I want it morning, noon and night of every day

Continuing my trip back through the 1988 album charts.

22/05/88 : Lovesexy - Prince


Our sixth visit with Prince and this is one I've never listened to - there's no denying the man had skills but I think the drama all got a bit too much for me around this time.

Hmmm - I'm not sure it was quite too much here, but it was certainly heading in that direction. I don't mind the core of the tracks (and I actively like "Alphabet Street") but there's just too much faffing about going on as well - I know it was always very much about Prince for his Royal Purpliness, but it's just all a bit too self-indulgent for me. I also think there's less obvious genius on display here than there is on some of his best albums - "Alphabet Street" was the only one that really jumped out at me. Overall, it's not terrible, but it's also not great.

We're at #4 in the charts this week on his second week of a 29 week run with it having debuted at #1 - it came back for further runs in '89, '05 and '16 (it's mad that it's coming up to ten years since his death). The rest of the top five this week were a compilation heavy Fleetwood Mac, Nite Flite, More Dirty Dancing and Dirty Dancing with the highest new entry being Fairground Attraction. 

Wikipedia had less than I was expecting on the album (210 milliPeppers) and it tells us its his tenth album (in ten years) and the "theme of the album is the struggle between good and evil" (obviously). There's an awful lot of pretentious nonsense on there which I skimmed over but I obviously noted the controversy about the album cover - can you guess what them US conservative dudes might have objected to? Critically, the reviews were pretty decent and commercially, it looked to do pretty well getting to #1 in The Netherlands, Italy, New Zealand and Switzerland - but it only got to #11 in the US, which lead to it being deemed as less successful than expected. Poor Prince, eh?!?

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent version for a couple of quid but if you want an unsealed longbox version then it's £100! All of which took me down a longbox rabbit hole - why did they even exist?!? I was very pleased to find the answer and it's actually quite simple - it was to allow record stores to use their existing vinyl racks because two longbox packages take up the same area as one album. They didn't catch on in the UK because we were a bit slower on the uptake for CDs and hence our stores had already converted their racks and they were phased out ostensibly because of the customers' concerns about the environmental impact, but I'm sure the labels didn't argue with the resultant savings in production and transportation. All of which is considerably more interesting than this album I'm afraid - I'm sure the hardcore fans love it, but it's not for me.

15/05/88 - An enjoyable memory jog
29/05/88 - Neither particularly good nor bad

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