LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Prince has a new album.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I AM YOU")
PRINCE: (Singing) I know a man's not supposed to cry, but how could you do this to me?
FADEL: I know, I know, the iconic pop star died 10 years ago. But on the anniversary of his passing, his estate has put out a collection of 10 songs, some previously released, others haven't seen the outside of the vault until now. The album is called "Timeless," like Prince himself. Joining us to talk about this is music journalist Alan Light. He's the author of the book "Let's Go Crazy: Prince And The Making Of Purple Rain." Good morning, and thanks for being here.
ALAN LIGHT: Hi, Leila. Happy to do it.
FADEL: So 10 songs, 10 years since Prince died. What stands out to you?
LIGHT: What immediately stands out on listening - there's sort of the music side and the strategy side - right? - at this point in this story. Musically, I think what jumps out is the incredible range and stylistic rule-breaking approach that Prince took to his music, that across these 10 songs you hear more dance music, kind of post-disco early Prince music.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I AM YOU")
PRINCE: (Singing) I am you.
LIGHT: You hear big rock 'n' roll songs, crazy shredding guitar.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE GUILTY ONES")
PRINCE: Yeah, that's it.
LIGHT: Big emotional R&B ballads.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WITH THIS TEAR")
PRINCE: (Singing) Please tell me what I did wrong.
LIGHT: It shows a bunch of the different facets of what this guy was capable of and why he could do things that nobody else could do. The limitation of that is it is sort of a grab bag. It isn't really a cohesive album statement. It isn't anything that tells one single story.
FADEL: Right.
LIGHT: And so it's a little bit hard to imagine it's a thing that people are going to sit down and listen to as an album a lot.
FADEL: So how many of these 10 songs have we never heard before, have never been released?
LIGHT: Well, it depends what you count.
FADEL: Right.
LIGHT: Because some of these are songs that he did play live at times. Some of them are different versions of songs that evolved into something very different. There's a song on here called "Tick, Tick, Boom" (ph) that did come out on the "Graffiti Bridge" soundtrack album, but a very different version.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TICK, TICK, BANG")
PRINCE: (Singing) You're such a bombshell. If I ever get you, ever get you, ever get you, there's no telling how long I'd last before I tick, tick bang all over you. Tick, tick-a-tick, bang, bang all over you. Tick, tick-a-tick, bang, bang, bang, tick, bang, bang.
LIGHT: So some of these are songs that people have heard one way or another, but none of these recordings are recordings that have been out before.
FADEL: Are these songs something Prince would have wanted to release? I mean, if you wanted them out there, wouldn't he have released them during his lifetime?
LIGHT: I mean, this is the eternal question with these posthumous releases - right? - is these are things that these artists recorded and chose not to put out. Prince is somebody who routinely said, oh, I don't always give the best songs to the label. He was constantly recording, constantly writing, constantly making music.
This vault has hundreds and hundreds, you know, if not thousands of unreleased songs, videos, performances, you know, things to go through and figure out what to do with. But there's no way to get inside of his brain to know what he would have wanted to do with what. There is this massive quantity of material - how do you organize that, how do you release it, what is the right way to try to continue to tell this story?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CALABAMA")
PRINCE: (Singing) I just got some news today, everything I wished for came my way. Love and peace and big money, more new members in the family.
FADEL: Why has there been so much drama around the Prince estate and the release of whatever they have?
LIGHT: It's a really messy situation. As we all know, Prince did not leave a will. The state of Minnesota says that anybody in the family then is a party to that person's estate. And so you have these siblings and half-siblings, some of whom had no relationship with Prince really during his lifetime, but legally, they are given a seat at the table. So there's just a lot of different parties that have to line up and sign off on anything that's going to move forward.
The "Purple Rain" musical will be opening on Broadway next spring. The Netflix documentary series, initially Ava DuVernay was going to direct, and then she walked away from it. Then Ezra Edelman, who won the Oscar for his O. J. Simpson docuseries, spent years and years working on a 10-part Prince series that the estate then rejected. So there are things that everybody seems to be able to get behind and others that are much more difficult. And you watch that with the music, too.
This one is, again, a pretty easy sort of a concept for everybody to say, oh, you know, not a big deal. Let's try and do this. Here's 10 songs from across the career that, you know, reflect the scope of this guy's work, and let's look at that. Feels like a bit of a compromise, and - you know, but at the same time, anything that gets more of his music out there can't be a bad thing.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BESTEST FRIEND")
PRINCE: (Singing) It's like we never met before. I guess that's why it takes so long to open up the door.
FADEL: So this might give Prince to a new generation. Although I will say the youngest person on our show this morning was like, I know who he is, and I love him. What do you say (laughter)?
LIGHT: Good. I'm glad. In the end, this is the challenge. Every day that passes is another day that's further from when he was here. So, you know, with any of these sort of great legacy artists, figuring out what to do with the catalog, what to do with the unreleased material really is about how do you continue to play out that story for people who haven't discovered him or have newly discovered him.
Certainly, you can't have this conversation and not look at what has happened around the Michael Jackson catalog since the release of the Michael biopic, right? That's put "Thriller back in the top 10 on the album chart. So in the end, that's the ultimate goal for any of these kinds of legacy projects is keep the story going.
FADEL: That's music journalist Alan Light. He's the author of the book "Let's Go Crazy: Prince And The Making Of Purple Rain." Thank you so much for speaking with us.
LIGHT: Thank you, Leila.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I WONDER")
PRINCE: (Singing) I wonder if she knows how much I love her. I wonder if she knows I need her face around. I wonder if she cares about me. I wonder. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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