he was one of the most accomplished guitarists of the last 50 years. He commanded perfection from himself and his band.

Start with the biggest hits. Listen to the instrumentation. Ignore the lyrics if they're not your jam but listen to the vocals. Listen to his various bass players and how they lock in with the drummers. Dig the tonality and nearly impeccable execution of note choice.

I was lucky enough to see him in Seattle just before he died. My girlfriend at the time snuck me into the show. It was unreal.

Prince had never really been on my radar until I saw this performance

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uWc4wMyL1oI&list=RDuWc4wMyL1oI&start_radio=1

I had no idea he was that talented

Do you like any of the other songs he's written for others:

Nothing compares to you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-EF60neguk

Manic Monday: the bangles (I personally hate this one) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsmVgoXDq2w

Jungle Love: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2FPQvwhSDY

Stand Back (not personally a fan of this either): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwS9BIqbffU

How Come U Don't Call Me Anymore? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-Jt1jSimjs

Prince is one of the best guitar players of all time, which doesn't always shine through on his singles. Watch his live performances. For example, here's Prince covering Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" in 2002. The dude commands the stage

What if it's just not for you? Not in a bad way, but in a blunt, not everything is for everybody way? To me thats ok.

Art comes to us 1. at a time 2. in a place 3. in a culture.
Those things together sometimes make magic for millions and it's cool. But sometimes all of them are off just enough to make the art uncompelling - we just can't get into it. Name a top artist of the last 50 years, and there a millions of people who would give anything to see them one more time, and millions (who have listened) and it just doesn't do anything for them.

I've heard a couple of 60's big acts say I'm not sure how you could enjoy our music without living the lifestyle we were into back then. That scratches at the thing I'm talking about, it's sometimes a bit of 'you had to be there.' That phrase is abused, but when it's used right it has meaning. You're hanging out with friends and the funniest thing happens. The next day you try to tell the story and it falls so flat of the experience. It was a time, a place, a people that made the magic.

Agreeing with other folk who point to his mastery, his craft, his ingenuity, his artistry, integrity. And those are all arguably real, measurable and true. But that doesn't mean it will speak to everyone. Or even be enjoyable by everyone.

for me to get Prince, I had to be a teenager first experiencing life and love and pain, and seeing Purple Rain as my first real musical movie, and having a brother who thought Prince as a genius, and a few close friends who would loan me the albums, and a tape deck to listen to on the way to school, and a radio that was playing the new hits - Abracadabra, Jack and Diane, and Hard to Say I'm Sorry, You Dropped the Bomb on Me, and Oh Mickey. In that soup, 1999 comes to me and I see it in Technicolor somehow, and it seeps in, and I read the liner notes, and lay on the floor listening, imagining. I had to have the mystery about a man who really only had one name, and what the word androgynous means. I think I had to have all of these things to get Prince. And for years I did. And I got older, and I got it less, and others more, and maybe back again a couple of times. The last thing is the new of it all. You cant recapture, re-experience the new - and once it's here it changes all of us, and everything is maybe a bit different and maybe a bit better, but it's near impossible to look back and feel what happened, you can only feel it going forward. I'd like to feel the Beatle's coming to America, or Chuck Berry on TV, or Getting muddy at Woodstock, but that's not really a thing. You can read, and watch, and learn get an appreciation, but we can't recatch old waves.

I didn't really "get" Prince at first either. His biggest radio hits didn't quite click for me. But then I watched a full concert video and loved it. He was just radiating energy the entire show in a way that wasn't quite captured by the studio recordings IMO. And I think it's one thing to read that he was an incredible multi-instrumentalist versus actually watching him absolutely shred on several different instruments at different times throughout the show.

Prince's albums have a lot of diversity over the years. Depends on what you like. I'm particularly fond of 1999 as his classic pop album, but sign-o-the-times is more ecclectic with jazz and funk. While among his least popular, my personal fav is the truth. It was supposed to be a bonus disc on Crystal Ball, but didn't make it for whatever reasons. I adore it because of the excellent recording qualities, it's a mostly acoustic album wich is an oddity for prince, and he clearly doesn't take anything too, too seriously, but shows his chops as a master multi-instrumentalist.

He went through a smooth jazz phase which was respectable, Musicology is another tight album on the pop side of things.

