MichaelD;4257148 said:
Do you mean, you think?
Why are you that certain?
Themidwestcowboy;4257175 said:
I don't think that's true at all. If Prince never wanted to collaborate with MJ then he wouldn't even have attended the meeting at hayvenhurst to discuss it in the first place. Also prince sent "Would you like to love me" to MJ for him to record on and put on Bad, that is also a form of collaboration.
I personally think that Prince truly wanted to collaborate with MJ not just be featured on of his songs, like bad, cause that was set up for prince to lose the "Battle", no matter how you look at it and it would be a bad look for . Especially considering prince's ego at the time.
Apart from these two cases (‘BAD’ song, ‘We Are The World’ song), there is also a third case in which Prince showed that he did not really want to collaborate with MJ on a song.
It took place during the ‘HIStory’ recording sessions, when MJ called Prince to work together on a song, but Prince eventually did not want to begin working with him.
DuranDuran;4257177 said:
Right after Purple Rain, he released Around The World In A Day and refused to release a single or film videos for it until Warner Brothers insisted he do it. People around Prince said he would lose interest in a project very quickly and want to go on to the next thing. Warners turned down many of his projects because they said he would saturate the market and the albums would cancel each other out. Also I doubt a guy that was only interested in commercial success would change his name to a symbol which resulted in comedians and the media making jokes about him for years. Or putting out instrumental funk jazz albums as Madhouse. He might have gotten a hit if he made Kenny G style smooth jazz instead. Prince also made flop movies like Graffiti Bridge & Under The Cherry Moon. I'm not sure that a lot of people in the 1980s were interested in paying to see a black & white movie at the theater. The plot of Graffiti Bridge didn't make a lot of sense. A lot of Prince's music was too weird to become mainstream hits like a song about incest (Sister). Batman sold because anything involved with the 1989 Batman movie was popular. Other than Purple Rain and 1999/Diamonds And Pearls, most of Prince's other albums were not huge sellers, and he did not get consistent hit singles like a Whitney Houston or Phil Collins.
The change of his name to a symbol was a temporary move by which he wanted to get a specific message across (that artists are the ones that should have ownership of their master recordings, not the companies).
He knew also that this name change would not really have a negative impact on his commercial success, in fact in Europe he increased his commercial success even more during that period (in 1993, for example, his concerts in Wembley Stadium in London became sold out in no time).
Also, when certain of his albums did not perform commercially well, then he always wanted to find the reasons for that (like, when his ‘Love Symbol’ album did not sell well, he blamed the Warner Bros. Records for not promoting it adequately).
Prince also wanted to please his fan base too, as he said it was a sophisticated fan base that expected the unexpected from him, so this explains why some of his music may appear not commercially strong enough.
Also, with certain films, like the Graffiti Bridge one, he wanted to create a cult following as well (a practice that even Madonna exercised with some of her films).