Fans of the artist formerly known as Prince were left frustrated by the upcoming album, Stone. The tracklist has upset Prince listeners, who believe it is a collection of songs that do not gel well. With a single released in June to promote the album, fans were left wondering why Stone sounded so light on quality, and short, too.
A post to the Prince subreddit had fans flag their concerns as they pointed out there were only nine songs of unreleased material, with the final track set to be a live version of How Come You Don’t Call Me Anymore?. Elsewhere on the album are the single, Stone, and tracks like With This Tear and Calabama.
One fan asked: “The new single, Stone, has been released. Dr. Funkenberry just announced a new vault album called Timeless due July 30. Are we excited?” The release date has since been changed to August 28. Fans did not seem all that encouraged by the upcoming project, set to release a decade after Prince’s death in 2016.
One listener fumed: “What the hell is this seriously, songs from different eras on an album with zero concept, doesnt even seem like they go together.” Another added: “A 40-minute album with songs from all different eras? Jesus, at least try guys. The Estate is extremely tone-deaf.”
A third wrote: “I don’t know how to feel, it’s cool that we’re getting new music, but, I would love remasters of the albums, alongside the 12″ and 7″ single mixes and B-Sides with a proper wide release for them all. I think that could be possible, release a simple 2 to 4 disc remaster, with the corresponding 12″/7″ mixes and B-Sides and a live show and it would be a pretty good tactic. Add in the super deluxe editions as an option and that’d be good.”
Some believe The Estate has not given Prince fans what they deserve as consumers, with comparisons made to other artists whose legacy releases are of an apparently better quality.
One person wrote: “When you look at all the lovingly produced legacy releases for any number of artists, it’s shocking how badly the estate has handled a supposedly huge vault of material from a highly prolific artist. The Prince estate needs fewer lawyers and more archivists who are fans that can review, catalogue, and select music from the vault with some coherence.
“Unless, of course, the vast size of the vault is a myth. At the very least, you would think there are any number of live shows on tape that could be released. Even if this stuff isn’t selling in huge numbers, there is an audience out there for it. Even dropping it to streaming only would bring in some revenue.”
Another added: “Of all artists who ever lived and recorded a note, I think we can be confident that the Prince vault is VAST. We know he was recording constantly and storing stuff away that he either decided not to release, or at the time, could not release because of his label. And we know from the previous super deluxes (RIP, Parade) that he had three or more tracks for every one that ended up on at least a few of his albums.
“There are major artists whose vaults I believe are disappointingly empty after hoping for more, but I’ll never believe that Prince wasn’t sitting on hundreds of unreleased songs when he died. Maybe a lot of them are not that good (guy didn’t always have amazing quality control after the 80s), but I’d be absolutely shocked if there’s not at least 5-10 solid albums worth of stuff in there.”
A full tracklist for Timeless can be found below.
- I Am You
- Tick Tick Bang
- Heaven
- I Wonder
- With This Tear
- Stone
- Calabama
- The Guilty Ones
- Bestest Friend
- How Come You Don’t Call Me Anymore (Live)
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