Rolling Stone (April 13, 2000)
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Purple Rain (Soundtrack)
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Prince
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Rating ****
By Kurt Loder April 13, 2000
The spirit of Jimi Hendrix must surely smile down on Prince Rogers Nelson. Like Hendrix, Prince seems to have tapped into some extraterrestrial musical dimension where black and white styles are merely different aspects of the same funky thing. Prince's rock & roll is as authentic and compelling as his soul and his extremism is endearing in a era of play-it-safe record production and formulaic hit mongering. "Purple Rain" may not yield another smash like last year's "Little Red Corvette," but it's so loaded with life and invention and pure rock & roll thunder that such commercial considerations become moot. When Prince sings "Baby I'm a Star," it's a simple statement of fact.
the Hendrix connection is made overt here with the screaming guitar coda that ends "Let's Go Crazy," with the manic burst that opens "When Doves Cry" and in the title song, a space ballad that recalls "Angel" with its soaring guitar leads and a very Hendrixian lyrical tinge ("It's time we all reach out for something new — that means you, too"). There are also constant reminders of Sly Stone in the ferocious bass lines and the hot, dance-conscious mix. But like Jimi and Sly, Prince writes his own rules. Some of his effects are singularly striking — note that eerie, atonal synthesizer touches that creep in at the end of "The Beautiful Ones" and the otherworldly backward-vocal montage in the frankly salacious "Darling Nikki" — and his vocals continue to be among the most adventurous and accomplished on the current scene. Prince also does wonderful things with string-section sounds, and his band — if it's not actually him playing all the parts — burns throughout.
Anyone partial to great creators should own this record. Like Jimi and Sly, Prince is an original; but apart from that, he's like no one else.
Billboard
Prince's 'Purple Rain' at 30: Classic Track-by-Track Album Review
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By Kenneth Partridge | June 24, 2014 2:25 PM EDT
In 1984, there was only one man in America more popular than Ronald Reagan. His name was Prince, and he was funky.
Had Prince run for president that year, he would have certainly carried his native Minnesota—the only state Ronnie lost—and he probably would’ve cleaned up most other places. The reason: “Purple Rain,” his groundbreaking, genre-blurring, utterly genius sixth album. It was a massive seller wherever there were radios and people with pulses.
When “Purple Rain” arrived 30 years ago on June 25, 1984, a few weeks had passed since Bruce Springsteen dropped “Born In the USA.” Five months later, Madonna would release “Like a Virgin.” Of those three monumental ’84 albums, only “Purple Rain” doesn’t suffer from dated production, and with its mix of sexy dance-pop and rugged all-American rock ‘n’ roll—not to mention funk, soul, psychedelia, and gospel balladry—it embodies a lot of what people loved about the other two.
Of course, “Purple Rain” was more than just an album. It was also the soundtrack for a movie of the same name, which hit theaters a month after the record landed in stores. Loosely based on Prince’s early days on the Minneapolis scene, the film turned this diminutive Midwestern oddball into a pop-culture giant on par with Elvis, the Beatles, and Michael Jackson.
The “Purple Rain” movie debuted at No. 1, and the album spawned five hit singles, two of which—“When Doves Cry” and “Let’s Go Crazy”—topped the Billboard Hot 100. To date, it’s sold some 20 million copies—a great many of those replacements for all the records, tapes, and CDs literally played to death by hardcore fans.
“Purple Rain” is that rare critical and commercial success that justifies every scrap of hyperbolic praise. Six albums into his career, Prince had found a terrific band in the Revolution and figured out how to sell his freakiness in malls and movie houses across the country. Read on to get our track-by-track take on an album that briefly had pop fans, punks, metal heads, moms, dads, cheerleaders, accountants, and just about everyone else in the world not named Tipper Gore pledging allegiance to the same purple freak flag.
“Let’s Go Crazy”: In arguably the best intro in pop history, Prince spends the first 40 seconds of this smash single playing gospel preacher, telling us to forget about the afterworld and start enjoying this one. As the track unfolds, he seizes the moment as only he can, fitting funky synths over fuzzy hard rock guitars and urging us to “look for the purple banana,” whatever that is. He ends by climbing back into the pulpit and ripping one holy mother of a guitar solo. Amen.
“Take Me With U”: After some frenzied drum rolls and a paranoid keyboard riff, Prince u-turns into a sweet psych-rock duet with Apollonia, his costar in the film. It’s a song about love conquering all, and the frilly orchestral synth sounds add to the neo-‘60s vibe.
“The Beautiful Ones”: Despite those heavy synths and hollow Linn drums—go-to electronic effects on early Prince albums—“The Beautiful Ones” doesn’t play like some bad ‘80s New Wave song. This lush ballad begins with Prince asking, “Is it him, or is it me?” and over the next five minutes, he gives his would-be lover an increasingly intense sales pitch. By the end, he’s down on his knees, shredding that guitar of his. Let’s see the other guy beat that.
“Computer Blue”: This one starts in the tub, where Revolution members (and real-life lovers) Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman are prepping for a little kink. When Prince crashes the party, the track morphs into a bizarre synth-funk suite that completely changes shape two minutes in. The title refers to what Prince deems the malfunctioning “machinery” keeping him from true love, and indeed, “Computer Blue” has the wonderfully disjoined feel of an early PC trying to cope with the command “create freaky bathtub sex jam.”
“Darling Nikki”: The only thing rawer than the guitars are the lyrics, all about a porn-loving gal not shy about pleasuring herself in hotel lobbies. Prince finds her doing exactly that, and he winds up back at her castle, where she actually makes him sign a waiver before blowing his mind. The song inspired Tipper Gore to form the Parents Music Resource Center—the group responsible for those warning labels on albums—but salaciousness aside, “Darling Nikki” is a stunning piece of music. Amid all the hot and sweaty synth and guitar grinding, you’re liable to miss, say, the metal-style double kick drums, which come in just before the rain effects and backwards vocals.
“When Doves Cry”: Famously bass-less and funky all the same, “When Doves Cry” sums up the familial angst at the heart of the “Purple Rain” film. The sadness and anxiety in the central synth riff perfectly reflect the lyrics, which center on a young man’s fears he’s becoming like his emotionally unavailable parents. It’s deceptively complex from both a musical and a psychological standpoint, and yet somehow, against all odds—and against Phil Collins’ “Against All Odds”—it became the year’s top-selling single.
“I Would Die 4 U”: Whether this dance floor favorite is about the connection between god and man, as many fans suggest, or simply the spirit of devotion between two lovers, it’s a reassuring disco-funk workout designed to make you feel good. And despite being released as a single, it segues perfectly into the next track.
“Baby, I’m a Star”: As he wrote the “Purple Rain” album, Prince was already thinking about the movie, and he knew damn well he was about to break big. “Baby, I’m a Star” is his early victory lap. Like “I Would Die 4 U” and the subsequent title track, it was partially recorded live in concert at First Avenue, the Minneapolis rock club immortalized in the film. (Overdubs were added later.) “You might not know it now, but I are—I’m a star,” Prince tells a global audience about to be rocked in ways it can’t begin to understand.
“Purple Rain”: Where do you begin with “Purple Rain?” How about those opening chords—performed live at First Avenue by then-19-year-old Wendy Melvoin. It was her debut outing with the Revolution, and it was the first time this epic psych-gospel ballad had been aired live. One of countless songs in Prince’s catalog that works as both a love song and a religious allegory, “Purple Rain” takes us full circle, ending the record in the church from “Let’s Go Crazy.” At this point in the sermon, Prince is more a messiah than he is pastor, and that final plea, “Let me guide you to the purple rain,” was something all Americans could get behind. It beat the hell out of Reagan’s “It’s morning in America.”
Robert Christgau
Purple Rain [Paisley Park, 1984]
Like the cocky high speed of the brazenly redundant "Baby I'm a Star," the demurely complaisant "Thank you" that answers "You're sheer perfection" signals an artist in full formal flower, and he's got something to say. Maybe even a structure: the frantic self-indulgence of "Let's Go Crazy" gives way to a bitter on-again-off-again affair that climaxes in the loving resignation of the title song--from in-this-life-you're-on-your-own to in-this-life-heaven-is-other-people (and-you're-still-on-your-own). But insofar as his messages are the same old outrageous ones, they've lost steam: "1999" is a more irresistible dance lesson for the edge of the apocalypse than "Let's Go Crazy," "Head" and "Jack U Off" more salacious than the groundout "Darling Nikki." He may have gained maturity, but like many grown-ups before him, he gets a little blocked making rebel-rock out of it. A-
BBC Online
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Purple Rain
"No amount of subsequent weirdness could detract from this achievement."
