I'm old as fuck, and I was one of those kids in the 80s who got into arguments about Prince being better than Michael Jackson. It wasn't just a Chris Rock bit, junior high kids seriously argued about it.
I think "talented dickhead" sums it up pretty well.
Some examples off the top of my head:
- I wanted to see Prince for 20+ years but couldn't afford it. His shows were REALLY expensive. I finally said "fuck it" when he hosted his own venue at the Rio in Las Vegas. Tickets for the show were about $1000 for me and my GF. Prince played seven songs I'd never heard of, closed out the set with "Purple Rain", walked off the stage and didn't do any encores. Zero interaction with the crowd.
- Years later, I gave him another chance. By then, tickets were $1200 for me and my GF. I damn near walked out of the club. The ridiculous cost of entry seemed to bring the Millionaire Douchebag contingent out in force, and the crowd just had a bad vibe. He was a little bit more engaging that time around, but once again he only played a single song that I recognized.
- The only time that he did a show that consisted mostly of his hits was when he did Coachella. From what I read, he was paid an absolutely ridiculous amount of money. Basically the people running Coachella didn't want him doing a set of songs nobody had ever heard of, so he made them pay dearly for it.
I can 100% understand why Prince did things the way he did. He didn't need the money. The only reason he did shows was because he liked to play music, and he had enough money not to give a shit about whether the fans recognized anything that he played. Prince certainly could have gone the same route as Motley Crue or KISS or the Rolling Stones and just played 30yo songs to stadiums forever. I don't think he was money hungry enough to justify that, and I think he preferred doing small intimate venues.
But as a fan? Yeah, it's frustrating.
In case anyone thinks I'm full of shit, here's one of his setlists from The Rio. On this night, 75% of the songs that Prince played were covers of shitty artists like Beyonce:
Get the Prince Setlist of the concert at Club 3121 @ The Rio Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas, NV, USA on February 10, 2007 from the Per4ming Live 3121 Tour and other Prince Setlists for free on setlist.fm!
www.setlist.fm
I'm too lazy to find it, but there
were occasional nights when Prince played eight hits and did two encores. Just wasn't the night that I happened to see them. But that kinda bugs me too; if I'm going to blow $1000 on concert tickets, $200 at the bar, $800 on plane flights and $500 at the hotel, it would be nice to hear Prince
actually play his own damn music.
I didn't spend $2500 to hear Prince cover Beyonce.