One Nite Alone ... (album)
| One Nite Alone ... | ||||
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| Prince's studio album | ||||
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Publication |
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admission |
Spring 2001 |
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| Label (s) | NPG Records | |||
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Format (s) |
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Title (number) |
10 |
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running time |
35:05 |
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| occupation | All songs were produced, arranged, composed and performed by Prince. The following people completed the recordings:
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Studio (s) |
Paisley Park Studio ( Chanhassen ) |
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One Nite Alone ... ( English for One Night Alone ... ) is the 25th studio album by the American musician Prince and is subtitled under the name "Solo piano and voice by Prince" ( English for "Solo piano and voice of Prince") . It was released on May 14, 2002 by his music label NPG Records and was only available for purchase through his website at the time. One Nite Alone… is an acoustic album on which Prince plays all the songs on the piano . The only guest musician is drummer John Blackwell, who supports Prince on two songs. The music on the album belongs to the genres pop and R&B , in the song lyrics Prince mainly deals with interpersonal relationships.
Prince didn’t run a significant music promotion for One Nite Alone… and since it didn’t make it on the international music charts, it had no way of going gold or platinum . Music critics rated One Nite Alone ... a lot lower than most Prince albums.
On May 29, 2020 The Prince Estate released One Nite Alone ... for the first time on record
Emergence
As early as 1999, Prince was asked by a fan on his then website Love 4 One Another.com if he would ever release a solo piano album, because his generally underrated piano playing reminded of the art of Art Tatum and Bud Powell . Prince replied, “I really appreciate the compliment. If the demand is there, I would publish a solo piano project. Make a petition . "
Prince recorded all of the songs on the One Nite Alone album in early 2001 at his Paisley Park studio in Chanhassen , Minnesota. During this time he was mainly busy mastering his album The Rainbow Children , which he released in October 2001. During the album recordings of One Nite Alone… Prince was only supported by the musician John Blackwell (born September 9, 1973 - July 4, 2017), who played drums on the two songs A Case of U and Here on Earth . Furthermore, Prince wrote his two pigeons "Divinity" (Eng .: deity ) and "Majesty" (Eng .: Majesty ) Credits for " Ambient - vocals on".
Before Prince One Nite Alone ... published five of the ten songs were already over its former site NPG Music Club.com as MP3 - Download available: Pearls B4 the Swine appeared on 18 September 2001 and the four songs A Case of U , on here Earth , One Nite Alone ... and U're Gonna C Me on January 17th, 2002.
The song A Case of U , which Joni Mitchell wrote in 1971 and published on her album Blue under the name A Case of You , was played by Prince for the first time in a live concert on August 3, 1983, but not until the spring of 2001 he recorded a studio version of his cover version .
For Prince, the title track was the inspiration for the naming of his worldwide one-nite-alone tour , which he completed from March 2002 to November 2002. The piece Here on Earth has nothing in common with the later song Somewhere Here on Earth of his album Planet Earth from the year of 2007.
Design of the cover
The album cover was designed by photographer Steve Parke and Jeremy Gavin, who was responsible for the layout . Gavin also designed the layout for the album cover of The Rainbow Children in 2001. Parke was mainly active as a Prince photographer in the 1990s and photographed the album covers of Graffiti Bridge (1990), The Gold Experience (1995), Chaos , among others and Disorder (1996), Newpower Soul (1998) and The Vault… Old Friends 4 Sale (1999).
On the album cover of One Nite Alone… piano keys can be seen in the middle , the album title “One Nite Alone…” can be read in the upper left corner and a bird's nest with three green-bluish bird eggs is shown in the upper right corner. The Prince symbol is printed on the lower left and is decorated with a sunflower- like plant; the tip of the symbol is in an egg shell. "Solo piano and voice by Prince" can be read at the bottom right. The album cover is mostly kept in brown tones.
The album cover is designed as a gatefold cover, on the right inside of which is the CD. There is no booklet , but the lyrics of the songs are printed on the inside of the fold-out cover. The liner notes are also on the inside. Prince thanks Joni Mitchell ; He also dedicated her song A Case of U to his father John L. Nelson, who died on August 25, 2001 at the age of 85.
The back of the album cover reads “© 200 1 NPG Records ”, but the CD itself says “© 200 2 NPG Records” because the CD was only released in 2002. In addition, Prince incorrectly gives the year of publication of Joni Mitchell's original version of the song A Case of You as 1972 - Mitchell had already published the song in 1971.
Music and lyrics
The music on the album belongs to the genres of pop and R&B . Prince plays all songs on the piano and at seven he added later Synthesizer - overdubs one. In addition, Prince can be heard on the electric bass on the two pieces Here on Earth and A Case of U , while John Blackwell plays the drums. Pearls B4 the Swine is the only track on the album that has a complete arrangement ; it consists of a piano, synthesizer, electric bass, percussion and acoustic guitars . All instruments were played by Prince.
In the song lyrics , Prince deals mostly with human relationships . In addition to his characteristic falsetto singing , he also uses lower voices on the album.
