{"id":878518,"date":"2026-08-31T18:32:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T18:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/878518\/"},"modified":"2026-08-31T18:32:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T18:32:11","slug":"album-review-new-prince-collection-timeless-falls-flat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/878518\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: New Prince Collection ‘Timeless’ Falls Flat"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhy was Prince<\/a> the ultimate pop star? Leaving out the outrageous persona, the eye-grabbing iconography, and the sizzling live shows, his musical restlessness and playfulness generated albums that were and are appointment listening. He expanded upon or subverted what had come before, from him and everybody else alike. Prince\u2019s albums <\/a>played their songs off one another in much the same way those songs\u2019 arrangements did, in spring-loaded patterns with endless buoyancy. An album should be a dynamic experience, and few demonstrated this with Prince\u2019s flair.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s almost no dynamism or flair in\u00a0Timeless<\/a>, a new collection of old outtakes that plays like it was slapped together in about 15 minutes. It is simply flat, like a club soda left out in the sun. Laid out in chronological order, from 1977 studio demo to 2016 live rendition of a beloved B side, it doesn\u2019t even begin to cohere. Rather than laying out fascinating alternate paths and hints of what might have been, Timeless\u00a0isn\u2019t even interesting as a collection of outtakes. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\n\tWhy these songs, you might wonder? Listening to\u00a0Timeless, the only conceivable answer seems to be \u201cWhy not?\u201d The best tracks are a pair of throwaway rockers, 2007\u2019s\u00a0\u201cThe Guilty Ones\u201d (bitchin\u2019 guitar squall) and the original jittery New Wave version of\u00a0\u201cTick Tick Bang,\u201d from 1981, which would show up on\u00a0Graffiti Bridge\u00a0<\/a>in 1990 dressed up with off-kilter synth and drum machine. Together, they sound like the seeds of a thematically coherent collection someone should make.<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tBut even there, you have to concentrate, because if you don\u2019t, the music largely evaporates. The live-in-Oakland \u201cHow Come U Don\u2019t Call Me Anymore\u201d from his final tour feels tacked on, not like a purposeful pivot; the opening \u201cI Am You\u201d mostly makes you wish you were listening to the Time\u2019s \u201cThe Walk,\u201d which realigns the 1977 demo\u2019s groove with thrust and power \u2014 a jalopy turned into a cruiser. Sure, it\u2019s historically interesting that Prince-the-ill-advised-rapper was still doing that skip-to-my-Lou cadence in 2003, the year he cut \u201cCalabama,\u201d but as soon as he chants \u201cNPG cutting up a rug,\u201d any glimmer of hope can be properly abandoned.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhy was Prince the ultimate pop star? There are few hints of an answer here. If somebody were to tell you he was, and then played\u00a0Timeless\u00a0for you as proof, you\u2019d never listen to Prince \u2014 or that person \u2014 again. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Why was Prince the ultimate pop star? Leaving out the outrageous persona, the eye-grabbing iconography, and the sizzling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":878519,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341,22527],"class_list":["post-878518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-prince"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=878518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/878519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=878518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=878518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=878518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}