A Track-by-Track Rundown of ‘Purple Rain’

 

“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.

Monte Williams

"Take Me With U" / "The Beautiful Ones"

 

“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.

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.

Dave Heaton

"Computer Blue" / "Darling Nikki"

 

“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. 

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. 

Terrence Butcher

"When Doves Cry"

 

“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.” 

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. 

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. 

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. 

Tim Slowikowski