Hades Presents: MJ vs. Prince

I was thinking about the not getting Americans thing (and them not getting us) comparing cyndi lauper to Kate bush to myself yesterday

padraig (u.s.) said:

one main difference is that the degree to which Prince drew on both white and black influences

my absolute favorite era of dance music is, as often previously noted, the post-disco pre-house early 80s

post-disco proper, disco not disco, new wave, post-punk, italo, boogie, electro

whatever records got played at The Paradise Garage, Danceteria, etc

Prince absolutely belongs to that, whether or not he literally got played at those places (idk)

he's drawing on Jimi, JB, Sly, P-funk, etc but also David Bowie, synth pop, etc

his feyness is that of both Little Richard and Jagger/Bowie

whereas MJ - despite his infinitely massive crossover appeal - is operating more strictly in the electronic black soul/pop continuum

doo-wop, R+B, soul, disco - epitomized in Off the Wall

as luka said, he was black pop royalty, Motown, Quincy Jones, the whole bit

this isn't an argument for superiority either way so much as explaining my own preferences

I love disco, expansively defined, in general, absolutely including disco proper, but I usually like the weirder stuff more

Prince is fucking weird and yeah, full of screaming guitars, but wed to flawless funk/R+B chops and a generational voice

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Prince got played by Electrifying Mojo too. Part of the Detroit techno story

Prince (and George Clinton) were tight with Mojo. They'd take unreleased stuff to him to play first and he was one of the few guys they'd give proper interviews to, where they'd just be themselves. I'd be surprised if Mojo never played any MJ though.

MJ was indeed a product. A product with a purpose. He was there to bring people together, and that he did. But he was also a sacrifice. A lamb. King Kill 33 once again. Anyone who represents the pure and good with that much spread will never survive in this world. No pop musician has or will do what he did with music ever again. While Prince could play all those instruments, MJ was the instrument. You just have to see a minute of footage of him in the vocal booth to see that it was in him like no one else. His body was the whole band. He could do it all solo, just singing, dancing and making sounds and have you moving. But he had all those amazing musicians to take it to the next level and Quincy bringing it all together. Bam.

Prince was like the older, street wise sibling who would sneak out in the middle of the night to hang out with the bad kids. He was driven by a different charge. He wanted to push, as opposed to MJ who was more of a pull force. Prince had his sweet side too, of course, but we all know which side of the tracks his soul really lay. He wasn't stunted in the way Michael was. But if you check his hair style and the way he'd ride his bike around Paisley Park right at the end, it's clear where he wished to be.

Both were top of the game and I don't think I can really choose, especially as I get older and appreciate prince more and more, but I had to go MJ because of how important he was for me in my formative years and how he made me see the world.

i take it patty doesn't believe the... accusations

padraig (u.s.) said:

I have a sense that English people don't quite get Prince, in the sense that they don't quite get America sometimes

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americans in general have that distance that i get listening to prince. americans don't have real emotions. they're not real people.

its all high fives and crying at the oscars. they're like sit com people. they're like people in david lynch films.

prince taps into all that.

you can see this in acting. in america you can just pull someone from the street and have him or her act an entire movie. every american is a potential oscar winner. whereas if you delve into european cinema it is often too painful to look at.

sadmanbarty said:

i take it patty doesn't believe the... accusations

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Keeping that slime flag flying eheh. Well done for waiting for me to join in before bringing them up. I didn't say anything because I thought we were focusing on the music. If you watch that YouTube above, most of my thoughts about him are expressed in there. Of course he did plenty of fucked up shit.

Europeans broadstroking America makes them look as dumb as the people they're projecting onto. It's amazing really, even seemingly intelligent people do it all the time.

The UK, culture and emotion wise is like a cheap knock-off US. It's a Blackpool bargain bin full of sunfaded plastic toys that were never all that to start with. Yet, somehow still all brash and full of Empirical pride.

