Prince’s Timeless vault album spans four decades

Prince’s archive has opened again, this time for a release designed to connect nearly his entire recording life. Timeless, a 10-track collection of rare and previously unreleased recordings, arrived Friday through the Prince Estate and Legacy Recordings.

A journey from teenage sessions to Prince’s final years

The album reaches back to 1977, when Prince was 19 and recording in Minneapolis, and extends to material from 2016. That unusually wide timeline makes the project less like a conventional set of leftovers and more like a compact tour through the restlessness that defined his catalog.

The opening track, “I Am You,” comes from those early 1977 sessions and places the young multi-instrumentalist’s funk instincts at the front of the record. “Tick Tick Bang” follows in its earlier 1981 form, years before a reworked version appeared on Graffiti Bridge. Elsewhere, “Heaven” includes backing vocals from Susannah Melvoin, while the 1991 ballad “With This Tear” predates the version Prince later gave to Celine Dion.

Rare studio work and a live finale

The collection also includes “Stone,” a slow-burning R&B recording from 1995 that was released ahead of the full album. Later selections move through the 2000s and 2010s, including “Calabama,” “The Guilty Ones” and “Bestest Friend.” The sequence closes with a live performance of “How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore?” recorded in Oakland in March 2015.

That range is the central appeal. Instead of focusing on one famous album cycle, Timeless lets listeners hear how Prince’s musical language shifted across funk, rock, pop, soul and intimate piano writing without losing its identity. The Estate has described it as the first Prince release curated to span every major era of his career.

The release also arrives during the 10th-anniversary year of Prince’s death. For longtime fans, the historic dates and alternate versions offer context; for newer listeners, the concise track list provides an accessible route into the vast archive surrounding one of pop music’s most prolific creators.