Let's go crazy is a bop. Sweet guitar. Can still dance to it. That's the main song of his I love. Not all his stuff is like that. Agree I don't like his slower stuff.

Short answer, it's down to taste.

Prince is a genial performer and composer, in particular during the early 80s with the Minneapolis Sound: a unique style of New Wave based on Pop Funk Rock, and a precursor of explicit horny vibe after the first Glam Rock period. I like to compare Prince to Michael Jackson: where MJ is just a boring Disco Pop, Prince is the real king of Pop in the same period starting with the crazy Dirty Mind LP. In Purple Rain you can find the peak of a Minneapolis Sound with the Hard Rock influences.

There ain't much to get, either you like his music or you don't. I like it but i'm not a massive fan. I sing 17 Days a lot actually.

It's ok not to like something just because eveyone else does .For example i can't stand Bob dylan but i appreciate millions of people adore him,he's just not for me.

Some of his albums I like a lot more than others. Try Parade and 1999 super deluxe edition. If you can't find something you like on those then you just don't like Prince. And that's okay.

Not necessarily something that would get you into his music, but one of the coolest things I ever heard was when he was asked if he would still be able to play the Super Bowl halftime show in heavy rain, and he responded “can you make it rain harder?”

Wish I could help you, I never have understood it either. I think it has a lot of social factors that I don't get, not having lived through that era of his heyday. When my aunt or family friends describe why they love Prince, it sounds like they're really just talking about how his songs were everywhere during formative years of their lives. Everyone I've talked to about it really has more of an emotional connection than any actual technical appreciation of his music.

Idk I like when doves cry. But I find most of his other radio songs almost unlistenable. The guitar intro for when doves cry is badass enough though that it makes me curious about his not radio shit.

God do I ever hate Raspberry Beret though.

You bring the ski masks, I'll bring the shovels. Let's go get him.

Here's the thing. You don't ever "get" Prince. You do your own thing. Carry on your way. Once you get good at or enjoy something, Pirnce snaps his head over his shoulder and... rocks it better... without saying a word.

Prime example is the 2004 R&RHF perfomance that a couple of other people have posted. There is a part while he's soloing that you can catch Tom Petty just thinking to himself, "Man, this kat's wild".

He's just an insanely talented instrumentalist, songwriter, perfomer & from what I've been told an incredibly kind person. I'm not even a big fan of his, but you got to respect.

Maybe try the 1979 album Prince, that unlocked a deeper appreciation for me for some reason. I Wanna Be Your Lover is impossible not to like I reckon, it slaps so hard

watch purple rain. great movie and soundtrack. this dude practically ruled the 80s and the genre "minneapolis sound" is pretty much just him and bands he gave his songs to. lots of hits, instantly recognizable voice and sound, especially the drums. he has excellent vocal control and amazing pipes

You don't need to "get" him.

You just need to know that he saved Dunk-a-roos from extinction.

I get where you're coming from. I tend to have to "click" with an artist/band before I can really sink into them. Sometimes it never happens.

That being said, I think the best approach to Prince is chronological. His oldest music tends to be the most accessible. As he developed, he got more experimental and that can make it harder to vibe with if you go in without familiarity.

I'd hit up the Wikipedia page and kind of surf through his first three albums. If you haven't "gotten" what made him popular back then, then the best you'll reach is appreciating his talent on an abstract level rather than feeling it. Nothing wrong with that at all, clicking with a given music segment or not doesn't mean anything other than the fact that it doesn't vibe for you.

But, he really was an amazing songwriter. So you could try browsing just his lyrics and see if that gets you into things that way. I know I'm not a musician in any way, so the subtleties of his guitar and other instrumental talent are beyond me, but I can comfortably say that he was capable of lyrics that could match any poet you wanted to point at. The craft of how he would structure a song is damn potent.

Even his bumping, club friendly stuff like Cream or Get Off is crafted extremely well. So if you're into lyrics enough, that might be the path that makes him click for you

I added his entire discography to my library when he died, but found I had to explicitly exclude him from my general random background playlist as it was too jarring when he popped up.

I decided to include him again about 6 months ago, and I now find him tolerable as the rest of my library has grown in size and scope.

Taste's subjective