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40 Years of Prince’s ‘Purple Rain’

After 40 years, Prince and The Revolution’s ‘Purple Rain’ remains a towering influence over all of music. Explore the soundtrack’s lasting legacy.

By Brandon Ousley

Prince and The Revolution inset photo

We know the opening sermon over the haunting synth organ all too well: “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here 2 get through this thing called life…”

Every once in a while, there are cultural watersheds that perfectly capture the zeitgeist while cementing an artist’s place in pop history. In the summer of 1984, Prince’s launch into the pop stratosphere fully crystallized with Purple Rain. It was more than a box office-shattering rock drama and mega-selling soundtrack. It was a larger-than-life phenomenon — a transcendent multimedia event that merged Prince’s pop crossover dreams and funk-rock rebellion with musical genius. The seminal moment Minneapolis’ funky daredevil star, multi-instrumentalist, and prodigious upstart carved himself into the Mt. Rushmore of American music.

Purple Rain
Prince And The Revolution
2020
Rock, Funk / Soul, Pop, Minneapolis Sound, Funk, Pop Rock, Soundtrack
Vinyl, Album, Reissue, Remastered, Repress, 180g
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Purple Rain’s success at the box office and on the charts partly underscores its impact. At one point in 1984, Prince not only secured the number-one film in America but the number-one album and single simultaneously. When Purple Rain entered the album chart at the peak position on August 4, 1984 (dethroning Bruce Springsteen’s blockbuster, Born in the USA), it wouldn’t drop that spot until the top of the following year. It even earned Prince an Academy Award for Best Original Score.

Yet these heights lead to one question: why?

Prince refined all facets of his artistry, and it clicked at the right time. While he was branded as a straight-ahead R&B wunderkind in his early years (something of a burgeoning successor to Stevie Wonder), many critics and listeners alike could detect the barely 20-year-old virtuoso’s musical talent was hard to classify from the start. Aside from the fact he could write, self-produce, and play nearly every instrument, his eclectic blending of genres was unique.

His second album, 1979’s Prince flirted with crunchy hard rock and country pop influences (“Bambi,” “With You,” and “Still Waiting”) alongside its slick pop-soul and funk edge. 1980’s genre-busting, lustful Dirty Mind and its more freewheeling follow-up Controversy flipped the switch, synthesizing risqué funk with minimalist new wave, intricate Beatles-esque melodies, guitar-laden pop, and electro-based R&B ballads all at once.

1999
Prince
1982
Pop, Funk, Minneapolis Sound, Pop Rock
2 x Vinyl, LP, Club Edition
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The commercial breakthrough, 1982’s 1999, marked a culmination of the Minneapolis Sound, the futuristic, synth-crazed funk Prince helped pioneer at the onset of his career. Only this time, he mastered its tough, knotty dance grooves with accessible song structures — making them street for the clubs but commercial and insular enough for the MTV generation and white radio. The first two mainstream hits of his career, the album’s apocalyptic-leaning title track and “Little Red Corvette” became MTV and radio staples at the expense of nothing: the sexually-charged lyrics and themes that were synonymous with Prince by that point hadn’t eased up, as he pushed the boundaries of what was considered acceptable radio play without compromising his spirit.

But he wanted more. During 1999’s supporting tour, Prince mapped out his next endeavor. While writing and producing hits for offshoot acts like Vanity 6 and The Time, he also assembled a backing band, The Revolution, that would be the ideal fold for his incredible abilities. With drummer Bobby Z, keyboardist Matt Fink, bassist Mark Brown, and guitar-keyboard duo Wendy Melovin and Lisa Coleman, Prince could now expand on his musical ideas with a tight, yet wildly energetic jam-based sound.

Prince also expressed interest in a movie loosely based on his life. An array of financial hiccups and personnel hurdles aside (protégé Vanity famously dropped out from the project, leaving Prince to cast the then-unknown Apollonia Kotero as his love interest), filming for the semi-autobiographic flick went underway with Prince starring in the lead role and featuring all-new songs (most of which he had already debuted in August 1983 during a benefit concert at Minneapolis’ famed First Avenue club). Even with 1999’s relative success, Warner Bros. executives didn’t know how it would fare.

