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. Keith Harris of Blender cites it as "his strongest record of the '90s, a mix of newly stripped-down funk and delicate balladry that reasserts 's dynamic range."
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".
Songs originally intended for the album, such "Acknowledge Me", "Ripopgodazippa", "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 was 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 album has been long out of print but still remains a fan favorite.
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". Prince denied the song was about the columnist when CJ herself interviewed him. Lenny Kravitz appears in the chorus but he was not credited on the album liner notes, probably because of problems with his record label not giving authorisation.
The song "319" appears on the soundtrack of the 1995 film, Showgirls.
Read more about The Gold Experience: Singles and Hot 100 Chart Placings
Famous quotes containing the words gold and/or experience:
“I had very good dentures once. Some magnificent gold work. It’s the only form of jewelry a man can wear that women fully appreciate.”
—Graham Greene (1904–1991)
“Christianity only hopes. It has hung its harp on the willows, and cannot sing a song in a strange land. It has dreamed a sad dream, and does not yet welcome the morning with joy. The mother tells her falsehoods to her child, but, thank heaven, the child does not grow up in its parent’s shadow. Our mother’s faith has not grown with her experience. Her experience has been too much for her. The lesson of life was too hard for her to learn.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)