The title track One Nite Alone… is from the R&B area, the lyrics are about a one-night stand with an anonymous partner. Prince asks for the name of his lover, but promises her never to say it again. He also wants to know whether she likes it “fast” or “slow”. The second song, U're Gonna C Me, is an R&B ballad in which Prince expresses longing for an unnamed ex-lover. He released a revised version of the song in 2009 on his album MPLSound . The play Here on Earth is about a dream in which a young woman “runs for her life” because she wants to flee from her ex-partner. Prince depicts the chorus in the first person , while he depicts the rest from an observer's perspective .
The song A Case of U , written by Joni Mitchell , implies that love is never lost and can be restored to memory as if it were born again. In his cover version, Prince sings barely half of the original lyrics and only begins with the text line "I am a lonely painter". Musicologist Brian Hinton wrote in his Joni Mitchell biography Both Sides Now (1995) that the lyrics were about her former lovers Graham Nash and Leonard Cohen . Hinton also contemplates that Mitchell may have related the lyrics to her daughter (* 1965), who she gave up for adoption at the time . In September 2018, an acoustic version of A Case of U was released on the album Piano & A Microphone 1983 , which Prince recorded in October 1983 and also only plays the piano. This version is 1:40 minutes long and is similar to the one on One Nite Alone… .
Have a Heart ( stylized as Have a ♥ ) has, in contrast to most of the other songs on the album, a defined melody . In the lyrics, Prince justifies the behavior after a failed relationship. A mutual friend of his and his ex-girlfriend tells him that she continues to love him; Prince is not aware of any guilt and asks sarcastically : "But don't you have to have a heart before you get broken?" Prince does not perform the lyrics in his falsetto singing, but in a soft, tender voice. Have a ♥ goes straight to the song Objects in the Mirror , in which Prince describes how he and his girlfriend share the bathroom together, brush their teeth and pose in the mirror after they both recorded a sex video together . Objects in the Mirror has a reprise of Have a ♥ at the end .
The blues- inspired piece Avalanche stands out clearly from the other album songs in the lyrics; it is an angry protest song directed against bad treatment of African Americans in the United States. In the first stanza , Prince describes the 16th President of the United States Abraham Lincoln (* 1809, † 1865) as a racist because he was "not or never in favor" of "liberating our people". In the second stanza Prince expresses his contempt for US music producer John Hammond (* 1910, † 1987) for exploiting African-American musicians. The track name "Avalanche" , avalanche ' , based on an analogy of individual snowflakes that can trigger avalanches no to people who want to not take responsibility for their actions.
Pearls B4 the Swine , cast pearls before swine ' is the only song on the album, in which the piano from Prince does not dominate. Thelyrics of the jazz- inspired piece deal with a failed affair. Prince asks why they both went different ways and hopes for reconciliation. But he comes to the conclusion that his hopes and words are futile. The metaphor “ Pearls before Swine ” comes from the Gospel of Matthew (7, 6). The subsequent song Young and Beautiful is a pop music- inspired up-tempo number and begins with a Chinese-sounding piano playing. The chorus is sometimes reminiscent of Prince's song Little Red Corvette from 1982. In the lyrics, Prince appears as a kind of moral apostle who advises a pretty young woman not to "do what the others are doing". His warning to them is: "They only want your virginity ".
The instrumental piece Arboretum is the tenth and final song on the album. The piece begins with an arpeggio piano part and at the end you can hear Prince getting up from his piano, going to the door and closing it. When choosing the title name, he was inspired by the arboretum of his Paisley Park Studio. The song is specified on the album with a duration of 2:16 minutes, but has a length of 3:25 minutes; from minute 2:16 there is a pause of 69 seconds. One Nite Alone… is the first Prince album to end with an instrumental piece.
List of titles and publications
| No. | song | author | length |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | One Nite Alone ... | Prince | 3:37 |
| 2 | U're gonna C Me | Prince | 5:16 |
| 3 | Here on Earth | Prince | 3:22 |
| 4th | A case of U | Prince | 3:39 |
| 5 | Have a ♥ | Prince | 2:04 |
| 6th | Objects in the Mirror | Prince | 3:27 |
| 7th | Avalanche | Prince | 4:24 |
| 8th | Pearls B4 the Swine | Prince | 3:01 |
| 9 | Young and Beautiful | Prince | 2:44 |
| 10 | Arboretum (instrumental) | Prince | 3:25 |
One Nite Alone… was released on compact disc on May 14, 2002 and was only available for purchase through Prince's website at the time, NPG Music Club.com. It was not until 2015 that the album was also released as a download via the music streaming service Tidal . Singles were not decoupled from the album and no music videos were produced. Cover versions of songs on the album are not known.
On May 29, 2020, The Prince Estate released One Nite Alone ... for the first time on record , available in purple vinyl. The album was also released in the 4-CD box set Up All Nite with Prince: The One Nite Alone Collection , which included both One Nite Alone… Live! and One Nite Alone… The Aftershow: It Ain't Over! as well as the DVD Live at the Aladdin Las Vegas .
reception
Press
In 2002, there was very little mass media interest in One Nite Alone ... because the album didn't go on sale. It wasn't until after Prince's death in April 2016 that it received multiple reviews . Compared to other Prince albums, music critics on One Nite Alone ... were much more reluctant to praise.
