| The Gold Experience | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Studio album by Prince | ||||
| Released | September 26, 1995 | |||
| Recorded | 1994–1995 | |||
| Genre | R&B, funk, pop, rock | |||
| Length | 67:48 | |||
| Label | NPG/Warner Bros. | |||
| Producer | Prince | |||
| Prince chronology | ||||
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| Singles from The Gold Experience | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | [1] |
| Robert Christgau | (A)[2] |
| Entertainment Weekly | (A-)[3] |
| Los Angeles Times | [4] |
| The New York Times | (favorable)[5] |
| NME | (7/10)[6] |
| Q | [7] |
| Rolling Stone | [8] |
| Trouser Press | (favorable)[9] |
| Vibe | (favorable)[10] |
The Gold Experience is the seventeenth studio album by Prince (his stage name at that time being the love symbol he created). It was released on September 26, 1995. The album is considered by some fans to be the Purple Rain of the 1990s, due to the rock and roll feel, accessibility of the tracks, and Prince's own admission that the song "Gold" would be the next "Purple Rain".
Prince wanted to release The Gold Experience under the symbolic moniker in 1994, alongside Come, which was marketed as a "Prince" album of "old" material. Both albums contained material from Prince's musical production called Glam Slam Ulysses. The plan was to show the superior quality of the newer material as opposed to the older "Prince" material. Plans were thwarted by Warner Bros., which felt the market would be over-saturated with Prince material, and withheld the album. Prince was prompted to protest by appearing in public with the word "slave" written on his face and stating The Gold Experience's release date would be "never".
Some songs originally intended for the album, such as "Interactive" and "Days of Wild", were removed by the time of the album's release. It is believed that "Days of Wild" was nixed because Prince was never satisfied with the studio version. By the time the album actually was released in 1995, Prince's interest in it had passed, and he was working on songs for his 3-CD opus, Emancipation, which could be partially responsible for the album's lack of commercial success. Despite that, The Gold Experience garnered Prince his best reviews in nearly a decade.
The Gold Experience produced three singles, each with an accompanying music video: "I Hate U", "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World", and "Gold". Additionally, a video for "Dolphin" was released prior to the release of the album. "P Control" was also intended to be released as a single, but was canceled because it did not receive enough airplay. It was, however, performed at the 1995 VH1 Fashion Rocks Awards.
The song "Billy Jack Bitch" was speculated by many sources to have been written about a Minneapolis Star Tribune gossip columnist known as "CJ".[11][12][13] Prince denied the song was about the columnist when CJ herself interviewed him.[14]
The song "319" appears on the soundtrack of the 1995 film, Showgirls.
Contents |
All tracks composed and arranged by Prince, except where indicated.
Another track, "Shhh", charted from The Gold Experience in July 1994; it was not the album version, but rather a live version performed on "The Beautiful Experience" TV special, which aired in 1994. It received some R&B airplay, causing it to chart and peak at #62 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart.