Every Single Video Prince Ever Made

November 28, 2018 6:44 PM

Now, the truth is, most of Prince's videos just aren't that great. Especially when considered in comparison to the sheer mind-boggling breadth of Prince's genius, or the groundbreaking video innovation of his pop contemporaries like Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson and Madonna, the fact that Prince has fewer truly extraordinary music videos is a stark contrast. But as with all things Prince, when he was doing his best, there was absolutely nobody better. Here, then, is a look at all of Prince's music videos, in chronological order. compiled by Anil Dash, via boingboing
posted by cgc373 (22 comments total)

Of course this is by Anil Dash. If you give him a date he will probably know a Prince song that was recorded that day or a live performance he did -- he's an absolute Princelopaedia.
posted by robotmachine at 6:55 PM on November 28, 2018 [4 favorites]

Going through these conveys how much Prince worked on the stage moves for each song to keep the concert experience nonstop. Probably he didn't want to re-conceptualize them much beyond that. And I'm sure he was even more wary about having someone outside the inner circle re-conceptualize his work. "Face Down" is the sleeper for me, both as a track and as a video.
posted by bendybendy at 7:30 PM on November 28, 2018 [2 favorites]

Now, the truth is, most of Prince's guitar solos just aren't that great. They're well played but rote and formulaic. He always just picks out the melody, then repeats a rapid arpeggio, then bends a high note a few octaves up. And that's it. I think Prince is a genius when it comes to performance & songwriting, but his guitar solos are competent but uninteresting. (Well, there might be some tracks where he stretches out that I haven't heard yet).
posted by ovvl at 7:53 PM on November 28, 2018

Watched from the beginning to 1999 so far, and it's fascinating how the presentation seems to be this evolution both of the man and of his understanding about stage performance and lighting and how to present a band on stage, and on stage in a video.

I'm looking forward to continuing the journey! This is a fantastic post, thank you!
posted by hippybear at 7:55 PM on November 28, 2018 [2 favorites]

Pretty sure Anil is a MeFite as well...
posted by gen at 7:55 PM on November 28, 2018 [1 favorite]

Now, the truth is, most of Prince's guitar solos just aren't that great.

And yet, then there's this performance, in which Prince basically stands before a jury of his peers and proves that there is nothing left to prove.
posted by hippybear at 7:58 PM on November 28, 2018 [14 favorites]

It hurts every day to be reminded that Prince is gone. I'm not crying...
posted by blessedlyndie at 8:08 PM on November 28, 2018 [3 favorites]

Ok, I'm crying....
posted by blessedlyndie at 8:16 PM on November 28, 2018 [2 favorites]

And yet, then there's this performance, in which Prince basically stands before a jury of his peers and proves that there is nothing left to prove.

Virtuosity aside, my absolute favorite moment in that clip is when he finishes the song and throws his guitar into the sky, where it evidently evaporates into thin air.
posted by belarius at 8:19 PM on November 28, 2018 [3 favorites]

Apparently nobody saw it come down.
posted by hippybear at 8:21 PM on November 28, 2018 [1 favorite]

Now, the truth is, most of Prince's guitar solos just aren't that great. They're well played but rote and formulaic.

I meeeean ....... If one were to argue in support of that point, I'd say part of it had to do with the nature of his record-making process. As any Prince insider will tell you, the dude was not exactly fussed about technique or technical matters. Many of his most popular records frankly sound like crap because he was always about capturing the immediacy of the moment, tools be damned. Also, I think many of his songs took some living in before he finally got them into peak shape, performance-wise ... and since his studio records often captured them at the moment of inception, you don't hear the most rapturous interpretations until you dig into the fathomless trove of live recordings. Solos which may have seemed more like sketches or ideas-in-progress on record often became positively stratospheric in performance. Unfortunately, the Estate very quickly caught up with the momentary lapse in bootleg gatekeeping after his death, so making specific recommendations at this point would be difficult, if not futile.

Anyway, for me, his best solos are precisely the ones which live in that spirit - inconsequential as displays of formal technique, for whatever that's worth, but overflowing with emotion and purple essence. Doesn't take a whole lot of notes or flash to make a great solo.

I didn't love a lot of his videos, but his music was psychedelic enough for me. My mind had plenty to do without all that literal imagery.
posted by mykescipark at 8:37 PM on November 28, 2018 [4 favorites]

Nothing can stop these lonley tears from falling ... tell me, baby , where did I go wrong
posted by blessedlyndie at 8:47 PM on November 28, 2018 [3 favorites]

he's an absolute Princelopaedia.

Well then, am I missing something? Right now, only the first two videos have any sort of description to them at all.

Is this Anil Dash or Anil Dash's bored intern with an eccentric boss compiling this list?
posted by alex_skazat at 11:44 PM on November 28, 2018 [1 favorite]

My browser reloaded this several times and then gave me a weird error message.
posted by pxe2000 at 3:32 AM on November 29, 2018

My phone couldn't load this page. It was just too much Prince, I guess. But: yes, there appear to only be descriptions on the first two videos – and nothing on Batdance.
posted by hijinx at 5:48 AM on November 29, 2018

Prince always kept some choice material out of the public eye, particularly when it comes to live performance. The officially sanctioned releases were never the real stuff (with the exception of the Sign o the Times movie, which is god-level though it has never been properly remastered on video). The guitar solo I've used to reliably make Prince converts is the long one that closes out a widely bootlegged live cover of "Just My Imagination." (No video, just audio.) Like, I'd have it on my car stereo and people would just interrupt conversations out of nowhere like, "Wait a minute -- who's playing guitar on this?" I used to have a live-in-studio performance on a laserdisc from Japan called The Undertaker that had a positively nasty version of Bambi. That kind of thing.

But Prince never really embraced the music video, for whatever reason. I think stuff like Raspberry Beret and Kiss is pretty good but mostly it almost felt like he thought MTV was beneath him. Certainly he never flirted with any of the big-name directors that worked with the likes of Michael Jackson and Madonna during the same time period. I feel like Prince wanted the records to speak for themselves and wasn't interested in making any moves that made it seem like he was trying to compete with or keep up with pop rivals. Mark Romanek probably could have made a pretty great latter-day Prince video but it was not to be.
posted by Mothlight at 5:48 AM on November 29, 2018 [2 favorites]

on the other hand, people do talk too much
posted by thelonius at 6:16 AM on November 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

Various Prince fans nitpicking Prince: Maybe I'm just like my mother, she's never satisfied.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:44 AM on November 29, 2018 [6 favorites]

"Motherless Child" is my favorite guitar workout of his. About 5:40, he does an evil metal thing that's an amazing contrast with the gospel trot of the thing.
posted by bendybendy at 8:15 AM on November 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

I think my first exposure to "When Doves Cry" was an MTV video. I recall I had no idea what to make of it - I'd never heard anything quite like it.
posted by thelonius at 11:21 AM on November 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

Another puzzling omission of Dash's: the idea that Purple Rain the movie is, in effect, a feature-length video.
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:38 PM on November 29, 2018

The guitar solo I've used to reliably make Prince converts is the long one that closes out a widely bootlegged live cover of "Just My Imagination."

jesus CHRIST
posted by the phlegmatic king at 1:08 PM on November 29, 2018 [2 favorites]