Chris Jones 2008
Following the commercial breakthrough of 1982's double album, 1999, with all its attendant sexual shenanigans and electro-funk beatbox rock it was time for Prince Nelson Rogers to cement his reputation for all time. Already (and rightly) labelled as the imp of the perverse, Purple Rain was to be the biggest, most audacious statement that the diminutive artist could possibly make. Not only an album but also a (supposedly semi-autobiographical) film, PR was his defining achievement. In the autumn of the year of its release it was well nigh impossible to go anywhere without hearing the words ''Dearly beloved...''.
Already in trouble with the so-called Moral Majority, Prince never could curb his priapic enthusiasm. The track Darling Nikki with its references to female onanism was never going to slip by unnoticed. Yet what really stuck in the mind after the smut had settled was Prince's ability to fashion the most avant garde pop imaginable while still making you want to shake your booty. When Doves Cry manages to squeeze in electro keyboards, squalling guitar, rattling drum machines and snarling backing noises, just in its first 30 seconds. Oh, and it has NO bass. Talk about clever.
On that note; up until that point the purple one had mainly done all the chores himself. The multi-talented multi-instrumentalist was entirely capable of doing it all himself (just like his hero, Todd Rundgren) but here he's properly joined by The Revolution. This beefed up the sound somewhat. Through the alleged religious allegory of I Would Die 4 U (yeah, right) to the prog stretch of Computer Blue, it's very much a product of its time, but resists any ageing process; unlike the film, which mixes superb live footage with cringeworthy acting.
And yet he still had a tour de force waiting. The title track is still one of the most affecting blues soul laments ever recorded. Equal parts Hendrix and Marvin, and yet utterly Prince. Its eight-minute climax to both film and album was a masterstroke. Like Michael Jackson after Thriller, no amount of subsequent weirdness could detract from this achievement.
Rolling Stone (2004)
100 Best Albums of the Eighties
#2 Prince and the Revolution, 'Purple Rain'
"Prince knew this was going to be it," says Susan Rogers, who engineered the 14 million seller Purple Rain. "He was ecstatic when he finished it."
Over five years later, the influence of Prince and Purple Rain is incontestable. He is one of just two artists (along with Bruce Springsteen) to have four albums among Rolling Stone's 100 Best Albums of the Eighties. And perhaps more than any other artist, Prince called the tune for pop music in the Eighties, imprinting his Minneapolis sound on an entire generation of musicians, both black and white.
Released in tandem with the film of the same name, Purple Rain was more than simply a soundtrack, and it stands as Prince's most cohesive and accessible album. "He envisioned the film as he made the album," says Alan Leeds, vice-president of Paisley Park Records, Prince's label. "He had a vision in his mind of the film a year before he got in front of the cameras, and he wrote the music to that vision."
Purple Rain contained five hit singles, including his first singles to reach Number One, "When Doves Cry" and "Let's Go Crazy," as well as "Purple Rain," which reached Number Two.
It was also the first Prince album to prominently feature his band the Revolution. "The band gelled when [guitarist] Wendy Melvoin joined," says drummer Bobby Z. "We were recording and writing and doing it. We all worked hard and did this music together."
Some of the album's success — and certainly its reception by radio — was possible because Prince downplayed the overt sexuality of previous records. There was only one controversial lyric on the album, the much quoted line "I met her in a hotel lobby/Masturbating with a magazine" — which appears in "Darling Nikki." The song caught the ear of Tipper Gore, the wife of Senator Albert Gore, who cited it when she formed the Parents' Music Resource Center (PMRC), a group that lobbied to have warning labels placed on album covers.
The album's quirky first single, "When Doves Cry," originally had a more conventional sound. But Prince stripped the song down to its current form, completely removing the bass part. Despite initial qualms among some of the people at Warner Bros, about the unusual instrumentation, the record was released and quickly reached Number One on the pop charts.
According to Rogers, "The Beautiful Ones" was Prince's favorite. "That song meant a lot to him," she says. "It was written for Susannah Melvoin [Wendy's sister and, at the time, Prince's girlfriend]. A lot of songs were written about her, but that was the first one."
Prince debuted many of Purple Rain's songs during a performance in August 1983 at 1st Avenue, the Minneapolis club featured in the film. Although the show was recorded, Prince didn't intend to use the live performances on his album — a decision that he reversed when he heard the tapes. Ironically, Prince and the Revolution lip-synced their parts for the film's live-performance sequences.
When Prince first played a version of "Purple Rain" for some of his staff, it caused quite a commotion. "Big Chick [Prince's bodyguard at the time] came into the office raving," says Leeds. "He said, 'Wait until you hear the song he did last night. It's gonna be bigger than Willie Nelson.'"
For Prince, the international success of Purple Rain was simply the culmination of many years of hard work, coupled with a strong sense of self-confidence. In 1985 he told Rolling Stone, "I wish people would understand that I always thought I was bad."
The Quietus
Anniversary
Winning It All: Prince's Purple Rain Revisited
Ned Raggett , May 15th, 2014 08:43
Ahead of Prince's return to the UK, our man in Orange County, Ned Raggett, gets hot under the collar when he remembers the purple one and his retinue.
Saying something new about albums that have been loved and discussed over the moons can sometimes feel like gilding the lily, no matter what approach you can bring to it. Saying something new about Prince and the Revolution’s Purple Rain makes me feel like I should just visit you all individually, give you a gilded lily on top of a copy of said album and then be on my way.
The news in April was that Prince and Warner Bros. are talking again and that songs from the vaults may finally officially emerge. On top of that there’s some sort of remaster of Purple Rain due first, ahead of everything else. This in turn has sparked fever dreams of a combination with The Time’s Ice Cream Castles and Sheila E’s The Glamorous Life and… and… and... etc. This news pretty much dominated music talk among friends for a few days. Perhaps oddly, perhaps not, a parallel to Star Wars and George Lucas emerged too - Prince’s conversion to the Jehovah’s Witness faith has led him over the years to revise lyrics in concert, stop performing some songs entirely. Whether or not this means that a reissued Purple Rain will undergo a ‘special edition’ treatment is unknown to anyone bar the man himself, at least at this time of writing. However this has also led to some talk which can be summed up as, “Whatever happens I’m holding on to my CDs/vinyl/whatever until I hear the reissue.” This type of conclusion would make sense for anyone suspicious of how remasterings are often not all that, depending on the record company in question, but because it is Prince, this is almost more like early believers really hoping the First Council of Nicaea doesn’t rewrite a key gospel.
Of course, that makes sense given that the first thing on the album you hear is a church organ and a preacher’s call to the faithful. Purple Rain is the art created by someone who knows that they have a following, that there are people waiting to listen, and they will listen. Prince probably always felt this to some degree once the first album was off and running but 1999 had sealed the deal two years previously because after that and its singles he was impossible to miss, even among eleven year olds in upstate New York miles from anything. That’s when I finally first heard and saw him, watching the syndicated Solid Gold TV program - as close to an American equivalent of TOTP that existed, even in the early days of MTV - and seeing Marilyn McCoo try to introduce him and the Revolution performing '1999'. For the first and only time on the show that I ever saw, the audience was yelping, screaming from the get-go practically before she said anything. Live wire insanity audible but not visible, and then the band actually started performing and that was that.
