Can you imagine going to a dinner party or something and the subject of Prince comes up and everyone starts waxing rhapsodic about what a genius the guy is and how sexy and awesome and what a musician and showman and everything and then you pipe up, yeah, but you know, I don't really like Prince that much I mean I get what people are saying but I just never really want to listen to the music, you know, and the hostess drops her platter of tilapia and everyone looks at you like you're the world's most enormous douche?
I can.
If you don't like Prince well then you are just not sexy enough, or really into sexiness and being all sexy and musical and short and totally sexed-up big time. But it's not just Prince's extreme sexiness, but also his songwriting! and musicality! the genius of his soulful musical songwriting! and not just how well he plays his instruments but how many of them! and his SOUND?! I mean no one else sounds like Prince, he's a genius at developing a musicality of sound that rises to the level of genius and when you combine that with all of that amazing sexfulness, I mean WHOA you really should NOT not like that. Because the women, you know, the "ladies", they love Prince's musical sexiness and the men, well, as I said, if the "ladies" love Prince's musical sexiness the "guys" are going to be all like Prince is totally way so super-genius and maybe the women will be so sexified by the sheer genius musicality of the sound-sex that Prince is bringing to the table, that some kind of soulful mustachioed midwestern purply sex-party will break out and I mean who doesn't want to be there for that level of sweaty squishiness? Everyone all short and sweaty and bristly and writhing on each other to the soulfulness of the musical SOUND of "Get Off"?
I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I've had Prince on my iPod for about 2 years now and never, not once, have I ever bothered to press play on it and whenever one of his songs comes on randomly I just skip past it and think to myself you know, this really isn't that good. But any time I tell anyone, it makes them drop their tilapia on my shoes.
Because you're not allowed to not like Prince.
It's just not OK.
You just don't understand MUSIC and Genius and Sexiness and Purple.
I guess I don't.
I guess I don't.
All I can think is, "Ew. Please get off of me (and my iPod)."
Disagreed, you're just a huge douche. I like Prince because he is mixes an upfront post-gendered notion of raw sexuality through a reinterpreted brand of motown/soul/r+b. The fact that he is a fantastic performer only adds to his legacy. Not everyone can stand there at their shoes for an hour.
ReplyDeleteTILAPIA
ReplyDeleteYou know, I just read this again and for the life of me, I have no idea what "upfront post-gendered notion of raw sexuality through a reinterpreted brand of motown/soul/r+b" even means. What could that even possibly mean? First off, the more upfront and/or raw someone is about their sexuality the worse of a person they are. There is a direct correlative relationship. Second, there is no such thing as post-gender any more as there has ever been such a thing as gender in any but the most narrow biological sense. It's a non-concept that only serves to keep people in graduate school drawing grants for fruitless ideation. Finally successfully reinterpreting a brand does not or rather should not a legacy create. It's figging R&B and soul. It's not rocket science or even opera. My point is we overuse the genius designation and Prince is a perfect example.
ReplyDeleteLate commenting on this here... I'm a massive Prince fan but I liked this entry. It's my exact same experience when I tell people I don't like The Beatles. Plus I may have about 2000 Prince songs on my iPod and I really do listen to him a lot, but this wasn't always the case and I too was met with much disdain in the past when I merely just liked him but thought he was overrated.
ReplyDeleteThanks Elysia, I agree that people do seem to be that way about the Beatles. That said, their ubiquity still kind of takes them out of Stuff you're not allowed to not like (although, admittedly, there are many scenarios where that's true). Prince seems to have this aura of untouchableness that is a bit more in line with what I'm getting at. There's a very subtle distinction there and really, in the end, it's kind of completely arbitrary on my part. But hey, it's my blog!
ReplyDeleteStill, when people tell you that you have to like the Beatles you can tell them for me that that's stupid and they can all go to heck!