Studio Album · No. 28
20Ten Songwriting Credits by Prince
Produced by Prince
Holds writing credit on 10 of 10 tracks
Authorship Breakdown 10 / 10 documented
Scored across the 10 tracks with documented writers, by whether Prince carries a lyricist or composer credit.
Share of the 10 tracks where a band member is credited, by role.
By the Numbers
20Ten was given away free as a newspaper and magazine covermount across Europe in 2010, with no commercial US release, an extension of the direct-to-audience model Prince used on Planet Earth three years earlier. Prince performed all vocals and instruments himself except for background vocals and a horn section featuring Maceo Parker, and he produced the record alone. Trinity Mirror distributed over 2.5 million copies through the Daily Mirror and Daily Record, while Rolling Stone handled the German edition. The release reflected Prince's then-public resistance to conventional digital distribution.
Released July 10, 2010, as a free covermount distributed with newspapers in the UK, Ireland, Belgium, France, and Germany, including the Daily Mirror, which saw a single-day circulation increase of 334,000 copies. 20Ten continued Prince's strategy of bypassing traditional retail and digital distribution entirely. Prince solely produced, arranged, composed, and performed all material at Paisley Park Studios in Minnesota, writing every track himself with no outside contributors credited. The thirty-nine-minute album blends funk, pop, rock, and soul, though critics generally found the material less developed than his peak work. Reviews were decidedly mixed: critic Tony Parsons called it Prince's best album in twenty-three years while AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine awarded only 2.5 out of 5 stars, describing the funk jams as stuck in low gear, and NME gave it 4/10. Intentionally withheld from digital download platforms and retail stores, the album's commercial footprint was defined entirely by its newspaper distribution model.