Reflections on Prince (The Beautiful One)
Those of you who read my blog know that I use this as a space to dive deeper into the music and share some of my inspirations behind it.
There is perhaps no other artist in the world who has inspired me as much as Prince.
Yesterday was a heavy day, it’s as though the world tilted off balance for a moment… to go from talking about someone as a current, modern-day innovator and someone I have also been blessed to cross paths with, to then speaking about that same person in the past tense is a very shocking shift. I struggle to articulate things I feel when I’m limited to short sound-bytes and our short-form social media culture makes it hard to truly express the depth of our feelings at times. So, I’ve turned to a longer format in order to try process my feelings around Prince’s death. It helps to write it down as I can candidly reflect on just how meaningful his influence has been in my life (and what I can learn from it) but also I see it as a way of maybe honoring his legacy and inviting you deeper into his artistry through the eyes of how I knew and looked up to him, from a distance.
Prince, entirely changed the way I make, listen, think and feel about music. He held the tension between pop and experimental music in ways that have shaped me and given me the courage to pursue these sides of myself as an artist. He could be aggressive and explosive in ways that felt completely unhinged and sometimes on the brink of madness, then hold the most gentle, sensual and elegant posture in the next breath. He rode the line between masculine and feminine, unveiling characters we recognized in ourselves… he spoke of the animal, and the god within, the primal beast and the humble soul seeking cosmic significance and oneness with god… he NEVER apologized for the things he wrote about and never censored his art to pacify the masses… he was controversial and daring but never cheaply shocking, he lived inside a paradox, balancing opposites and holding the tension. As he evolved musically, spiritually and emotionally, he continued to produce work, never looking back, never being defined by anything he released, but fearlessly expressing himself with an unapologetic passion that completely captured me from the day I bought ‘Musicology’ as a 14yr old in a record store in New Zealand to the day I stood in front of him at the Grammy’s in 2013.
Prince inspired me to push forward in my ambitions and never set limitations to the kind of artist I will be. He didn’t let anyone define him and also showed the world that even when people tried to challenge that, he would always fight to release his art. He was never pushed down by the structures put on him. His artistry and expression had no bounds.
And Yes, that’s right, I said ‘Musicology’. The first Prince album I properly lived inside. So I came to Prince pretty late, but in some ways I feel this album allowed me to discover Prince in a different way than perhaps others did. I didn’t have the context of Purple Rain or the notion that he was as big of a star as I later realized. I knew his name but it was this moment that I crossed from being curious to being enamored.
I remember seeing the video for Musicology on Juice TV in New Zealand and buying the album for myself at my local record store. For months after I remember singing Call My Name at the top of my lungs in my bedroom.
Next, I ventured deeper and discovered his very first album, For You. This was around the time I was myself building arrangements and making demos completely from vocals. I heard the opening song for this record and just couldn’t believe the musicality and craft within this song. Not only was he 20years old when he made this album but he played everything on it and produced it himself.
It wasn’t long till I was completely deep in Prince’s entire catalogue. I’d become obsessed. I found so much fulfillment in his songs… there were many of the same things I appreciated in modern r&b music but when Prince did it, it was different…. the dimension and texture of everything felt tactile, deeply intentional and soulful like nothing I’d heard before. There was a constant sense of unease and wildness, as if he might jump OUT of the stereo at any moment… everything provoked such a deep reaction in me. I had become fascinated with a lot of experimental music at this time and also heavy rock and metal. I started to see threads of Prince in so much of the music I had been listening to. His influence became evident everywhere. He was the starting point for so much of what I gravitated to in the music I’d come to love. Of course, his own starting points were in Sly, George Clinton, Jimi Hendrix, and naturally it was Prince who pointed me to their music too. I’d found a kindred musical mind and a kind of permission to own all the juxtapositions of my own musical exploration.
My interest in production started with a fascination for Prince albums also. There was something dangerous about the production on his records, he left jagged edges. You could feel sweat, there was something so real about it. I had found an artist that truly showed me the scope of possibilities that one could explore as a pop artist. The progressive, genre-bending, psychedelic aspects of my current favorite bands at the time were all elements I now discovered in Prince records. I found myself referencing his songs in almost every musical conversation, no matter the genre of the artist. I began to realize that so much of the music I loved (even the heavy metal I was listening to) ultimately traced back to funk. And my father of Funk was Prince. He took me to school. While my friends went to university and studied their degrees, I studied this artist and the records he made. I continue to tell people that almost everything I need to learn as a producer and a songwriter are found in his albums.
