20Ten
Encyclopedia
20Ten is the thirty-fifth studio album
by American musician Prince
. It was released on July 10, 2010 by NPG Records
as a free covermount
with the Daily Mirror and Daily Record
in the UK and Ireland, and Het Nieuwsblad
and De Gentenaar in Belgium. It was also released on July 22, 2010 with Rolling Stone
magazine in Germany, and Courrier International
in France. The album was produced, arranged, composed, and performed by Prince at Paisley Park Studios in Minneapolis, Minnesota
. It is his thirty-third studio album released in the UK. 20Ten contains musical elements of funk
, pop
, rock
, and soul music
. Some names of the tracks from the album were revealed as clues in Prince's song "Cause and Effect" which was released to radio earlier in 2010.
in June 2010. He stated to the Daily Mirror that he chose the title because, "I just think it's a year that really matters. These are very trying times." He considered the album a personal diary of the year. Prince made arrangements to release 20Ten exclusively as a free CD add-on to European newspapers on July 10, 2010, including the UK's Daily Mirror, Scotland's Daily Record, and Belgium's Het Nieuwsblad, and on July 22, 2010 in France's Courrier International and the German edition of Rolling Stone.
Over 2.5 million copies were distributed by Trinity Mirror
, the publisher of the Daily Mirror and Daily Record. Prince was featured in the publications, to which he granted his first interview in a British newspaper in over 10 years. The issue of the Mirror cost 65 pence; the album was not available as a digital download
or in retail stores. Prince stated to the Mirror that this method of releasing the album was "the best way to go... no charts, no internet piracy and no stress," although the album is easily available for illegal download via peer-to-peer
networks. The publisher released that sales of the Daily Mirror increased by 334,000, and sales of The Daily Record increased by 45,000 copies on the day it included the album.
Prince released his album Planet Earth
in July 2007 under a similar arrangement with the British newspaper The Mail on Sunday
. , no plans for a U.S. release have even been announced.
On October 8, Prince told French radio station Europe 1
that he was reportedly planning on releasing an updated edition of the album called 20Ten Deluxe. It has never materialized.
reviewed the album for the Daily Mirror, the newspaper marketing the album. He wrote that it was "as good as [Prince's] all-time classics like Purple Rain
and 1999
" and that it's "his best record since Sign o' the Times 23 years ago." Joachim Hentschel, writing for the German edition of Rolling Stone
, viewed the album as Prince's best effort since 1992's the Love Symbol Album. Jason Draper of NME
gave 20Ten a 4/10 rating, stating that while it "has its moments", the album was "no way" his best in 23 years, but likely his best in four years. MusicOMH
writer Luke Winkie gave it 2 out of 5 stars and described it as "one of the slightest albums the man has ever recorded; fluffy, anti-climatic, and utterly boring". Stephen Thomas Erlewine
of Allmusic gave the album 2½ out of 5 stars and wrote that its songs feature "enough of a shape to be attractive from a distance, not enough to withstand closer scrutiny... hooks don’t sink in, funk jams are stuck in low gear, sensuality only simmers, the rhythms are somewhat stiff, and Prince’s deliberate mining of the past only highlights how he’s stripped the freakiness out of his entire persona".
.
Studio album
A studio album is an album made up of tracks recorded in the controlled environment of a recording studio. A studio album contains newly written and recorded or previously unreleased or remixed material, distinguishing itself from a compilation or reissue album of previously recorded material, or...
by American musician Prince
Prince (musician)
Prince Rogers Nelson , often known simply as Prince, is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. Prince has produced ten platinum albums and thirty Top 40 singles during his career. Prince founded his own recording studio and label; writing, self-producing and playing most, or all, of...
. It was released on July 10, 2010 by NPG Records
NPG Records
NPG Records is the current active record label owned by Prince, founded in 1993 to release his music after Paisley Park Records. Paisley Park was shut down by Warner Bros. Records in 1993. Warner Bros. distributed one NPG release in 1995, The Gold Experience. "NPG" is short for "New Power...
as a free covermount
Covermount
Covermount is the name given to storage media or other products packaged as part of a magazine or newspaper...
with the Daily Mirror and Daily Record
Daily Record (Scotland)
The Daily Record is a Scottish tabloid newspaper based in Glasgow. It had been the best-selling daily paper in Scotland for many years with a paid circulation in August 2011 of 307,794 . It is now outsold by its arch-rival the Scottish Sun which in September 2010 had a circulation of 339,586 in...
in the UK and Ireland, and Het Nieuwsblad
Het Nieuwsblad
Het Nieuwsblad is a Belgian newspaper that mainly focusses on "a broad view" regarding politics, culture, economics, lifestyle, society and sports.-Mission statement:...
and De Gentenaar in Belgium. It was also released on July 22, 2010 with Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
magazine in Germany, and Courrier International
Courrier International
Courrier International is a Paris-based French weekly newspaper which translates and publishes excerpts of articles from over 900 international newspapers. It also has a Portuguese and a Japanese edition...
in France. The album was produced, arranged, composed, and performed by Prince at Paisley Park Studios in Minneapolis, Minnesota
Minnesota
Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...
