Prince Planet Earth by: Dean Van Nguyen Wed:28-Nov-07 Label: Columbia Year: 2007 WB rating 42 out of 100

Prince has never done things by the book. Equal part musical genius and cold, unapproachable eccentric, his recent decision to threaten his fan sites who publish his image with legal action is just the latest chapter in a bizarre story. While he has always kept his admirers and the media at a distance, firmly looking in from the outside, even now years after his creative peak he has managed to deliver one of the years most talked about albums and a major live drawcard. Not bad for a man about to enter his fourth decade of musical output.

The main reason for all this attention on Planet Earth came from Prince’s decision to give it away free in a U.K. newspaper. A wave of controversy ensued. Surprise, surprise, the record industry managed to survive, and now all we are left with is an album to reflect on. First things first, is it any good. Well no, certainly not by his high standards. In the world of modern music this is below average and in the Universe of Prince, it barely registers on the map. While it’s true it’s been years since he was knocking out classic-after-classic, year-in-year-out, 2004’s excellent Musicology and last year’s more commercially minded 3121 signalled his return as a real force in modern pop music. So where has it gone wrong? Unfortunately the purple one loses his momentum here with a series of symbol-era-like schmaltzy R&B ballads and unmemorable mid tempo pop songs.

Opening with the gentle piano chords of the title track, an Al Gore preach on the dangers of climate change. “50 years from now what will they say about us here? Did we care for the water and the fragile atmosphere?” It’s an overstuffed epic, the type of song Prince probably imagines himself performing at his own personal Live Earth, if he was that way inclined. He also uses the track to address the war in Iraq; “Imagine sending your first born off to fight a war. With no good reason how it started or what they’re fighting for”. The scope the track attempts to cover and the idea of Prince playing father to the earth make it hard to take seriously. Gradually building into an epic, oddly taking a breather with a short jazz interlude halfway through, the song winds to a huge guitar solo climax, this climax leads nicely into the monster riff that pushes ‘Guitar’, his most radio friendly single in years – this song sitting alongside ‘Call My Name’ and ‘Black Sweat’ as his modern classics. The prominence of the electric guitar on Planet Earth’s opening two tracks is welcome; a reminder that young Prince was once touted as the heir apparent to Jimi Hendrix.

The rest of the album is mainly made up of ballads. Prince gave up writing songs about sexual organs living in the land of fever or girls masturbating in hotel lobbies years ago, but he’s rarely sounded as bored as this. In a way it makes sense that this CD was freely distributed in a Sunday newspaper, the traditional day of rest. It’s inoffensive, occasionally charming, blends into the background nicely and his “rapping” on ‘Mr. Goodnight’ is so dull it could induce sleep. Many of the tracks could have slid onto his bloated 1996 disaster Emancipation. The production on that album sounded dated, but coming over a decade later it’s clear Prince hasn’t paid attention to any sort of musical movement since his foray into New Jack Swing in the early 90s.

Thankfully though there are some moments of inspiration, ‘Somewhere Here on Earth’ being one of these, a jazzy melody and Prince’s always engaging falsetto serenade his lover. And ‘Resolution’ is a nice return to the guitar driven pop that pushed songs like ‘I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man’ and ‘Take Me With You’, even if the outcome can’t hold a candle to those tracks. And while these moments may suggest that the purple one still has the talent to create pop magic, true fans should not be too surprised by Prince’s patchy production, as in the same year Prince dropped Emancipation he returned to the studio over a long weekend and recorded an infinitely better album Chaos & Disorder. Part of being a Prince fan is taking the rough with the smooth, heck, it’s half the fun!