It turned out that was prelude. The insane audacity of what Prince was able to do with 'Purple Rain' is one of those things that hovers in the young brain - equivalent audacities can occur later but they seem to be nothing but poor copies and knockoffs. The actual film still works as heavily stylised craft by cinematic journeymen and non-actors. It's a white-heat moment where everything comes together, wears all the obvious influences on the sleeves, is a product of its time just so but is more than simply artefact. (If you needed proof it was a one-off moment all around even beyond later Prince films, watch director Albert Magnoli’s followup film American Anthem sometime. Nothing could scream “1986!” more loudly, and calling it cheesy is an insult even to Velveeta. And in comparison to 'Purple Rain' the song, this piece of tripe was the later film’s theme song - so, no comparison.) And the music, the MUSIC. The report of the tour, the videos, the TV appearances, the awards, the wall to wall radio playing, the way extended versions of songs started mysteriously appearing on my local Top 40 station instead of the single edits. “Hey, wait, I don’t remember 'When Doves Cry' having that ending…”
Which calls up a salient point - I didn’t actually purchase the album upon initial release (think I had it by the end of the year), nor did I see the film in the theatres at the time. As for the album, I almost didn’t need to get it immediately because again, he felt like he was everywhere, omnipresent. Not just him, of course - that summer of 1984 in America was a flashpoint moment where so much suddenly clicked, and even where I was I could hear Duran Duran remixed by Nile Rodgers, Bruce Springsteen remixed by Arthur Baker, Frankie Goes to Hollywood singing about ill-disguised lust and power politics, Madonna still scoring hits off her first album in the run up to Like A Virgin that fall, much more besides. Add in things like Ghostbusters and Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom and Gremlins and more in the theatres. There was the Los Angeles Olympics making all of us feel damn great about our wonderful selves and to heck with them commies who didn’t show up, and a certain Teflon president preparing to coast to a crushing reelection victory and little surprise that summer lingers in the mass memory among people of a certain age as a theoretically golden time. (Theoretically - if you didn’t have to actually struggle in life with a pre-dealt deck, of course it was golden. Those who didn’t have to struggle, never learned how lucky they were in retrospect, and probably just never grew up still light candles to the projections of Reaganism rather than the realities. Sadly this explains a lot about American politics these days.)
Thinking of my claim of audacities, looking back on Purple Rain with a critical eye means overcoming a barrier in one’s head for me, that of teenage imprinting. This is one of those albums - actually, maybe the album above all else - that for me approaches the level of one of those sixties albums which people even then deemed to be a life-changer, man. But that stuff happened already and I didn’t care, really; this I cared about. Now that I’m well away from that time I can sympathise more with those older people going on about albums from their youth that rewired their heads - hey, here I am now, aren’t I? Trying to pick out a song I don’t like or a problem with this album would be a forced exercise so I’m not going to attempt it. Also while trying to imagine how I think about pop without this album as an early framework is impossible.
So what do I get from the album even after all else? Possibilities. Sure, in the grand scheme of things, looking back over the whole musical story of that time now - Prince in the eighties let’s call it - it doesn’t have everything he ever tried or attempted on it. It’s actually a partial reduction - from a double album in the form of 1999 to a single one. It's just nine songs, anchored and concluded by a theme song for the album and for the film, designed as a huge from-the-heartland anthem. It had one of the most beautifully surreal/sad images in its title, purple as royalty, rain as sorrow, the bomb lurking behind it all, not so much bringing people together as leaving everything flattened in its wake. Except it is the band performance, not the bomb that does the job here instead; as if nukes could actually send you to heaven with musical sublimity. (Like I said, hard to overcome the barriers in my head when talking about this album, or attempting to talk about it coolly. Realistically, I CAN’T.)
When I think of this album, I think of the poster it came with. I was already used to the early 80s variety of glam-as-such that had filtered through to America - Boy George, obviously, but Duran Duran and the Human League too. And then this poster, what I assume is a posed still from the 'When Doves Cry' video set, Prince in hyperfinery, the rest of the band not so far behind, Wendy and Lisa seeming to be extremely comfortable with each other… I’m still kinda surprised my parents let me put it up in my room. (Also how weirdly/strangely amazing it is to me still that besides bringing their own compositional and arranging skills throughout the album, Wendy and Lisa would have actually been the first lesbian couple I ever knew about, heck the first lesbians I think I would have been aware of, period? Hiding in plain sight, but not really hiding at all, and yet I remember plenty of discussions - not exactly of the most elevated sort - among classmates about whether it was all a pose or not, whether or not that opening dialogue on 'Computer Blue' was just that, dialogue rather than reality. Prince had them accompany him to the Oscars and when he won the award for Best Original Song for 'Purple Rain' itself they came on stage with him and he introduced them both and obviously the implication was that they were ‘with’ him but they weren’t of course and THE SWIRL OF FEELINGS AND HORMONES IN MY HEAD. This is again exactly why this album is kinda hard to talk about as well, but while I won’t exactly embrace my inner young teen dumbass I won’t handwave him either. And thirty years on Wendy and Lisa are even more heroic to me than I would have guessed then.)
So… possibilities. Image informing film, involving video, feeding back into the music. But not just the overripeness at work, which was less that than perfection in luxuriation. 'When Doves Cry', after all, isn’t about being overstuffed, it’s about absence. When I first heard it on the radio, mind-blowingly great, when I heard it again and again, still so. When I realised years upon years later, and only because it was pointed out to me by someone else, that there wasn’t any bass on that song at all, I think I seized up a bit. Something so essential, theoretically, to music, something I’d been trained to listen for by socialisation, there was always bass in there somewhere in pop, wasn’t there? It might not be much but it was there - but not here. Prince did that a few more times throughout the eighties on some of his biggest songs and I still didn’t quite pick up on that, it became so much of his sound that I just accepted it as is without thinking or realising why, and that’s how to have an impact just as profound as something immediate, something crushing.
Looking back on a song like that you hear so much of what was to come in future years, one of the cornerstones of the Neptunes and Timbaland empires, where space and silence, the not-playing of notes, would be as much a hook as a hook. But silence and spare approaches can work in other ways and thus 'The Beautiful Ones'. Oh that’s a song, baby, baby, baaaaa...BY! (I wouldn’t even try to actually sing this. Prince is one of the few people who make me want to sing the impossible, though.) Just the way it starts, barely there, how it slowly builds, how Prince turns from the quiet contemplations and wondering to the shrieking obsession and rampage to...that ending. I love that ending, how everything winds down suddenly, not on a dime, but like it’s all eased back, and while I’m sure the man himself and the surrounding atmosphere suggests something biological taking place across the whole song, say, it’s more weirdly and beautifully mechanistic by the end. Numanish, even, how the final drum hits appear and then it softly, slowly burbles away. Of course it’s the following song that’s called 'Computer Blue' rather than this one, but it could have applied.
Some moments were just hard to imagine or get for me, sure. Again, I’m thirteen, I’ve hardly figured myself out and an opening line for 'Darling Nikki' is about masturbating with a magazine? I’d learned some things via sex ed but not… that. It didn’t help that the biggest Prince fan I knew then was also seated right next to me in science class, that she was ridiculously attractive and sweetly friendly and that she saw Prince on that tour that year. (What universe was I in that I missed that?) She wore her tour shirt when she could and generally left me stupidly distracted and feeling even more dorky than I already did, and I was a supremely dorky thirteen-year-old. If Prince hadn’t directly sung about sex even once then maybe feelings would have been different but good lord, compared to what I’d already heard over the previous years, this was a door being kicked open by someone who made it seem like it was all pretty easy. Just like his guitar playing on 'Let’s Go Crazy'’s solo or his swooning duet vamp on 'Take Me With U' or his “AAAOWAH!” bursts on 'Baby I’m a Star', it all seemed so easy and immediate, so instant - for him. Not for anyone else.
Part of learning more about music is, I suppose, seeing what came before and figuring out where something you like might have come from. If Purple Rain is no different in that regard it’s also really, really hard to see as anything other than sui generis, something that came out of the sky. That’s both patently silly in its own right, given the slew of albums he’d already released on his own or working with others, and in light of his own manifold inspirations, whether it was Joni, Jimi or Sly, to name only three of many. (I’d also say Kate except it was Hounds Of Love that blew his mind and that appeared a year later, when he probably thought she was the only person on his level as a result - not a bad judgment.) Yet the net effect on Purple Rain seen from within its own sphere is almost to reduce a lot of things which had already happened down to being John the Baptist flashes waiting for a messiah. (You can’t exactly avoid that comparison point given 'I Would Die 4 U'. I didn’t even realise this track was outrageous when it came out as a single. But it made an excellent fourth single, after 'When Doves Cry', 'Let’s Go Crazy' and 'Purple Rain' had stomped all before it. This meant that a song in which Prince claimed to be an omnisexual divine being was received with the thought, “Well yeah, why wouldn’t he be?”)