The music critics David Wilson and John Alroy were not very enthusiastic about the album and gave two out of five stars in 2002. They were of the opinion that the sound of the album sounded economical, but not demo-like and the songs were slow, but not adult contemporary . Prince's falsetto singing in Avalanche is better than ever and the “powerful” piano playing on Young and Beautiful is “refreshing”. The two music critics described the lyrics of the album as "more awkward" and "less cordial" than usual with Prince. In conclusion, Wilson and Alroy concluded that One Nite Alone… was “mediocre” and “nothing” was on par with the best material on The Truth (1998) or Crystal Ball (1998).
Per Nilsen, who was an intense observer of Prince's career at the time and author of several books about the musician, said that One Nite Alone ... expressed "no more feelings than your average Prince album." In addition, "a large part of the songwriting seems superficial and fuzzy". The "clear highlight" of the album is the piece Avalanche . Overall, the album is a “pleasant experience” and Prince shows “another facet” of his “musical vocabulary”.
Posthumously
The music website Sputnikmusic praised the album and posthumously awarded three and a half stars out of five. The website wrote, among other things, that One Nite Alone had… “hidden gems” and “a real highlight” with the song A Case of U. The best piece, however, is Avalanche , which thematically differs from the rest of the album because it is the most politically charged Prince song since Sign "☮" the Times from 1987. The album One Nite Alone… is not a masterpiece, but is suitable as “perfect background music for a candlelight dinner”.
The British music journalist Simon Price from the British daily The Guardian gave three out of five stars posthumously. He didn't give a detailed explanation, but mentioned Prince's cover version of A Case of U , which was "beautiful". The music journalist rated a total of 37 Prince albums, placing One Nite Alone ... at number 30.
The music journalists Albert Koch and Thomas Weiland from the German music magazine Musikexpress were very disappointed and posthumously awarded only one of six stars. They wrote: “Between successful, because intimate readings (e.g. Avalanche ) there are repeatedly applied vocal mannerisms that stand in stark contrast to the ambitious obscenity that Prince wants to achieve with his piano.” In conclusion, they drew: “Maximum Kitsch result with minimal effort ”and ironically stated that this was“ also an art ”.
Charts
The album One Nite Alone… was not listed in the international music charts because it was only available for purchase through Prince's website at the time, NPG Music Club.com. Nothing has been publicly known about the sales of One Nite Alone… .
literature
- Ben Greenman: Dig If You Will the Picture - Funk, Sex and God in the Music of Prince. Faber & Faber Ltd, London 2017, ISBN 978-0-571-33326-4 , OCLC 985601816 .
- Per Nilsen: DanceMusicSexRomance - Prince: The First Decade. Firefly Publishing, London 1999, ISBN 0-946719-23-3 , OCLC 40610683 .
- Ronin Ro: Prince - Inside The Music And The Masks. St. Martin's Press, New York 2011, ISBN 978-0-312-38300-8 , OCLC 428027211 .
- Matt Thorne: Prince - The Biography. Edel Germany GmbH, Hamburg, 2017, ISBN 978-3-8419-0523-9 , OCLC 966421361 .
- Uptown: The Vault - The Definitive Guide to the Musical World of Prince. Nilsen Publishing, Linköping 2004, ISBN 91-631-5482-X , OCLC 186521364 .
Web links
- Princevault.com , information about the album One Nite Alone…
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Album cover of the CD One Nite Alone… by Prince, NPG Records, 2002
- ↑ One Nite Alone… In: Princevault.com. November 24, 2017, accessed June 24, 2018 .
- ↑ a b c d e f Uptown (2004), p. 419.
- ↑ Nilsen (1999), p. 129.
- ↑ One Nite Alone… In: Princevault.com. May 5, 2018, accessed June 24, 2018 .
- ↑ Steve Parke. In: Princevault.com. 2018, accessed June 24, 2018 .
- ^ One Nite Alone (2002). In: Complex.com. 2018, accessed June 24, 2018 .
- ↑ Greenman (2017), p. 274.
- ↑ a b c d e f Thorne (2017), p. 377.
- ↑ a b c d e Uptown (2004), p. 420.
- ^ Ro (2011), p. 316.
- ^ Wilson & Alroy's Record Reviews - Prince. In: Warr.org. 2018, accessed June 24, 2018 .
- ↑ Uptown (2004), pp. 419-420.
- ^ Prince - One Nite Alone ... In: Sputnikmusic.com. April 5, 2018, accessed June 24, 2018 .
- ^ Prince: every album rated - and ranked. In: Theguardian.com. April 22, 2016, accessed June 24, 2018 .
- ^ ME editors: From the big Prince special - an overview of all albums. In: Musikexpress.de. May 22, 2016. Retrieved June 24, 2018 .