. It is his thirty-third studio album released in the UK. 20Ten contains musical elements of funk
Funk
Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...
, pop
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
, rock
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
, and soul music
Soul music
Soul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of...
. Some names of the tracks from the album were revealed as clues in Prince's song "Cause and Effect" which was released to radio earlier in 2010.
Release
Prince revealed the name of the album when receiving a lifetime achievement award at the 2010 BET AwardsBET Awards
The BET Awards were established in 2001 by the Black Entertainment Television network to celebrate African Americans and other minorities in music, acting, sports, and other fields of entertainment over the past year. The awards are presented annually and broadcast live on BET...
in June 2010. He stated to the Daily Mirror that he chose the title because, "I just think it's a year that really matters. These are very trying times." He considered the album a personal diary of the year. Prince made arrangements to release 20Ten exclusively as a free CD add-on to European newspapers on July 10, 2010, including the UK's Daily Mirror, Scotland's Daily Record, and Belgium's Het Nieuwsblad, and on July 22, 2010 in France's Courrier International and the German edition of Rolling Stone.
Over 2.5 million copies were distributed by Trinity Mirror
Trinity Mirror
Trinity Mirror plc is a large British newspaper and magazine publisher. It is Britain's biggest newspaper group, publishing 240 regional papers as well as the national Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and People, and the Scottish Sunday Mail and Daily Record. Its headquarters are at Canary Wharf in...
, the publisher of the Daily Mirror and Daily Record. Prince was featured in the publications, to which he granted his first interview in a British newspaper in over 10 years. The issue of the Mirror cost 65 pence; the album was not available as a digital download
Music download
A music download is the transferral of music from an Internet-facing computer or website to a user's local computer. This term encompasses both legal downloads and downloads of copyright material without permission or payment...
or in retail stores. Prince stated to the Mirror that this method of releasing the album was "the best way to go... no charts, no internet piracy and no stress," although the album is easily available for illegal download via peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads among peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application...
networks. The publisher released that sales of the Daily Mirror increased by 334,000, and sales of The Daily Record increased by 45,000 copies on the day it included the album.
Prince released his album Planet Earth
Planet Earth (album)
Planet Earth is the twenty-fifth studio album by American musician Prince, first released July 15, 2007 in the UK as a free covermount with The Mail on Sunday national newspaper. This was followed by the album's worldwide distribution...
in July 2007 under a similar arrangement with the British newspaper The Mail on Sunday
The Mail on Sunday
The Mail on Sunday is a British conservative newspaper, currently published in a tabloid format. First published in 1982 by Lord Rothermere, it became Britain's biggest-selling Sunday newspaper following the closing of The News of the World in July 2011...
. , no plans for a U.S. release have even been announced.
On October 8, Prince told French radio station Europe 1
Europe 1
Europe 1, formerly known as Europe n° 1, is a privately owned radio network created in 1955. It is one of the leading French radio broadcasters and heard throughout France...
that he was reportedly planning on releasing an updated edition of the album called 20Ten Deluxe. It has never materialized.
Reception
20Ten received mixed reviews from most music critics. Columnist Tony ParsonsTony Parsons (British journalist)
Tony Parsons is a British journalist broadcaster and author. He began his career as a music journalist on the NME, writing about punk music. Later, he wrote for The Daily Telegraph, before going on to write his current column for the Daily Mirror...
reviewed the album for the Daily Mirror, the newspaper marketing the album. He wrote that it was "as good as [Prince's] all-time classics like Purple Rain
Purple Rain (album)
Purple Rain is the sixth studio album by Prince, the first to officially be credited to Prince and The Revolution, and is the soundtrack album to the 1984 film Purple Rain.Purple Rain is regularly ranked among the best albums in pop music history...
and 1999
1999 (album)
1999 is the fifth studio album by Prince, released on October 27, 1982. It was his first top ten album on the Billboard 200 chart in the United States and became the fifth best-selling album of 1983. 1999 was Prince's breakthrough album, but his next album Purple Rain would become his most...