In 2011 I signed to Warner Bros and began working with Lenny Waronker, who signed Prince to the label as an 18year old and continued to work closely with him over the years. I remember my first visit to Warner Bros and seeing photos of him all over the wall. I couldn’t believe he had walked the same floors, sat in the same rooms as I had… He also fought huge battles in that building and I knew this was home to a lot of stories.
Lenny often shares stories with me about Prince and there are a few I’ll never forget.
Like the one where Prince played him, ‘When Doves Cry’.
Lenny explained that Prince had concerns about there being no bass in the song. I couldn’t believe it, Prince with a concern about his song?! Part of me felt he must be free of self-doubt.
But something about this story reminds me that he had moments of fear about fitting into the constructs or at least the idea of what a song should be.
Prince explained that he felt the song was finished. But he also knew most of his songs centered heavily around bass. Could he leave it like this?
He played it for Lenny. Lenny got so lost in the song, he hardly noticed it. He told him it would probably be fine with a bass line if he added it, but it sounds great as it is, and he should probably just put it out.
And so he did.
I think of this story when I’m struggling with my own art and questioning wether something fits neatly into a genre or traditional song format and doubting it if it doesn’t.
Prince had a relentless trust in his instinct, and that was something that he stood by no matter what. His instincts and intuition. Luckily, the best A&R’s knew to get out of the way and let that intuition ultimately drive things.
When the album ‘Diamonds and Pearls’ was played for Warner Brothers back in 1991…no one knew where it would fit. Record executives were sure there was no song for Urban Radio. When this information was passed onto Prince he simply said ‘it sounds like you’ve got a marketing problem’ and hung up. Lenny tells me this story while laughing, he fondly reflects on Prince’s stark honesty. But he notes that he was also an intent listener, and incredibly smart and up for a challenge. After hanging up the phone, he went back into the studio over the weekend. Monday morning came around and he called Lenny saying ‘you’ve got a new baby’. He’d written a new song. Lenny said he remembered Prince coming in with the song and looking ‘so damn good’…. then there it was, ‘Get Off’.
Dark, dirty, provoking, a slick fit for urban radio and undeniably brilliant.
When people didn’t know what to do with him, he would tell them to work it out, then come back with something even better, he could play the game, but the game never played him.
No record that Prince ever made was easily marketable in terms of definable genres or subject material. He was a force that stood entirely in his own league, unmatched and ever-evolving.
One thing that inspires maybe the most about Prince is his wildly prolific and varied catalogue. When we sit and go through his albums now we will see it from start to finish, and it’s truly the journey of an unstoppably creative spirit constantly navigating and shifting but never being held to any one piece of art he makes, instead, he was always looking forward.. there’s a lightheartedness, a lack of preciousness even, to the way Prince has released music over the years. His experimentation and exploration is played out before us in his records. It is not a neat, manicured body of work…. it’s raw, visceral and most of all, captures a moment.
Making Vows was a time where I grew my appreciation of the deep craft of Prince as the songwriter and producer. I remember the day we started production on Old Fame because Francois Tetaz has started introducing me to Purple Rain in a deeper way than I’d ever known it. Together we studied The Beautiful Ones. To this day this remains one of my all-time favorite songs and what I believe to be perfectly crafted in emotion, groove, intensity, texture, subtlety, soul and passion. The drum beat in this song evoked so much in me, it was so punchy, but then the dream synths came in and the pitch shifting drone of the one high string drunkenly wailing over the whole arrangement.
The yearning in Prince’s songs struck such a chord in my own mode of expression. He sang in a way that so abandoned and spoke to my soul. He never let his voice stay tied to one sound or space. He would send tingles up your spine in a chilling low tone, eerie and creepy then flaunt the most impeccable falsetto that would dance and shimmer over the song. His voice to me was an incredible instrument. Coupled with his fierce guitar playing and ear for production and songwriting, I had found all the things I aspired to in one artist. He could write a song so seemingly simple and lullaby-like, then sneak in dazzling complexities for those who scratched beneath the surface. He could twist a song on its head while keeping you captivated and immersed the entire time. As freaky as it got, it always maintained a sense of the familiar. Every time I heard his songs, I would hear new textures and detect new subtleties in the landscapes that I hadn’t heard before. He left things raw enough for the listener to go inside and feel for themselves. Even when the production turned shinier in latter albums, there was always a danger to the way things interacted in the arrangements, a kind of untamed energy so that even though he could shift the sound worlds dramatically they always felt authentically Prince - in the way they could grab you at the throat one minute then caress you the next. But he never shut the listener out with tricks. The syncopation was like hypnosis. The dissonance evoked intrigue, instead of isolating the audience. This balance of depth and accessibility is my endless fascination with Prince.
Prince was fiercely prolific and Crystal Ball is an example of this. Originally released as a 3disc set, with a bonus 4th disc of Prince just on acoustic guitar. He held just as much command in this setting.
