Prince of Tabloids

Fascinated to read that Prince's new album isn't going to be distributed through anything as mundane as record shops, but on top of being available with his concert tickets, will be "free" with the Mail on Sunday. There's a bit of logic here, in that artists like Prince (like the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney and the Who) can pack out any venue in the country but have problems shifting copies of their new albums without the sniff of a hit for years. Only reliable hit machines like Madonna seem able to keep the public buying their listening wares as well as seeing them. Yet, its somewhat troubling that someone somewhere has worked out that there is a close affinity between the demographics of Mail on Sunday readers and potential Prince fans. (This is the man who wrote a whole album called "Dirty Mind" - somewhat of a favourite of mine incidentally - with tracks called er... "Head" and "Sister".) Though I'm sure Mail on Sunday fans are going to be in for a treat, since his last two albums, the jazz-inflected "Musicology" and the taut pop collection "3121" were his best for a decade. As for me, I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to stomach reading a whole issue of the Mail on Sunday.