Prince – Planet Earth
Sony Music (7/24/07)
Pop / R&B
I enjoy Prince’s hits, let me say that. I’m not a hardcore fan, but I enjoy the songs you hear on the radio. I’ve enjoyed them since I was a kid in the ’80s, thinking Prince basically as a funky alternative to Michael Jackson on the R&B/pop scene. But that’s the problem. No, not Michael Jackson… he’s his own problem. It’s the funkiness. I know that’s probably not a good thing to say, given the site I’m on, but I fear that Prince may be too funky for me. Sometimes I worry that I just don’t get him.
Planet Earth, let me start off, is a perfectly serviceable album. If it had come out in the ’80s, even in the early ’90s, it would have had two or three hits, and the mediocre songs would have been brushed over. Unfortunately, it’s the late aughts, and Prince doesn’t have that luxury anymore. It’s not that the music has passed him by—anyone who know anything about music will tell you that his songs are as cutting edge and modern as can be, following both the latest trends in funk and R&B, and even forging new trends. It’s not the music that passed him by, it’s just the world. Like it or not, the man is a product of the past. He’s hopelessly mired in Purple Rain and in TAFKAP. So much so that I feel compelled to mention these things in a review for an album released this year. I mean, Purple Rain came out 23 years ago.
Even with whatever problems I had with the mediocrity that exists in times on this record, Prince still has a capability to come up with a good turn of phrase, which I always look for in an artist. Some things that jumped out at me include stating of a model, “she’s so fly, she’s coast to coast”. That’s just witty. Also, in talking about other potential suitors in a club, “they’re all nickels lookin’ for a dime”. I happen to like that last one quite a bit, as it simultaneously disparages them and sums up the club scene succinctly. I think he does swing and miss with trying to make “shake it like a juicy-juice” a viable catch phrase.
In listening to the album a few times, as happens with almost any album, a few songs jump out at you, so I’ll discuss them here, as, well, that’s what I’m supposed to be doing.
“All the Midnights” is a good soft ballad, sung in the classic high crooning Prince style. It has some interesting biblical references, being that the guy is a fairly devout Jehovah’s Witness, and it’s really very interesting how he combines that with constantly sleeping with hot women. I’m pretty sure there’s something in the Bible about not sleeping with Carmen Electra.
“Guitar” is obviously the “big hit” on this album, not only because it’s the first single and it’s getting significant airplay, but just because of its structure and its makeup. It’s brash and cocky, it’s got a catchy rock/pop hook, the lyrics are easy to understand and straight-forward and its production is impeccable. In fact, the song is so catchy that Prince doesn’t even bother finishing the last chorus, he knows you know what the remaining lyrics are, and tells you so. It’s the confidence that leaks out of it that really sells it.
The other song that has that confident swagger is “The One U Wanna C” which is just apparently how Prince picks up girls. It’s a classic rocker number, the singer just expressing that he’s cooler, badder, richer and in every other way better than any other possible suitor. Still, Prince breaks out that old Prince swagger, which allows a five-foot-six guy who dresses excessively fruity to score supermodels. You can’t help thinking when he’s singing ridiculous things like this that at least he can back it up.
“Mr. Goodnight” is a track that reminds me of LL Cool J’s “I Want Love”—it’s just basically a rap love song. Well, except for the fact that Prince rarely talks about romantic love, and more about boning. So it’s basically Prince rapping to a girl about how he’s going to nail her later, and how she’s going to brag about it later. What can you say? He certainly has balls.
There’s an awful lot of religious imagery on this album, from “Lion of Judah” to the title track “Planet Earth”, which—and I’m not kidding about this—encourages us to save the Earth because God went through the trouble of making it. As an argument against global warming, it certainly doesn’t have the immediacy of “we’re all going to die!”, but it might reach the crowd that doesn’t really care about that, I guess.
So why doesn’t it work? Why isn’t this album going to sell well, or really have any big singles? Prince himself is the answer there. After years of being way too freaky, and not having a name, and being a eccentric personality who flaunted his sexuality for publicity, the public can’t really get into him as an artist anymore.
Last year, Prince was the artist for the half-time show of the Super Bowl. I was watching this show with about a dozen friends, and all but myself and one other person met this news with not only apathy, but disappointment. Pointing out his musical skill, his great backlog of songs and his show-making abilities did nothing. People were more excited to see Paul McCartney. Now, I’m a huge Beatles fan, so I was excited to see Sir Paul, but really, one had his career high in the mid-sixties, the other (Prince) had his twenty years later. I mean, all of us were alive and listening to music during Prince’s heyday. But he’s just too out there now, and there’s no connecting with casual fans anymore. It’s a shame, because it’s not his music’s fault.
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