Everything was just so PRINCE on the album, no matter the band co-credits and the songwriting, arranging and engineering help (and a big hand here for Susan Rogers, engineer of engineers and just beginning her association with him which would last for nearly the rest of the decade). It was more like whatever had come before was heading in an accelerating speed towards his event horizon, song for song. Soul bent towards him, new wave angled again his direction, electronics existed to be programmed for and by him, confessional moments in song were his to clone, funk acted as his engine, hard rock and metal and more, sorry, the feedback was all his to use as needed. Hell, even backward masking to warp children’s minds served him here, except it was a spiritual call that the Lord was en route once again, beating even Bloom County’s joke about Deathtöngue going “Goooo to church...saaaaay your prayers” to the punch by three years. There was a time a couple of years before Purple Rain when it seemed like he and Rick James were challenging each other but the net effect of history was that by the time Dave Chappelle made fun of both only one was the truly sad punchline, and Rick had Street Songs but he never had this.
So, how to conclude. Well, do some looking around online - one version is here for now, it might not be later - for a particular clip, a performance of 'Baby I’m a Star' from the 1985 Grammys. (And just like that Solid Gold performance there’s another host trying to do some introducing over the screams - the host in this case being Wendy’s father. It doubtless helped a little in both directions that he ran the organisation who awards the Grammys.) It’s not technically perfect on the one hand - the clip itself, depending on the source, may be a little pixelated, and on the original broadcast Prince has a little mic trouble here and there. But this is a coronation moment of moments, before anything and everything changes as it must, before Around The World In A Day was both simultaneously brilliant and clearly not Purple Rain Pt. 2. Less than ten years after being the random wunderkind signed out of Minneapolis, king of the world; I was enthralled upon original broadcast and I’d rank it still as one of the top performances of all time. And what’s clear, too, is that he incorporates the past to a T - the way he and the band rework the song, synchronise their moves, his sliding mic catches, how dancers appear and he’s right there with them, it’s a James Brown tribute, it’s a Motown revue, all that just to start with and a whole lot more - and it’s all, again, him and only him as the guy who can pull it off and put all the pieces together, the lace and flowers and chiffon and frills. After the song is ‘supposed’ to have ended vis-a-vis the album version, everything just keeps going, call and response with the crowd about ‘wanting more’ and more is what happens. “Sheila E!” he calls as the dancers start grabbing people from the audience and the percussion fires up some more, the saxophone is exultant, the stage is packed, and so of course he disappears into his own band setup to play keyboards and sing for a bit, even as his none-more-ruffled/New Romantic-than-thou shirt almost fully falls off. He stands in front of everyone directing the whole thing like he was Leonard Bernstein and Bob Fosse, he spins and kisses, he points and shakes, then he just finally strips off his shirt as he almost - almost - casually walks up the centre aisle as everything is still going, bodyguard and some entourage members following, fists in the air, Muhammad Ali winning it ALL.
Yeah, I was wrong at the start. Not just one gilded lily for each of you. A whole damn bouquet.
IGN (August 24, 2004)
Purple Rain
20 years later it's still Prince's masterpiece.
by Spence D.
August 24, 2004
It's always strange to revisit an album that is universally regarded as a classic. And it's even stranger to re-examine one that's just turned 20, yet still sounds fresh, invigorating, and above all cutting edge. Such is the case with Prince's seminal offering Purple Rain, which was originally released back on August 6th, 1984 and is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year.
Following on the heels of the uber successful 1999, this album—and the accompanying film—proved once and for all that his purple majesty from Minneapolis was bona fide. No, Prince Nelson Rogers, esq. was not merely a flamboyantly sexual cross between Hendrix and Little Richard, but his own singular talent as guitarist, songwriter, and object of sexual desire.
Each and every one of the 9 songs (yes, there's only 9. Why? Because Prince understands the value of crafting a tight album, unlike many of today's pop stars who find it necessary to overload their albums with 17-plus tracks, many of which are nothing more than vapid filler) contained within is a gem, ranging from the rock infused anthem "Let's Go Crazy" to the nastication of "Darling Nikki" and the slow burn slink of "When Doves Cry." Not only is the album rife with classic hits, but it's one of those rare hit pop records that has been masterfully sequenced. In short, every track fits into place like a well-oiled machine, setting a mood and then carrying over to the following track. This is perhaps one of the smoothest flowing albums ever crafted. Period.
As if sonically foreshadowing his future Al Green-esque career path (from secular singer to Born Again Christian and then back to a permutation of the two) Prince kicks off the album with mock church organ and an uplifting sermon that commences with the words "Dearly beloved/we r gathered here today/2 get through this thing called life/electric word, life…" before grinding off into a guitar driven chug of fist waving and booty sashaying exuberance. In fact, Prince's six-string ejaculation is what holds the song together (and thankfully his axe wielding prowess will continue to rear it's glorious head throughout the album) cresting in a searing solo that will leave even the stoutest of air guitarists gasping for breath.
From this upbeat opening Prince and the rest of The Revolution (easily the best backing band he ever utilized) shift into the bubbling "Take Me With U." Featuring Prince's prot¿g¿ of that moment in time, Apollonia, it's a bouncy pop number that shuffles along thanks to some kinetically spicy rhythms, faux string enhancements and Prince and App's cajolingly sexy counterpoint. With the next track, "The Beautiful Ones," Prince and company tone things down, at least musically speaking, for a low-n-slow tempo number that has the Purple one crooning, gasping, sighing, and vocally genuflecting with uber sensuality.
"Computer Blue" begins with Lisa (Coleman, one half of the duo of Wendy & Lisa and the Revolution's keyboardist) asking the following sultry question: "Wendy, is the water warm enough?" Naturally the answer is "yes" and the song kicks off into Prince's trademark sauciness, this time revolving around the seemingly rhetorical question "Where is my love life?" and then slipping into ambiguous phraseology regarding the titular computer blue. Buzzing guitars intertwine with sizzling keyboards and a clopping rhythm, keeping everything decidedly in the red before collapsing into a dizzying guitar driven aural melee.
In reality, "Computer Blue" was nothing more than a 3-minute and 59-second lead in to the album's centerpiece. "Darling Nikki" is the notorious grinder wherein Prince talks about meeting a woman in a hotel lobby where she is masturbating with a magazine. Those self-same lyrics ring with just as much controversy today as they did 20 years ago, capturing the musician's pure, unadulterated rock and roll bravado with a graceful sleaziness. Prince's accompanying whelps, yelps, and ecstatic screams only add more fuel to the fire. Brilliant, sexy, nasty, and dirty; everything a great rock song should be. That it culminates with a climactic guitar flurry is like the proverbial icing on the cake. Plus the back masked ending is classically nebulous.
The skirling spiral guitar crunch that signals the opening of "When Doves Cry" is perhaps one of the most recognized axe blasts ever laid to tape. Coupled with the loping rhythm track and Prince's restrained nasal vocal tang, the song is one of the seminal numbers in his vast canon. From the introspective (and rumored to be autobiographical) the album shifts into the speed shuffle of "I Would Die 4 U," in which Prince unveils the somewhat cryptic lyrical rush "I'm not your lover/I'm not your friend/I am something that you'll never comprehend…" The song more or less bleeds seamlessly into "Baby I'm A Star," yet another musically upbeat number propelled by spastic rhythms and Prince's yelping cat call vocalistics.
But the previous two songs, while catchy and infused with unbridled energy, are merely the set-up for the grande finale: "Purple Rain." The closing track is an epic 8-minutes and 41-seconds of slow burning intensity, initially beginning as nothing more than a stripped down drum beat, soft keyboards, and Prince's guitar, all flowing smoothly underneath his quietly calm tenor. The imagery instilled in the deceptively simple lyrics is wonderful (c'mon, purple rain? F@#kin' brilliant, if you ask me) and the song slowly builds up in musical and emotional tension, Prince's voice cracking and careening and screeching with wild, yet restrained abandon. Then the guitar kicks in, buffered by piano and swelling synth orchestration, all of which is just a precursor to the enrapturing "oh-oh-ohs" that lead into the squelchingly intense guitar apocalypse that shuts the song down. Sure, it's crazy '80s, but damn if it still doesn't resonate, both musically and emotionally, these twenty years later.
Given the quality of the songwriting and the almost uncanny timelessness of the music contained on Purple Rain, it's really hard to imagine somebody who has never heard a single note of this album. In fact the very thought of such a notion is nothing short of mind-numbing. At the risk of being over laudatory, Purple Rain is one of those albums that belongs in everybody's record collection. It's really that simple.
IGN Ratings 10/10 Masterpiece
AllMusic
Prince / Prince & the Revolution
Purple Rain
AllMusic Rating *****
Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Prince designed Purple Rain as the project that would make him a superstar, and, surprisingly, that is exactly what happened. Simultaneously more focused and ambitious than any of his previous records, Purple Rain finds Prince consolidating his funk and R&B roots while moving boldly into pop, rock, and heavy metal with nine superbly crafted songs. Even its best-known songs don't tread conventional territory: the bass-less "When Doves Cry" is an eerie, spare neo-psychedelic masterpiece; "Let's Go Crazy" is a furious blend of metallic guitars, Stonesy riffs, and a hard funk backbeat; the anthemic title track is a majestic ballad filled with brilliant guitar flourishes. Although Prince's songwriting is at a peak, the presence of the Revolution pulls the music into sharper focus, giving it a tougher, more aggressive edge. And, with the guidance of Wendy and Lisa, Prince pushed heavily into psychedelia, adding swirling strings to the dreamy "Take Me With U" and the hard rock of "Baby I'm a Star." Even with all of his new, but uncompromising, forays into pop, Prince hasn't abandoned funk, and the robotic jam of "Computer Blue" and the menacing grind of "Darling Nikki" are among his finest songs. Taken together, all of the stylistic experiments add up to a stunning statement of purpose that remains one of the most exciting rock & roll albums ever recorded.
PopMatters
Let’s Go Crazy: Celebrating 25 Years of Purple Rain
A Track-by-Track Rundown of 'Purple Rain'
By PopMatters Staff 31 May 2009
“Let’s Go Crazy”
Having encouraged us two years earlier to accept that “Life is just a party and parties weren’t meant 2 last,” Prince started 1984 with a more defiantly optimistic sermon, suggesting that in life, “things are much harder than in the afterworld”, and that our reward for enduring our current hardships would be to enter “a world of never-ending happiness.” (Seriously: why were we so surprised when His Royal Badness “became” devout?)
More importantly, “Let’s Go Crazy”—the lead-off track to Purple Rain—suggests that the best way to endure one’s hardships is to rebel against the expectations and norms of our safe, sanitized society; essentially, Prince’s message is the message of all good rock n’ roll, which is ... well ... “let’s go crazy.” And make no mistake: Purple Rain is rock n’ roll first and foremost; its opening salvo’s guitar solo puts Slayer to shame.
“Let’s Go Crazy” boasts that elusive sense of inevitability and completeness that only the greatest rock songs offer; who but Prince could yield such provocative, anarchic alchemy from so simple and unassuming a guitar riff? And who would dare to suggest that a single second of the song could be changed?
At its best, rock n’ roll serves as a call-to-arms, even when the revolution in question is nothing more subversive or relevant than a suggestion to party. “Let’s Go Crazy” is not shy about extending an invitation to the audience; its opening monologue, which reads as intimately as a “Dear Constant Reader” introduction from a Stephen King collection, addresses the listener in a warm and direct and empowering manner that went unmatched until Danzig’s “Godless” in 1993, which itself sounds like something Prince could have written (“I ask all who have gathered here to join me in this feast ... may we always be strong in body, spirit and mind”):
Dearly beloved
We are gathered here today
2 get through this thing called life
Electric word, life
It means forever, and that’s a mighty long time
But I’m here 2 tell U
There’s something else:
The afterworld
A world of never ending happiness
U can always see the sun, day or night
The pop cultural landscape of today is a barren and exhausting place, inordinately enamored with irony. Nonetheless, for all the earnest optimism of its opening sermon, “Let’s Go Crazy” was the freshest, coolest, trendiest sound of 1984, and yet it does not sound dated in 2009.
I knew in 1984 that Prince and his Purple Rain were special. I may have been only seven years old at the time, but I wanted to be Prince; no other performer inspired such adoration. Still, would I have predicted that Prince would boast such staying power and lasting relevance?
No. In an early episode of Family Ties, Mallory asked her mother if she was familiar with Purple Rain‘s opening track (which she mistakenly called “Let’s Get Crazy”), and Elise quipped, “It was our wedding song,” and had you asked me then, I’d have assumed that the canned sitcom laughter would probably be pop culture’s last response to “Let’s Go Crazy.”
Instead, 25 years later, “Let’s Go Crazy” still rocks, and Purple Rain is arguably the album of the ‘80s.
And I still want to be Prince.
By Monte Williams
“Take Me With U”
Simply put, “Take Me With U” is arguably Prince’s single greatest pure pop song. Oh sure, he’d later do tracks that were more “mainstream” (see: “Cream”) and showier (the still-fantastic “Raspberry Beret”), but the breezy, breathtakingly romantic “Take Me With U”—with its acoustic hammer-ons and sampled string sections—is the aural equivalent of falling in love for the first time, hopeless devotion mixing with eternal optimism, all making for one utterly irresistible Top 40 cocktail.
The song’s history, however, was less than rosy. First off, the track wasn’t even supposed to be on Purple Rain in the first place. Initially written for Apollonia 6’s debut album, Prince—who knows when to take back a good song he’s written for someone else (sorry there, Mazarati)—decided to use it to soundtrack the scene where Apollonia rides around on the Purple One’s decked-out motorcycle for the first time (prior to “purifying” herself in Lake Minnetonka). If you watch the scene on mute, it feels like watching the most boring stock footage you can imagine, as there are only so many times that you can film passing trees before you begin to wonder what Morris Day is up to. When backed by “Take Me With U”, however, it suddenly feels like all these excessive shots are actually moving the plot forward, the montage showing the doe-eyed Apollonia realizing she might have feelings for The Kid after all ...
Released as the fifth and final single from Purple Rain, “Take Me With U” has the sad distinction of being the only single from the album to not become a Top 10 staple (it stalled at #25). It’s a damn shame too, considering that “Take Me With U” marks the first time that Prince dueted with anyone in any official capacity. As only the second track on the immaculately sequenced Purple Rain, the addition of Apollonia’s voice not only deepens The Kid’s character arc (he’s
sharing
the song with her—and he hates sharing songs!), but also sets up the audience for the inevitable falling out between our leads, their naïve love ballad a reminder of better times. Of course, with instrumentation this lush (the opening drum breaks swirling between the left and right channels, the echoed clanging of bells sweetly leading the song during the fadeout, etc.), it’s hard not to fall in love right along with them.
Yet part of the reason that “Take Me With U” works so brilliantly is because of its simplicity. “I can’t disguise the pounding of my heart” it opens, “It beats so strong / It’s in your eyes, what can I say? / They turn me on”. Given the later lyrical depictions of animals striking curious poses and fetish-obsessed women performing extreme self-gratification acts in hotel lobbies, “Take Me With U”‘s simple, unadorned sentiments serve as a breather, an easy emotional entry point for the rest of the album/film. No matter what we think of Apollonia’s half-reconciliation at the end of the movie (that awkward half-kiss backstage prior to The Kid’s dynamic performance of “I Would Die 4 U”), we will always have “Take Me With U” as a souvenir of what could have been, a soundtrack for young romance the world over that clocks in at less than four minutes; pop doesn’t get more prefect than that.
By Evan Sawdey
“The Beautiful Ones”
“The Beautiful Ones” is the closest Purple Rain has to a proper love ballad, but there’s little proper about it. It nearly annihilates the conventions of the form. Like the album itself, the song is fraught with romantic desire and anxiety, but it’s the latter that takes control. It’s a love letter in song, but our protagonist clearly has issues.
“The Beautiful Ones” follows the traditional pattern of a man trying to win over a woman by singing directly to her. He’s wooing her, trying to win her away from another man. In the film, it’s Prince wooing Apollonia away from Morris Day. In life it’s said to have been Prince’s attempt to woo Susannah Melvoin, the sister of his Revolution band member, Wendy Melvoin. In the song, the person of his affectations seems more distant, less specific. That vagueness only grows as the song progresses, because with each second his chances seem to be dwindling, as his come-on – or really, ultimatum – grows more crazed. He begs, pleads, and ultimately freaks out so thoroughly that any impression of his confidence has shattered. In the film, Apollonia is brought to tears of shock but also apparent understanding. In the song it’s hard to see him as succeeding. This isn’t the man who will sweep you off your feet and fly you to the moon, or even the carefree but lovesick Prince of the previous song, “Take Me With U”. This is the man howling into the wall or crying uncontrollably into his own chest. Earlier he sweetly begged, “don’t make me lose my mind,” and, now, he has.
