Why was Prince the ultimate pop star? Leaving out the outrageous persona, the eye-grabbing iconography, and the sizzling live shows, his musical restlessness and playfulness generated albums that were and are appointment listening. He expanded upon or subverted what had come before, from him and everybody else alike. Prince’s albums played their songs off of one another in much the same way those songs’ arrangements did, in spring-loaded patterns with endless buoyancy. An album should be a dynamic experience, and few demonstrated this with Prince’s flair.
There’s almost no dynamism or flair in Timeless, a new collection of old outtakes that plays like it was slapped together in about 15 minutes. It is simply flat, like a club soda left out in the sun. Laid out in chronological order, from 1977 studio demo to 2016 live rendition of a beloved B side, it doesn’t even begin to cohere. Rather than laying out fascinating alternate paths and hints of what might have been, Timeless isn’t even interesting as a collection of outtakes.
Why these songs, you might wonder? Listening to Timeless, the only conceivable answer seems to be “Why not?” The best tracks are a pair of throwaway rockers, 2007’s “The Guilty Ones” (bitchin’ guitar squall) and the original jittery new-wave version of “Tick Tick Bang,” from 1981, which would show up on Graffiti Bridge in 1990 dressed up with off-kilter synth and drum machine. Together, they sound like the seeds of a thematically coherent collection someone should make.
But even there, you have to concentrate, because if you don’t, the music largely evaporates. The live-in-Oakland “How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore” from his final tour feels tacked on, not like a purposeful pivot; the opening “I Am You” mostly makes you wish you were listening to the Time’s “The Walk,” which realigns the 1977 demo’s groove with thrust and power — a jalopy turned into a cruiser. Sure, it’s historically interesting that Prince-the-ill-advised-rapper was still doing that skip-to-my-Lou cadence in 2003, the year he cut “Calabama,” but as soon as he chants, “NPG cutting up a rug,” any glimmer of hope can be properly abandoned.
Why was Prince the ultimate pop star? There are few hints of an answer here. If somebody were to tell you he was, and then played Timeless for you as proof, you’d never listen to Prince — or that person — again.