Barty has some nerve saying he doesn't like pastiche music when he's spent the last 2 years boosting UK drill LMAO

I don’t get offended by the plasticky performative distance thing with prince though I can see why it puts people off. But its a bit like saying your local Sunday league team has more heart than PSG, obviously true in loads of ways but not really the point either.


You have songs like this which are untouchable but also have this unbelievable slightly creepy edge, you can’t really get your head around the idea that prince, even at a younger formative age would even have time for feeling lonely in this kind of way. You can imagine he might keep a secret room full of wretched Dracula style brides locked in cages who might endure those feelings for him to instrumentalise at some point, but theres a tension in a lot of the songs which might come from that kind of disbelief or mistrust of the man himself. I dont know why this wouldnt be the same with Michael Jackson though because I never really listened to him.

As my smart friend said though you can never underestimate how pathetic very controlling people might be. And in that sense I don’t feel like prince is a total cyborg to the point that it ruins him for me. I went to a prince concert when I was in the womb so I vote for prince.

However when I was in primary school we had a kid whose mum was a huge Michael Jackson fan, she was a bit odd in a few ways anyway, Had a, perhaps Jackson influenced post racial thing going on where she wore this huge Guinness records amount of fake tan for instance. Anyway during his trial she flew over to watch it from outside the court, it was supposed to be a holiday for a week and then she broke her leg and had to stay in the us for the entire duration of the trial, six months or something . I mean that’s a very sad story really but I don’t think prince has quite that kind of effect on people .

pattycakes_ said:

Europeans broadstroking America makes them look as dumb as the people they're projecting onto. It's amazing really, even seemingly intelligent people do it all the time.

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I mean obviously this is true and yet it's also true that Americans are outwardly oriented in a way we aren't. It's a very extroverted country. A huge amount of focus on the way you present yourself. The white teeth. The eye contact. The firm handshake.

Like the difference between a movie culture and a novel culture. One which is filming exteriors the other typically concerned with the interior experience

And if you read American literature there is a command of visual detail you would never get from English literature. It's full of the names of things, specifics. It's a world of things objects solid presences. It's very striking.

luka said:

A huge amount of focus on the way you present yourself. The white teeth. The eye contact. The firm handshake.

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brits have the same concerns but are just too insecure to express them.

Well maybe but you're married to an English girl and you know there's a lot of truth in what I'm saying. It's the same with the Australians. Their eyes face outwards.

absolutely. that was said mostly (but not entirely) in jest.

I was gonna say MJ is all QJ but ...

Thinking about Quincy's pointillist sonics for MJ: all dabs & touches, precisely deployed tuned-perc, strings like deft wand-strokes, all bright but not sterile, the studio-based song as a constellation of perfected gestures, musically tracing a dancer's moves as little winking stars. There's vim & polish, prettiness even, but it's not the sort of studio sheen that stiffens everything under it, or the spick'n'span session muso rectitude of yr Steely Dans. There's always this sort of living gleam.

So it's all QJ? perhaps but quite apart from the key contribution of the voice isn't this whole sonic idea wrapped around the idea of MJ as a DANCER? and isn't MJ just miles ahead of Prince as a dancer? the stealthy, lightened movement, but also the sharp angles, the command of staccato, the gliding, swift 'moonwalker' thing..

Don't know when ecstacy/mdma started seeping into the NY disco scene but that's where those key qj/mj tracks - 'rock with you' 'don't stop till you get enough' 'got to be starting something' - take me. I was gonna say 'weightlessness' but it's not quite that - that E high when u feel unburdened physically, like the body now has rather exactly the right weight and density, your body's not some rotten shawl around you, you're dancing well, finally, and you can dance all night.

In any case drug or not it's a disco-era legacy, re-centering a fluid-ized body, dramatising the 'going out' ritual that opens out onto the floor, the song projecting out from that transfigured social space rather than the private space, stage space, head space, street space.

I love Prince but you don't get that sort of elation with Prince, on the other hand it's really only a few MJ tunes that do it for me, there's so much great Prince stuff to dig up, so much invention and play.