I’ve done no scientific study, but it seems that Prince wildly shrieks more often on this album than any other in his mighty discography. “The Beautiful Ones” wins the award for most convincing and even chilling Prince shrieks. “Shriek” seems the only fitting word for his breakdown at the end of the song. The song starts with him almost asking her politely, albeit with a lot of heaviness in his voice, “baby baby baby / what’s it gonna be?” Before you know it he’s proposing marriage to her, almost like he thinks that may be what does the trick: “if we got married / would that be cool?” By the end of the song he’s on his knees screaming in pain, calling up devils in his soul to voice the ordeal that love, or desire, is putting him through. He has to know if she wants him, he tells her. All he knows is that he wants her, he proclaims in an ear-piercing shriek, one perched atop a peak built of moody keyboards, wailing guitar and a drum machine that, after the storm has calmed, sounds a note of life-goes-on.
Concentrate too much on the initial come-on and the nervous breakdown at the end and you’ll miss another interesting feature: Prince’s psychological diagnosis of why she’s rejecting him. In the middle of a song that otherwise is constructed like a personal screed, a love letter written in tears and pain, there’s the protagonist’s own rationalization that it’s the beautiful ones who are the problem. Of course he gets more pseudo-poetic than that, whispering, “Paint a perfect picture / bring to live a vision in one’s mind / the beautiful ones always smash the picture / always, every time.” That moment is why Prince is Prince. He never hesitates to build an epic structure of drama and fantasy around each feeling or action, while also making you feel it viscerally. Purple Rain opens with a song where he slips into the tone of a preacher, and he does it again later in the album. That isn’t quite the tone of this commentary section of “The Beautiful Ones”, but it does sound like, mid-emotional rant, he’s giving a lesson. That he can become Prince the poet/teacher/mystic in the middle of breaking down and crying, screaming, raging his heart out says something about the control Prince exerts throughout Purple Rain, the way he turns the conditions of the heart into fodder for that pulpit of rebellion, the arena stage.
By Dave Heaton
“Computer Blue”
Poor “Computer Blue”. Imagine growing up in a sonic family that features eight other siblings that are far more famous than you (even the protracted Paris Hilton of the clan, “Darling Nikki”). The Purple Rain fanbase can recite your relatives’ accomplishments verbatim, 25 years of rote repetitiveness on your favorite radio station guaranteeing their place in the public consciousness. But not poor “Computer Blue”. Ask a Rain-head to rehearse or recreate anything else from the album—“Let’s Go Crazy”, “I Would Die 4 U”, even “The Beautiful Ones” or “Baby, I’m a Star”—and you’ll have little trouble with the treatment. But this bizarro track, built around a funky little hook, a syncopated drum pattern, and random guitar feedback sticks out like a surreal sore thumb. As Prince’s echo heavy voice randomly invokes “where is my love life?”, the direct disposability of the track hides something far more telling.
Reviewing the writing credits, “Computer Blue” is the only Purple Rain production where Mr. Paisley Park is not 100% in control. The lyrics are credited to him, but the music is made up of random jams between himself, his father John L. Nelson, the dynamic Revolution duo of Wendy and Lisa, and keyboardist extraordinaire Dr. Fink. In many ways it represents the exact narrative of the movie, a microcosm of the kind of collaboration it takes a near-tragedy to get The Kid to embark on. Prince originally recorded the song as an extended 14 minute opus. It contained more electronics, a sing-along chorus, additional lyrics, and even something called “The Hallway Speech.” When the album was being mixed, a near eight minute edit was offered, but that was also trimmed when “Take Me With U” became a last minute addition. So not only is “Computer Blue” orphaned among what is practically a greatest hits collection on one single album, it suffered at the hands of its creator before it even hit vinyl.
The history explains the half-realized nature of the track, the lack of all the additional trimmings tantamount to turning an epic into a clip. And if you track down the lyrics for the longer version, the title even makes sense. Throughout, Prince is complaining about his broken down “machine”, unable to find him the love he so desperately needs. Mandating that his emotionless pile of silicon chips receive a new “programming” to learn “women are not butterflies/ They’re computers 2/ Just like U Computer Blue”, he hopes for something more pure and spiritual. He rallies against anyone, or anything, that will “fall in love 2 fast and hate 2 soon/And take 4 granted the feeling’s mutual.” On Purple Rain, the track feels like a freaky fetish anthem, what with Wendy and Lisa going through the whole “is the water warm enough” spoken-word routine at the beginning. With the excised material reinserted, the song becomes a prophetic, almost painful search by one man for feelings that are meaningful, not mechanical.
Kind of makes you feel bad for this awkward middle child of a song, doesn’t it? Marginalized by its maker, forgotten by many who claim to know the property by heart, this is a clear case of commercial concerns taking the place of artistic needs. Finding a copy of the complete version is next to impossible, though Prince is known to favor live audiences with differing versions of the tune. Still, it doesn’t make life any easier for this misbegotten musical memory from an otherwise earth-shattering sonic statement. Both the album and the film made Prince a superstar on par with Michael Jackson and Madonna, destined to partly redefine the ‘80s in his own oddball virtuoso image. Sadly, “Computer Blue” remains the obvious dysfunction in this otherwise solid family unit.
By Bill Gibron
“Darling Nikki”
That Nikki is one slinky ‘ho.
Any hussy bold enough to get her rocks off in a hotel lobby, presumably in full view of any passerby, deserves a wax likeness in the Hooch Hall of Fame. Of course, we’ve no idea whether Miss Thang is holed up at in a Times Square ‘hotsheets’, or the local Ritz-Carlton, but Sweetheart has no shame either way.
Who’s Nikki, you ask? (And no, I don’t have her digits, so stop asking.) She happens to be the titular vamp in Prince’s scandalous 1984 tune, “Darling Nikki”, the most notorious track from his massive Purple Rain album, which followed in Thriller‘s footsteps as the pop crossover smash, while demolishing radio-influenced notions of “black” or “white” music, a social construct which sadly continues to flourish.
“Darling Nikki” tells the steamy tale of a “sex fiend” named “Nikki” caught—by His Royal Badness, of course—“masturbating with a magazine”. Our heroine predictably seduces the Purple One in a variety of situations, including an overnight romp at her “castle”, making it clear he should ring her up “anytime U want to grind”. Sonically, the song alternates between stripped-down percussion and swirling, melodramatic guitars; Prince, an unquestioned musical prodigy, handled all instrumentation himself. An insinuating keyboard whine—betraying a hint of femme fatale menace—starts us off, and we later hear slapping drum machine beats, possibly hinting at S & M play between Prince and Nikki. A standard-issue heterosexual male fantasy, as it were, not highbrow enough for Hefner, but more likely to appear in the pages of Penthouse.
And therein lay the problem. Purple Rain was released during “morning in America”, Reagan’s mildly jingoistic slogan for reassuring the citizenry that prosperous times were just around the corner, with a caveat. The good times didn’t necessarily include the freewheeling sexual bacchanalia of the 1970s, i.e., wife-swapping, nightclubs catering to group sex, or—for the AIDS-ravaged gay community—no-holds-barred bathhouses. The Gipper favored a more conservative, Rockwellian America, but also a wealthier one, apparently oblivious to the contradiction in dictating personal desires in an atmosphere of capitalistic freedom.
To wit, a watchdog group, the Parents Music Resource Center—headed by future Vice-Presidential wife Tipper Gore—formed, with the express desire to rate and label music releases, and our little Nikki was definitely on the radar. In fact, after Gore heard “Darling Nikki” blaring from her daughter’s stereo, the song became a keystone exhibit in their crusade, also rousing the ire of hypocritical Jimmy Swaggart and the Trinity Broadcasting Network, veteran purveyors of cheesy Biblical Camp. Eventually, the PMRC was able to coerce the recording industry to adopt “Parental Advisory” stickers, for placement on any albums containing sexually suggestive lyrics or profanity.
Although never issued as a single, “Darling Nikki” has firmly established itself in the audiosphere, inspiring numerous covers, including one from the Foo Fighters (!), which Prince ungraciously opposed, even refusing the band’s request to release their version. Shame on you, Prince Rogers Nelson. Are you trying to scare off Miss Nikki’s other admirers? We all heard you screaming in desperation after she left you alone in the sheets, “Come back, Nikki, come back!” Best crawl on back to Paisley Park ... Darling Nikki’s grindin’ without U.
By Terrence Butcher
“When Doves Cry”
On an old cassette tape from my youth, wedged in between “St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion)”, random interludes of my weird, nine-year-old ramblings, and three different versions of Huey Lewis’ “The Power of Love”, is arguably Prince’s greatest song he ever wrote.
“When Doves Cry” was a last-minute addition to his Purple Rain soundtrack album and was single-handedly written and recorded by the Artist Not Yet Formerly Known as Prince. According to Rolling Stone magazine, he supposedly told an engineer at the time, “Nobody would have the balls to do this. You just wait—they’ll be freaking.” And, of course, everyone did (freak that is). Unfortunately, not everyone did the same when it came to his semi-autobiographical movie.
In the long run, the album proved to be much more successful than the actual film. From July 7th to August 4th 1984, the song reined number one on the American music charts and Billboard named it the number one single of 1984. Since then, “When Doves Cry” has been hailed as one of the greatest songs of all time by various music magazines, as well as by MTV and VHI.
The iconic intro to the song—a dizzying electric guitar solo followed by a very computer-generated drum machine loop—still makes me want to wear a skin-tight, crushed velvet body suit with a white ruffled silk shirt and play air guitar. Although musically a bit dated, the lyrics are full of universal truths; of how we are sometimes a reflection of our parents—in our relationships, in our careers—and how we need to break away from them, to become our own person.
How can you just leave me standing
Alone in a world so cold?
Maybe I’m just too demanding
Maybe I’m just like my father, too bold
Maybe you’re just like my mother
She’s never satisfied
Why do we scream at each other?
This is what it sounds like when doves cry
It’s been said through the years that the song and the video evoke the theme of religion—most likely due to the white doves flying around in a church in the video. A staple on MTV in 1984, the video is difficult to take seriously (like most anything from that era) now. I wonder if Face-Off director John Woo got his inspiration for his whole dove motif from this video. What, with a naked Prince crawling out of bathtub around on the floor, his renaissance fair-style jumpsuit, and scenes of him driving that huge motorcycle cruiser from the film, it’s better to just listen to the song via MP3. At the time, it was considered controversial among studio execs who thought the video’s sexual nature was too much for television audiences to take. Some 25 years later, it’s nothing compared to what they show now.
Many artists have covered what is now considered to be Prince’s career-defining song, including Canadian folk/country band The Be Good Tanyas, southern rock/jam band Gov’t Mule, R&B singer Ginuwine and Irish troubadour Damien Rice. Other alternative versions have appeared in films such as the 1996 Leonardo DiCaprio/Claire Danes version of Romeo + Juliet and in the 2003 Sofia Cappola comedy/drama Lost in Translation.
Listening to that old blank tape now, I laugh at myself at how bad the sound quality is and the awkwardness of my recording method back then—holding that large box of a tape recorder up to the TV to catch those songs as the videos started—thank goodness for the Internet. It’s been 25 years, and many of those songs from the 1980s just don’t translate well now. “When Doves Cry”, however, is an exception. As Milhouse so cleverly put it in the “Lemon of Troy” episode of The Simpsons when he confronts another boy with the exact same name: “I guess this is what it feels like when doves cry.”
By Charlie Moss
“I Would Die 4 U”
“I’m not a woman, I’m not a man / I am something that you’ll never understand”
The stunning opening lines of “I Would Die 4 U” encapsulate as best as anything what it was that was so alluring, dangerous, mystifying and thrilling about Prince, circa 1984. Forget about the unmistakable spiritual implications of the song itself (we will get to that in a minute): this was an introduction to a figure as alien and sexually ambiguous as any pop culture iconoclast since Ziggy Stardust. Undoubtedly, for a time, it was the latter that troubled not only many a parent about Prince, but perhaps also unnerved an even higher number of insecure males unsure of whether it was okay to actually like this freak, motorcycle and harem of beautiful women or not. It was not that Prince was obviously or even possibly gay (he had already addressed that conundrum, however evasively, years earlier in the song “Controversy”), it was that his brand of carnality always had him unshakably poised in the role of the mysterious, Dracula-like aggressor. We, which is to say all of us who bought a ticket or spun the record, were vulnerable to his hypnotic spell.
If anything, “I Would Die 4 U” proves just how impossible that spell was to resist. Gliding in on a shimmering wave of a simple but irresistible keyboard melody and itchy percussion throb, the song is simultaneously majestic and intimate, a series of comforting promises written in the sky: “You’re just a sinner, I am told / Be your fire when you are cold / Make you happy when you’re sad / Make you good when you are bad”. That the song is cloaked in the guise of a pop love song, that elemental and broadly unspecific form that has served generations of pin-up heroes from the Beatles to the Jonas Brothers up to legions of squealing fans, highlights its singular brilliance as both a formal composition and a sly subversion of the same. Taken simply as a pop love song it is exemplary, but listen to what it says about the relationship between larger-than-life rock star and adoring fan: “No need to worry / No need to cry / I’m you’re messiah, and you’re the reason why.” Any hint of vulnerability in Prince’s words—indeed, in the title itself—is a ruse. He is our savior, seducer and pop idol all at once.
Because few rock stars ever explored the dimensions of their faith with as much conviction as Prince, the song’s conceit of placing him in the literal role of Christ (“I’m not a human, I’m a dove / I’m your conscious / I am love / All I really need is to know that you believe”) successfully mutes any blanket accusations of sacrilege. Rather, the song is an expression of the defining tension at the heart of rock and roll, the struggle between the spiritual and the sexual. It is a duality that perhaps no other popular figure of the last thirty years, not even Madonna in all of her insistent provocation, has addressed with as much illuminating depth and fire as Prince. “I Would Die 4 U” is the ultimate act of self-mythologizing, placed in the midst of an album that successfully crafted and launched upon the world the legend of it’s own enigmatic creator. Here, as in so much of Prince’s classic work, the Christian savior and the glamorous rock star are one and the same.
By Jer Fairall
“Baby I’m a Star”
If “I Would Die 4 U” was Purple Rain‘s spiritually anguished yin, then “Baby I’m a Star” was its cocky, narcissistic yang. As the former seamlessly bleeds into the latter with a big organ swell, Prince kicked the religious allegories and latent born-again-isms to the curb in favor of just having a good time in this already fallen world. No one’s going to get in his way or tell him that he’s a nobody because, as far as he’s concerned, he’s already a star.
The truth is that no one was disputing Prince’s purple majesty in 1984. With Purple Rain, he had a hugely successful album and a blockbuster movie; at one point during the year he simultaneously held the spots for #1 single, #1 album and #1 film in the U.S. So when he hollered, “Baby I’m a Star,” it wasn’t a delusion of grandeur—it was the gospel truth. But when Prince first penned his overweening ode to pop stardom, his celebrity status was not quite cemented.
Originally composed and recorded in 1982 during his prolific 1999 sessions, “Baby I’m a Star” found the 24-year-old musician on the precipice of superstardom — and this song seemed to anticipate his success. Propelled by a danceable, hard-to-deny Linn drum machine pattern and punctuated by Prince’s signature keyboards-as-horns, the song’s self-assertive speed and cocksure chorus was the biggest slice of rock and roll hubris this side of Rod Stewart’s “Do You Think I’m Sexy.” Just check out the brazen chorus: “Oh baby, I’m a star! / Might not know it now / Baby, but I are, I’m a star! / I don’t wanna stop, till I reach the top.”
His eyes on the prize, Prince was destined, if not downright overconfident, to achieve greatness. Lines like “Hey, check it all out / Baby, I know what it’s all about” and “Everybody say nothin’ come 2 easy / But when U got it, baby, nothin’ come 2 hard” only supported that swagger. By the time “Baby I’m a Star” appeared on Purple Rain, Prince had assuredly reached the top and lyrics like “Hey, I ain’t got no money / But honey, I’m rich on personality” just seemed laughably awesome.
