Royal welcome

I bought a cd of Prince's greatest hits on my birthday last month, since I knew he was a phenomenal guitarist by reputation and I knew so many of his songs, which have gotten a lot more radio play in recent years. I don't know if that's because all his lawsuits were finally finished, but there was a time when I never heard him on the radio a few years ago.

I remembered liking "When Doves Cry" when I was a kid, and of course he did the soundtrack to Batman, which was interesting, and then there was the New Power Generation. His videos with them are the first that come to mind for me, probably because his '80's videos (the only one I actually remember clearly was for "When Doves Cry") were a little dated by my teenage years.

One of the few music videos my mother ever told me she didn't want me watching was "Gett Off", and of course that made it all the more memorable. By that point, Prince had taken his raunchy style to its logical conclusion, just in time to re-embrace Jesus and disappear for a while. I didn't remember just how strange and wonderful that song was until I heard it on this cd, but what struck me the most was how it was pretty much of a piece with the rest of his work, rather than an anomaly.

I can't think of any other pop artist of the time who was so willing to twist and distort his voice for bizarre effect at the top of his career. Just listen to that screech he lets out to begin "Gett Off", followed by some kind of wimpering moan that seems to go on and on. Or the way he uses a computer-like voice filter to drone on at the beginning of "When Doves Cry". Or his strangled scream at the climax of "Little Red Corvette" that follows a vocal run up and down the registers.

That got me to thinking, maybe Prince wasn't so popular in spite of such touches, but because of them. In fact, at least on the pop charts, we have nowhere near the eclecticism of the '80's, and to a lesser extent the '90's before the death of grunge. "American Idol" and the like push a kind of studied perfectionism on the world of pop music that, together with modern digital correction, results in a bland, perfect sound on every song.

Lest I sound too old-fogey-like, I must admit I've liked Kelly Clarkson's new album a lot, despite the fact that it suffers from the above, as well as being way over-played. At least she knows how to pick a good song. It's just too bad there isn't room at the top anymore for the artists really willing to be idiosyncratic and weird in the pursuit of their fame and fortune. Like System of a Down, they have a hit here and there, but they don't get to rule the airwaves like they used to.