It turned out to be a triumph no one, including Prince, imagined. The opening salvo, “Let’s Go Crazy” continued the afterlife theme of 1999’s title track, thumping as a guitar-laced call-to-arms about letting go of one’s inhibitions and embracing the unknown. The album shifted into the neo-psychedelic pop of “Take Me With U,” an affectionate string-laden duet between Prince and his love interest in the film, Apollonia.

Love’s bliss is soon replaced with jealousy, uncertainty, and desperation, and “The Beautiful Ones” sets these emotions to a scorching slow jam on unrequited love. Written for Susannah Melvoin, the twin sister of guitarist Wendy, whom Prince met in May 1983, Prince delivers one of his impassioned vocal performances, shifting between a gentle falsetto and orgasmic scream as the song builds around gentle synths and slow drum patterns. It can be argued that its quiet storm laid the sonic blueprint for alt-R&B, with many artists taking cues from its purple-hued seduction.   

The album’s mid-section pacing is exemplary, offset by a rousing string of up-tempo dance jams and ballads. The clubby workout “Computer Blue” kicks off with its driving drum loops and soaring guitar licks and Prince questioning his inner self, searching for salvation from technological alienation. The emotional intensity spills over into “Darling Nikki,” a grinder about a one-night tryst with a “sex fiend” that landed Prince in hot water when Tipper Gore (wife of future US Vice President and environmentalist Al Gore) overheard the song in her daughter’s bedroom, prompting her to form the Parents’ Music Resource Center. The organization led a crusade to clean up pop music, resulting in the Parental Advisory stickers that pepper many hip-hop, R&B, and pop music releases today. 

If Prince changed the way listeners bought music with “Darling Nikki,” then Purple Rain’s avant-garde centerpiece, “When Doves Cry,” a song about familial trauma that sounds oddly seductive, rewrote the playbook on what modern pop songs traditionally sounded like. Opening with a blistering guitar riff, Prince famously removed the bass line in favor of splashy, string synth chords, overdubbed vocals, and intricate LM-1 drum patterns, making it one of the unique minimalist pop singles in the chart’s history. The one-two punch of the new wave devotional “I Would Die 4 U” and the celebratory funk jam “Baby I’m A Star” leads into the album’s anthemic closer, “Purple Rain,” where Prince slips into the role of minister and arena rock god. It’s a spiritually-driven, lighters-in-the-air motherlode that builds from a simple chordal opening to a massive crescendo with strings, five minutes of fiery Hendrix-meets-Santana soloing, and Prince’s singular voice. 

While the Albert Magnoli-directed film might not have aged all that well, its significance in pop culture is undeniable. Perhaps it’s best to remember it as an ‘80s time capsule more than anything: the new romantic clothes, big hair, the neon-colored sets, and the fast-paced editing techniques that were MTV-coded are all archetypes of the flashy decade. But its musical performances, particularly Prince’s, remain dazzling as ever, showcasing the Minneapolis master in all of his guitar-slinging glory, packing every bit of emotion and panache he could muster. 

It all speaks to the sky-scraping power and musical legacy of Purple Rain itself. Prince consolidated his strengths and envisioned an album that had something for everybody. The payoff would ascend him to the top of the pop and rock stratosphere. And in 1984, he had the world in the palm of his hand. Never again would he scale such heights or have a desire to do so. Four decades later, it still reigns as a thrilling ride of sex, salvation, and rock and roll.            

Brandon Ousley (he/him) is a music journalist, writer, and editor from Chicago. So far, he’s penned for publications like Bandcamp Daily, The Coda Collection, Albumism, and Discogs, specializing in soul, jazz, funk, and more. When he’s not writing, he’s at a record shop somewhere, or praising Stevie Wonder’s genius on X.   

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