The version that ended up on the album—and as a B-side on the “Take Me With U” single—was recorded live with the Revolution at the Minneapolis club First Avenue in 1983. The performance marked the debut of guitarist Wendy Melvoin. Prince reworked the song in the studio, keeping the audience clamor and applause and adding assorted effects and overdubs — most notably the faux string enhancements and the nebulous backmasking in the beginning that rips his critics: “Like what the fuck do they know? / All their taste is in their mouth / Really, what the fuck do they know? / Come on, baby. Let’s go crazy!” More than any other song on Purple Rain, “Baby I’m a Star” documents the unbridled energy and graceful sleaziness that was Prince live. If you listen close enough, you can hear purple chiffon and pelvic thrusts under all the come-ons.
By Jeremy Ohmes
“Purple Rain”
“Remember when we was young, everybody used to have those arguments about who’s better, Michael Jackson or Prince? Prince won!”
With this quote, the great Chris Rock comes down firmly on the side of Prince Rogers Nelson in the battle of pop icons. But in 1983, the answer wasn’t so obvious. Michael Jackson was in the midst of Thriller-induced megastardom. Then, the summer of 1984 came along and with it, the pop culture ubiquity of Prince. He even captured two titles Michael Jackson never could: Movie Star and Rock Star. And no other song cemented his mythical status like that of the title track to a movie, an album and an era—“Purple Rain”.
Recorded live at First Avenue, the Minneapolis club that hosted the Revolution vs. Time throwdowns in the movie, “Purple Rain” starts off simply enough. Technically an exploration of harmony in ballad format, it’s really just a man and his guitar, sounding lonely on purpose. The song has places to go—and go, it does. From resignation to urgency over an epic eight minutes and forty-five seconds—like gospel on rock & roll steroids. Prince builds emotion with his classic vocal take and busts the song in half with a ringing guitar solo, from which “Rain” intensifies with organs, cymbals and pleading. Finally, the song settles as piano and strings linger like sparks trailing the fireworks.
Lyrically, the question that endures 25 years later can be summed up thusly: what the hell is he talking about? Is it an allusion to the “Purple Haze” of his idol Jimi Hendrix? A lyrical rip from America’s “Ventura Highway”? Is he just really into purple? Regardless, Prince deduced the great secret of mass acceptance by keeping the lyrics decidedly elliptical. He never explains this fantastical “purple rain” or why it’s got him so morose at the start. On one listening level, ignorance is bliss so just sing along. But if you delve deeper, more questions arrive than answers.
In Thailand, the color purple represents mourning and Prince is certainly lamenting the end of a relationship through the first half of the song (“It’s such a shame our friendship had 2 end”). He seems the Prince of the Purple Heart, wounded in battle. As the song structure opens skyward, the lyrics reflect the change by discussing a larger relationship, that of a “leader” that will “guide” his prospects. Purple seems to take on the connotation of ultimate royalty—the King of Kings. Does Prince have a God complex? In one sense, he could be setting himself up as the Creator of this relationship. He “only wants to see you underneath the purple rain.” Kind of a poetic way of saying, “my way or the highway”. Or perhaps he’s contemplating his relationship with his Maker. Rain falls from the heavens after all. This reading seems a better fit for the spiritual transcendence reflected in the music.
The definitive answer never comes though, and the song is all the better for it. In the end, that sense of mystery keeps the track universal. There’s something bigger at work within “Purple Rain”, the holiest of rock anthems.
New York Times (Movie Review 1984)
Movie Review
Purple Rain (1984)
July 27, 1984
'PURPLE RAIN,' WITH PRINCE
By VINCENT CANBY
Published: July 27, 1984
''Purple Rain,'' which introduces Prince, the rising young rock performer, to theatrical films, is probably the flashiest album cover ever to be released as a movie. However, like many album covers, ''Purple Rain,'' though sometimes arresting to look at, is a cardboard come-on to the record it contains.
Prince's soundtrack recording has already become one of the summer's big sellers, while the almost confessional single, ''When Doves Cry,'' is at the top of the charts. The movie, which opens today at the Criterion and other theaters, may also become a hit, but it's of a different caliber entirely.
Here is a narrative film with music, shot and edited in the jazzily manic, staccato style favored by every rock documentary since ''Woodstock,'' at the center of which there is the small, slight, somewhat nervous figure of Prince himself. When performing onstage, as he is in much of the film, whether photographed frontally, in profile or silhouetted against a manmade aurora borealis, he can be a riveting spectacle. Off the stage, his screen presence is a pale reflection of the dynamic recording personality.
With his mass of carefully tended, black curly locks and his large, dark doe eyes, he looks, in repose, like a poster of Liza Minnelli on which someone has lightly smudged a mustache. When astride his large motorcycle, as he is from time to time, the image suggests one of Jim Henson's special effects from a Muppets movie: Kermit the Frog on a Harley- Davidson. In the depths of depression, pacing back and forth in his dressing room, he expresses all the pent-up rage of a caged mouse.
The screenplay, written by Albert Magnoli, the director, and William Blinn, and reported to contain certain autobiographical elements, focuses on the public and private torments of the Kid (Prince), a Minneapolis rocker on the rise. He's a driving young singer obsessed with getting to the top and away from his black father (Clarence Brown 3d), an alcoholic, wife-beating former musician, and his mother, played by the Greek actress Olga Karlatos, another show-biz dropout, who drinks along with dad, whom she can't quite bring herself to leave.
Also figuring in the story, which, without the music, would simply be another fantasy about teen-age angst, are Apollonia (Apollonia Kotero), a strikingly beautiful young woman, who not only is a singer but also understands the Kid's need for love; Morris (Morris Day), a cheerfully lecherous, outrageously vain, zoot- suited rock performer, who lusts after stardom and Apollonia, and other members of such Minneapolis groups as Prince's Revolution, Mr. Morris's Time and Miss Kotero's Apollonia 6.
Though Prince is somewhat less androgynous than Michael Jackson is, everything about him and the movie suggests cross-overs between opposites, or, at least, compromises between different modes of expression.
Prince's music, which lifts the movie without exactly carrying it, has black, white, rock and gospel roots. Prince's background is also mixed. The movie uses all the cliches of the rock concert film, except for the split screen, but it's supposed to be a seriously affecting romantic drama.
''Purple Rain'' is playing in theaters but it demonstrates the skills of the recording industry far more effectively than it does those of movie making. Though its women characters are supposed to be strong and independent, they are suckers for the men who knock them around with brutal regularity.
In one of the dizziest of the film's nonmusical interludes, the Kid takes Apollonia for a motorcycle spin in the country, tricks her into skinny dipping while he, fully clothed, looks on and then, when she tries to climb back onto the bike for the return to town, he maliciously teases her by pretending to drive away. Instead of belting him, as might be expected, she comes to understand his desperate longing for love and his inability - because of dad and mom - to give it. Where is Dr. Joyce Brothers when a kid really needs her?
With the exception of one comic bit based on the old Abbott and Costello ''Who's on first'' routine, ''Purple Rain'' is completely without humor. The only wit comes in the music and in some of Prince's lyrics, especially those for ''When Doves Cry,'' ''Darling Nikki,'' ''Let's Go Crazy'' and the title song.
The offstage stuff is utter nonsense. Mr. Magnoli, whose first theatrical film this is, has seen to it that the movie is so efficiently edited that the story ends sometime before the movie does. This is all right because it allows the movie to close with two successive musical numbers, which, in ''Purple Rain,'' are the only things that count.
Record Rain
PURPLE RAIN, directed by Albert Magnoli; screenplay by Albert Magnoli and William Blinn; director of photography, Donald L. Thorin; edited by Albert Magnoli; music by Prince; produced by Robert Cavallo, Joseph Ruffalo and Steven Fargnoli; released by Purple Films Company and Warner Bros. At the Criterion, Broadway and 45th Street; Gemini, Second Avenue and 64th Street; Art, Eighth Street and University Place; RKO 86th Street, at Lexington Avenue. Running time: 111 minutes. This film is rated R.
The Kid . . . . . Prince
Apollonia . . . . . Apollonia Kotero
Morris . . . . . Morris Day
Mother . . . . . Olga Karlatos
Father . . . . . Clarence Williams
3d Jerome . . . . . Jerome Benton
Billy Sparks . . . . . Billy Sparks
Jill . . . . . Jill Jones
Chick . . . . . Charles Huntsberry
Dez . . . . . Dez Dickerson
Brenda . . . . . Brenda Bennett
Susan . . . . . Susan