http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/...ry?id=43705362


So his estate are finally releasing a song from his infamous collection of unreleased tunes -its been well known for years that he had literally 1000's of unreleased songs hidden in his vaults. People that knew him said he wanted Prince albums to be released decades after he died using this material. Whilst its sad we are prematurely getting to hear this material, its a tantalising prospect what treasures might he have hidden away for future generations to hear.

it was always going to be the case from such a prolific songwriter genius - we would hear more music after his death. I think he actually would have been very wise about this and I am sure that his family will honour his wish, perhaps more so than management or record labels etc.

alan leeds said something similar recently about the vaults, in that there are loads of really great tracks in there, many of them are as good as if not better than much of what was released, but the unreleased stuff isn't necesarily commercial radio orientated tracks, so great music but not big top 10 hits

this is one of many favourites between those who have heard some of the unreleased stuff. in all my dreams is another great track, but not commercial, and electric intercourse is great too, and hopefully on the purple rain deluxe release

there is so much stuff it's going to take a long time to release it. the thing is there are many alternate versions of tracks that have been released, such as his vocal versions of tracks released under the names of other artists and as with many other artists, umpteen different mixes/takes of released tracks, but in some cases they can be radically different. there are extended versions of well known tracks, some of which were released on 12" singles but with just the standard album mix whilst the remix didn't get released, such as i could never take the place of your man or 17 days, adore, ballad of dorothy parker, etc

there's also piles of live stuff, he recorded all his live shows and soundchecks and rehearsals were also recorded, and he would rehearse and soundcheck for hours each day typically when he was doing it, so hours of recordings for days. in the studio he would complete on average 2 full tracks/songs a day when not on tour, and most of the circulating outtakes amongst fans are basically fully completed release quality tracks, not rough sounding demos, although there are a few demos of him on accoustic guitar recorded onto a tape recoder, but few of those had got out

the thing is he left no will or instructions on what he wanted when he died, so no-one knows his actual wishes. he reffered to at one point that he wouldn't release the vaults stuff but someone else may. perhaps he wanted it out, but much of the material was in conflict with his religion. i think that's why he left no will so his estate wouldn't be left to the JW's which is customary

Its great and I hope it gets some recognition. I'm amazed at the quality of songs in the vault. Some of the stuff that was on YouTube is top notch - Roadhouse Garden, Dance Electric, Uh Huh, his demo of Screams of Passion - they would all have been big hits back in the day. I never really appreciated how much of a driven batshit crazy genius the guy was until now. I hope it gets released in whatever way he would have wanted. Its too good not to be!

Its a tough one - obviously his wishes should be respected, but its potentially a great loss if there's a lot of great stuff that never sees the light of day.

Presumably a lot of it isn't all that great as well. He released way ore than his share of great stuff, but there were times / albums when he maybe could have had a bit more restraint editorially. (Emancipation for example should never have run to three hours).

Still can't believe he's gone - so glad I got to one of the Hit'n'Run shows as a last memory of seeing him live.

Sounds interesting. Hopefully it's a decent track.

I thought Michael Jackson's unreleased song "Love Never Felt So Good" was a classic -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJDdBbgJafU

- so old stuff can be worth dusting down and made available.

i've heard a lot of stuff from the vaults and ironically a lot of unreleased songs are better than those that were released. partly because he did so many projects at times he would cancel one and skip to another before it's completed, and a load of great songs could just be left out. sometimes they may move to other projects later on, but not always. as time went on he was more interested in his new music so even though the unused stuff may be arguably better he wasn't interested in it. from time to time though he would go back and rerecord an old track, such as extraloveable or in a large room with no light. i know of other tracks that he released in latter years that were decades old

some of the old tracks may be great but a bit dated, and some of the lyrical content may be objectional, such as the songs mentioning rape. some of the stuff isn't commercial at all, for example the flesh sessions, a bunch of instrumental funk jazz tracks, one of which was an hour long and edited to 20 minutes for an album that got shelved. it's great if you like that stuff, but even within his fanbase a lot of people aren't interested in stuff like that, many don't like jazz or don't like instrumentals, and there's a few unreleased mostly instrumental albums

the thing is, with many artists, if the record company releases rare and unreleased stuff such as the pink floyd box, the interest is in the fanbase and doesn't have much of a wider commericial appeal, and the estate need to look on it like that. there's loads of great superdeluxe editions of albums from artists which have little hope of selling many copies. so if the approach it like that rather than expecting a hit album then they could do something good

there's also a lot of great alternate versions of tracks, some of which have been around on bootleg but i know for a fact there are other great things that haven't been out on bootleg. there's multiple versions of computer blue that run over 10 minutes for example. so perhaps a series of 4 disc boxsets with a mix of previously unreleased songs, some alternate versions, and perhaps some of his versions of tracks he released for the time and family and sheila e etc, as there definately are prince vocal versions of stuff llike that

the estate just needs to remember it's prince, not elvis or madonna or mj or led zepplin or the beatles, so they need to treat it accordingly. but remember dylan, beatles, zep and many other people have great sets with unreleased music that weren't hits necesarily