" and that it's "his best record since Sign o' the Times 23 years ago." Joachim Hentschel, writing for the German edition of Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
, viewed the album as Prince's best effort since 1992's the Love Symbol Album. Jason Draper of NME
NME
The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...
gave 20Ten a 4/10 rating, stating that while it "has its moments", the album was "no way" his best in 23 years, but likely his best in four years. MusicOMH
MusicOMH
musicOMH is a United Kingdom-based website which publishes independent reviews, featues and interviews from across all musical genres including classical, metal, rock and R&B.-History:...
writer Luke Winkie gave it 2 out of 5 stars and described it as "one of the slightest albums the man has ever recorded; fluffy, anti-climatic, and utterly boring". Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Stephen Thomas Erlewine is a senior editor for Allmusic. He is the author of many artist biographies and record reviews for Allmusic, as well as a freelance writer, occasionally contributing liner notes. He is also frontman and guitarist for the Ann Arbor-based band Who Dat?Erlewine is the nephew...
of Allmusic gave the album 2½ out of 5 stars and wrote that its songs feature "enough of a shape to be attractive from a distance, not enough to withstand closer scrutiny... hooks don’t sink in, funk jams are stuck in low gear, sensuality only simmers, the rhythms are somewhat stiff, and Prince’s deliberate mining of the past only highlights how he’s stripped the freakiness out of his entire persona".
Track listing
All songs were written by PrincePrince (musician)
Prince Rogers Nelson , often known simply as Prince, is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. Prince has produced ten platinum albums and thirty Top 40 singles during his career. Prince founded his own recording studio and label; writing, self-producing and playing most, or all, of...
.
- "Compassion" – 3:57
- "Beginning Endlessly" – 5:27
- "Future Soul Song" – 5:08
- "Sticky Like Glue" – 4:46
- "Act of God" – 3:13
- "Lavaux" – 3:03
- "Walk in Sand" – 3:29
- "Sea of Everything" – 3:49
- "Everybody Loves Me" – 4:08
- "Laydown" – 3:07 (hidden trackHidden trackIn the field of recorded music, a hidden track is a piece of music that has been placed on a CD, audio cassette, vinyl record or other recorded medium in such a way as to avoid detection by the casual listener...
on track #77; following tracks #10 to #76, each containing 5 or 6 seconds of silence )
Personnel
- PrincePrince (musician)Prince Rogers Nelson , often known simply as Prince, is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. Prince has produced ten platinum albums and thirty Top 40 singles during his career. Prince founded his own recording studio and label; writing, self-producing and playing most, or all, of...
– all musical performances, except as indicated below - Liv Warfield – background vocalsBacking vocalistA backing vocalist or backing singer is a singer who provides vocal harmony with the lead vocalist or other backing vocalists...
- Shelby J – background vocals
- Elisa DeaseElisa FiorilloElisa Fiorillo is an American singer.-Career:Her father was a classical pianist, who was under the guidance of Vladimir Horowitz. Her ancestry is vast as it includes German, Italian, Irish and Cherokee...
– background vocals - Maceo ParkerMaceo ParkerMaceo Parker is an American funk and soul jazz saxophonist, best known for his work with James Brown in the 1960s, as well as Parliament-Funkadelic in the 1970s. Parker was a prominent soloist on many of Brown's hit recordings, and a key part of his band, playing alto, tenor and baritone saxophones...
– hornsBrass instrumentA brass instrument is a musical instrument whose sound is produced by sympathetic vibration of air in a tubular resonator in sympathy with the vibration of the player's lips... - Greg BoyerGreg BoyerGreg Boyer is an American trombonist known for performing with many successful R&B and funk bands.Born in Washington, DC, Boyer grew up in Bryans Road, Maryland. An avid music lover at an early age, his first steps into the world of playing music were on alto saxophone at the age of 10...
– horns - Ray Monteiro – horns
Release history
| Country | Date | Format | Publication | Label |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | July 10, 2011 | CD Compact Disc The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,... covermount Covermount Covermount is the name given to storage media or other products packaged as part of a magazine or newspaper... |
Daily Mirror | NPG Records NPG Records NPG Records is the current active record label owned by Prince, founded in 1993 to release his music after Paisley Park Records. Paisley Park was shut down by Warner Bros. Records in 1993. Warner Bros. distributed one NPG release in 1995, The Gold Experience. "NPG" is short for "New Power... |
| Scotland | Daily Record Daily Record (Scotland) The Daily Record is a Scottish tabloid newspaper based in Glasgow. It had been the best-selling daily paper in Scotland for many years with a paid circulation in August 2011 of 307,794 . It is now outsold by its arch-rival the Scottish Sun which in September 2010 had a circulation of 339,586 in... |
|||
| Belgium | Het Nieuwsblad Het Nieuwsblad Het Nieuwsblad is a Belgian newspaper that mainly focusses on "a broad view" regarding politics, culture, economics, lifestyle, society and sports.-Mission statement:... |
|||
| France | July 22, 2011 | Courrier International Courrier International Courrier International is a Paris-based French weekly newspaper which translates and publishes excerpts of articles from over 900 international newspapers. It also has a Portuguese and a Japanese edition... |
||
| Germany | Rolling Stone Rolling Stone Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J... |
External links
- 20Ten at DiscogsDiscogsDiscogs, short for discographies, is a website and database of information about audio recordings, including commercial releases, promotional releases, and bootleg or off-label releases. The Discogs servers, currently hosted under the domain name discogs.com, are owned by Zink Media, Inc., and are...