Either/Or: Prince vs. Will Oldham

[Mason]

One, two princes kneel before you.

[P.J. Craven]

Prince

[zom-zom]

Prince is a jerk and his music is terrible.

[lemur68]

One, two princes kneel before you.

Just go to hell now

[projectMalamute]

Prince is a jerk and his music is terrible.

[Ptommydski]

Excellent Thunderdome. Brutal.

[steve]

Let's see, an asshole who made unspeakably ugly music riddled with all the era's worst cliches for a few years in the 80s, or a humble guy who has been consistently brilliant for a couple decades...

Prince is a cockroach.

[Ptommydski]

If every Will Oldhan album was as mesmerizing as Viva Last Blues, still Prince.

Viva Last Blues is good but not even in the top ten Will Oldham records. Probably in the top twenty though.

I want to vote Will Oldham but there's something stopping me. Prince's best records are about as good as pop music gets.

[:::]

Neither. They both suck.

[steve]

My prediction is that everyone who votes against Prince was a fretful guitar music teenager when the first Prince classics started coming out.

My balls. I can hear, that's enough.

[steve]

Prince's best records are about as good as pop music gets.

The fuck. I mean... My mind just goes blank when I see things like this. He's maybe as good as, I don't know... Toni Basil.

The Commodores eat his lunch, and I'm not particularly a fan. Stevie Wonder just destroys him.

The music is the worst part, but he's a chump with a control fetish, he hits women, he's a noodly, fiddly guitar player with horrible processed sounds, he's mean to everyone around him and his music is riddled with the mechanized chliches of its era. There is literally nothing about this guy I can stomach.

He was occasionally filthy. Whoop de shit.

[steve]

The music is the worst part, but he's a chump with a control fetish, he hits women, he's a noodly, fiddly guitar player with horrible processed sounds, he's mean to everyone around him and his music is riddled with the mechanized chliches of its era.

Nearly everything here is true about the Beatles post '67, many members of Parliament, James Brown, Bob Marley...

Well, no, that's pretty much entirely wrong. Like 90 percent wrong what you wrote. Waffles because I don't know who hits women in Parliament.

[:::]

Prince's best records are about as good as pop music gets.

The fuck. I mean... My mind just goes blank when I see things like this.

...

The music is the worst part, but he's a chump with a control fetish, he hits women, he's a noodly, fiddly guitar player with horrible processed sounds, he's mean to everyone around him and his music is riddled with the mechanized chliches of its era. There is literally nothing about this guy I can stomach.

He was occasionally filthy. Whoop de shit.

Whoa, nice one. I have to say that this is exactly right.

[Ptommydski]

Hooray, I can link this again -

[cneutron]

Yeah you know what?
Fucking Prince never wrote "I See A Darkness"
Game fucking over.

In the right mood and at the right time I can get into SOME Prince (note this mood generally involves alcohol and the promise of impending sex), but the staggering amount of absolute shit that man has produced... not to mention the evil that was spawned is kind of overwhelming. Yet he is lauded as a hero?

To me: Prince has about the same track record as Kiss for good songs... which is to say, about an album's worth over an entire career. And even then, for serious douchebaggery.

Will Oldham, no contest.

[sparky]

Prince v a guy who has a dozen or so good songs and bunch of affectation.

Oldham's affectations are weird, amusing and serve his own fascinations: they're in good faith. Prince's affectations are a pantomime version of rock and roll that strips out anything actually moving in the original, apart from the perviness.

I like pop, lots of it, and think Prince is awful. The studio gubbins that the Beatles used mostly sound good today whilst the crappy, thin beep-beep-waddas of Prince that sounded fashionably terrible when he first used them now sound plain terrible. Bloody awful eugh

[Ptommydski]

"I See A Darkness"

Not even in the top one hundred Will Oldham songs.

Prince has sixty odd songs far better.

[cneutron]

Futhermore: while the constant shifting of the Will Oldham monicker... Palace Songs, Palace Family... Palace-sades Park, whatever... while I find that as obnoxious as all get out, Will Oldham never changed his name to a symbol. A symbol folks. That's HOF douchebag.

Prince is in very strong need of somebody to tell him "NO." But he's probably too far down the fame hole for that ever to be an option now.

[cneutron]

"I See A Darkness"

Not even in the top one hundred Will Oldham songs.

Prince has sixty odd songs far better.

The fuck he does!
name them.

And I See a Darkness is an amazing album and an amazing song.
I WILL FIGHT YOU DSKI!!!

(edit: that's a dick ask.... sorry. Do 6.)

[Ptommydski]

Will Oldham never changed his name to a symbol.

Not yet, anyhow. He might one day. He has released albums with no writing and participated in all manner of esoteric stuff. Oldham an extremely theatrical person, which is not in any way a criticism. He's a very, very convincing actor playing at being a troubadour - which is totally fine by me. I absolutely love him.

The reason this is such a good poll is that they are similar on a lot of levels, even though their music has basically nothing in common.

The fuck he does!
name them.

Just write down all of the songs from 1980's Dirty Mind to 1987's The Black Album.

I See A Darkness is the weakest Will Oldham record (about on a par with Beware) and the title track is middling at best.