The fourth disc includes another of my favorite songs, Dionne. I loved to unveil these gems within Princes world. Little pieces of the puzzle. I felt like I was in on a secret when I heard some of these bootlegged songs. It was so exciting to dig through and discover .
The title track of Crystal Ball quickly became another of my favorites by Prince. I would love asking people, ‘but have you heard Crystal Ball?! I’d sit them down and make them listen to this entire almost 11 minute song and pointing out my favorite parts while it panned psychedelically around the speakers. The song made me feel like I was on a trip and I couldn’t believe his ability to move in these avant garde worlds as effortlessly as he did in a song like ‘Kiss’.
‘Expert Lover, my babe… Ever had a crystal ball?’ I would listen to it over and over. He assigned Camille (alter ego) to some of these freakier tunes and I loved how this character could exist in its own little world, this strange genderless character he would bring into songs. Prince was the first artist that led me to explore characters in my music. I would always write for different characters in my music, and hear arrangements as conversations between dark and light or just different voices within myself. When I heard the way Prince cast himself in so many characters in his songs, I felt that permission for my music to also explore these different voices and create fun roles for them.
There were so many sides to Prince and ways in which he expressed himself but there was another side to his music that maybe wasn’t as well known or far-reaching, and those were his songs exploring faith. To this day, one of my all time favorite gospel songs is one written by Prince himself called, The Cross.
I’ll never forget the power I found from this song when I first listened to it and how it has continued to empower me in my own faith journey. The lack of fear in proclaiming his truth is endlessly inspiring to me. He moves in and out of subject matters that seem almost frivolous, temporal one minute then profound, sacred and mystical the next, all of this so deeply reflecting our own fragmented navigation through a life of both spirit and flesh.
Fast-forward to 2013 and I was suddenly at the Grammys with my friend Wally for a song called Somebody I Used to Know. I remember our faces when we saw Prince on stage, and the genuine shock and amazement of our all-time musical idol standing in front of us. I remember thinking to myself ‘I wonder who the person will be to receive an award from Prince!!!…that must be the ultimate honour ever!!….’ …. For a moment I completely forgot we were even in the category. My attention was so focused on the fact that he was up there that I forgot that there was a chance he was holding OUR names in that envelope. Then he said it. Gotye and Kimbra. He also said, ‘I love this song’.
He removed his shades and handed us the award. My smile was so big it was starting to hurt, my face was holding that kind of look elation that verges on tragedy, almost paralyzed in an ecstatic wonderment… I remember our gazes locking and him bowing his head subtly and gracefully. When it came time to speak, I was still only thinking about Prince. Yes we had won a Grammy, but PRINCE was standing next to us with his cane and impeccable outfit and he has just honored US. All I could do when it came to my turn on the mic was to thank him. The inspirer and innovator who came first.
Hearing these words come out of my mouth : ‘I just want to thank Prince’ and to look over and see him there graciously accepting… well, that was quite unforgettable.
I never interacted with Prince directly after that night although there were a couple of moments where it nearly happened. Prince had requested for security and a reservation of seats at one of our past shows in Minneapolis although he never arrived (not an uncommon occurrence for one of the worlds most mysterious superstars).
I was also asked us to perform at Paisley Park last year and although I was off my touring cycle when the request came through, we had planned to make it one of the first shows on announcement of a new record.
Aside from feeling a sense of loss that our paths may not directly meet again (at least in this physical realm), my most treasured memory involving Prince was probably a text conversation I had with my friend Janelle Monae last year. I had been asked to give my favorite 10 Prince songs for an interview piece by an Australian blog and Janelle mentioned to me that Prince had seen it, he wanted her to tell me that he loved The Golden Echo and his favorite song is ‘Carolina’.
I’ll never forget that feeling of knowing that something I had created had ended up in Prince’s stereo and he had listened to it and even picked a favorite track.
It was such a high honor and encouragement to be acknowledged by my idol and that’s something I’ll always hold so close.
I am so grateful that I got these small personal glimpses into the world of Prince. I was lucky to see him perform once in Melbourne. It was incredible and exceeded all expectations of Prince as a force of musicianship, soul and the Father of Funk that I came to learn from over the years. He he has passed on to be with the others now but what a gift we have in the music he left behind.
He will always be the strange and Beautiful One to me, and I can’t speak higher words of the influence his music has had on me and others I have known.
I feel there is a baton we must take up now as artists of the younger generation. His spirit lives on through us. I’ll be forever grateful we were all able to experience true artistry like this and I encourage everyone to dig deep into the discography with a reverence for the joy and magic that lies there.
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