Bob: After one listen, I think this album is a solid 3-3.5 star record taken on its own. There is some good disco stuff and it foreshadows electro a bit. More importantly, it hints at where Prince will go in a few years. He’s clearly not there yet, but the ideas seem to be forming on a few tracks.
Chuck: I expected an unfocused mess from a young artist, but this is 100% Prince. I’m surprised by how clearly he had defined his career-spanning artistic vision. With that said, I do agree that he’s not there yet. If his career had ended here, For You would be nothing more than a solid genre album that was mostly forgotten. I agree, I’d give it probably a 3. Allmusic was harsh with their 2-star review, though if they’re using his catalog as the scale, I can see where they’re coming from.
Bob: I agree that 2 stars is harsh. There is enough to like here even if he never went beyond it. It’s a genre record as you said, but if you like the genre, it’s good enough and that usually lands as a 3. To me, a 2 is a record with some dire flaws and I don’t think there are any of those here. It’s funny thinking about Allmusic giving it a 2 when considered against his other work. I think I am inclined to bump it to a 3.5 considering that it led to better things rather than dinging it.
Chuck: Your rationale for 3.5 is fair. There’s a strong case for either 3 or 3.5. I also just read he was 19 when he did this. Major label release, 19, did everything himself. I truly can’t fathom how things lined up to make that possible. (Edit: after listening for a few more days, I’m squarely landing on a 3.)
Bob: “Crazy You” has a bit of Parade in it. To me, Parade is his most polished work, so it is interesting to hear that so early. I think For You is missing the rock element and that is a significant piece of what made Prince great and commercially successful. “I’m Yours” is an exception. It is definitely a rock song, just not a particularly good one.
Chuck: I don’t know Parade well, but “Crazy You” definitely stands out as a gem. That makes me want to dig into Parade.
Chuck: I completely agree that Prince’s ability to combine genres is part of what made him great. “My Love Is Forever” is a forgettable late-’70s R&B jam, but both solos (the short one in the middle and the longer one at the end) breathe life into an otherwise drab song. “I’m Yours” is the best hybrid of funk, R&B, and rock here, but despite an awesome intro and outro (I love the guitar riff over that dramatic chord progression), everything in the middle falls flat.
Bob: I went back to check out “My Love is Forever” for the solos you mentioned. Before I even got to the solos, I thought of something else that was not quite there yet: his voice, or his use of it. There is some good falsetto here, but later, he would mix that up and it would bend into a shriek that added texture and intensity. The solos do help, but they also lack the intensity of his later guitar work.
Chuck: Yes, to both his voice and his guitar playing. His talent is obvious in retrospect, but it wasn’t there yet.
Bob: I also want to mention the intro track. It’s not great on its own, but it got me excited that this record was not just going to be some run-of-the-mill disco/funk/R&B record. It’s not enough to intimate just how different he would be, but there is a statement there, I think.
Chuck: I agree about the intro track. On my first listen, I expected a bad album and it immediately told me I was in for something special. On my second listen, I was expecting something special and its shortcomings immediately reminded me that this isn’t a great album. It’s a reminder that our reactions to music are subjective, no matter how objective we try to be.
Chuck: I think “Crazy You” is the star here, but a lot of other songs are good in their own ways. “Just as Long as We’re Together” hints at so much of his work with the Revolution and the NPG, and I love that it stretches out to 6+ minutes. It makes me wonder what this album would’ve sounded like if he hadn’t played everything himself.
Chuck: After two listens, I was internally groaning about listening again. But in the spirit of this exercise, I did, and I’m glad. The “meh” of my second listen turned into happiness that I’m digging deeper and maybe imprinting these songs on my brain.
Bob: As I get into my third time through, I’m starting to pick up on some of things that make Prince special being present. We’ve both said that he’s not there yet, but I think that is relative to where he would be in the 1980s. I’m surprised nothing from “In Love” has been sampled. Each stop in “Soft and Wet” has some subtle difference. There is a lot of attention to detail.
Bob: Since we’ve been comparing this record a bit to where Prince would be at the peak of his powers in the next decade, I decided to listen to Lovesexy, his first post-peak record, to see how For You measures up. The tools in Prince’s musical toolbox were better by Lovesexy, of course, but the resulting record itself was not. While For You sees Prince honing his skills, it still has direction. Lovesexy suffers from too many tools and Prince not knowing exactly what to do with them next. For instance, “Alphabet St.” is a really good 2:30 pop song that then devolves into three more minutes of Prince digressing into aimlessness. For You :doesn’t make those mistakes and I think it is a better record for that.
Chuck: Interesting points, and probably fair. I’ll try to listen to Lovesexy before we wrap up on For You.
Chuck: I listened on my decent car stereo today and it felt like the first time I’ve heard the album. My earbuds can’t comprehend anything below moderately low midrange frequencies, so I never noticed that the mix is terrible and the vocals are completely buried. I also realized how weak the songs are. Neither of us have really mentioned “Soft and Wet” yet. Why? Because there is no chorus, there is no hook, the arrangement is boring, and the words appear to be nonsensical but the mix is so bad that I can’t make them out. Its only redeeming quality is a semi-catchy riff that ultimately doesn’t go anywhere. Listen to the first three minutes of “Automatic” from 1999 and it’s basically the same song structure but with a good mix, audible words that are both coherent and kinda sexy, and an arrangement that doesn’t simply do the same thing over and over and over again. Sadly, “Soft and Wet” isn’t the only song here that could be described that way, but it might be the worst offender.
Chuck: I want to repeat something I said earlier, because the more I listen, the more important it becomes. I think For You’s biggest weakness is that Prince did everything himself. Whether it was an engineer or a producer or a band, he needed people to challenge and push him.