8. Prince and the Revolution, "Purple Rain"

 


Not to disrespect Prince in any way, since he was clearly one of the greatest musical talents of our time and deserves any possible accolade you can give him, but I'm puzzled overall by the rankings of his albums on this list.  This is certainly a fine album but, to my mind, pales in comparison to 1999.  And it's not just me; lists of Prince albums ranked usually have Sign O' the Times at the top, and even though my personal preference is with 1999, I certainly can't argue with that.  But this being the highest ranked Prince album?  I'm mystified.

Let us first take account of the absolute audaciousness of a 26-year-old deciding that what he really needs is a biopic.  That's right, at the time this album was released, along with the film of the same name, Prince was a mere 26 years old and was already a rising star, largely due to Controversy and 1999, the albums that preceded it.  (I should note at this juncture that I've never seen the movie, so this entry is based solely on the album and not the film.)  

This was his first number 1 album and produced his first number 1 single, "When Doves Cry," which, if you were alive in the 80s, is imprinted on your brain like a migration route to a Canada goose.  It's actually kind of a weird song, if you think about it; it has no bass, and a strange and moody feel with lyrics that seem sad without actually being that clear:

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

I've always liked the odd phrasing of the opening lines "Dig if you will the picture/Of you and I engaged in a kiss."  Something about the formalism of "if you will" paired with the archaic slang "dig" really appeals to me.

The album certainly has one of the best opening tracks of all time, "Let's Go Crazy," an absolute banger with that weird faux-preacher spoken word intro:

Dearly beloved
We are gathered here today
To get through this thing called "life"
Electric word, life
It means forever and that's a mighty long time
But I'm here to tell you there's something else
The afterworld

Imagine my surprise to learn that the pre-chorus to this song is not "Nothing's gonna let the elevator bring us down," as I have thought since the 80s, but is in fact "Are we gonna let de-elevator bring us down?" with the "de-elevator" apparently a reference to Satan.  

As he typically does, Prince moves effortlessly between genres on this album.  Apart from the psych-soul-funk of "Doves," there's the pure funk-rock of "Crazy" and the disco of "I Would Die 4 U."  Your album could not be cool in the 80s without a Parental Advisory sticker and Prince was pretty much a walking Parental Advisory sticker, but he made sure by including in "Darling Nikki" the lines "I met her in a hotel lobby/Masturbating with a magazine."

The last song is the title track, a wild power ballad (so much so that Prince contacted members of Journey to apologize for any similarity to "Faithfully," a monster ballad hit for them) that also incorporates the feel of gospel and soul, a song so powerful Pitchfork named it the Best Song of the 80s.  You wouldn't know this from listening to the radio, but the song has like a five-minute instrumental outro/extended guitar solo in which Prince shows off his chops that made him one of the best, or maybe flashiest, guitar players of his time.

Despite all this majesty, the album has some weak spots.  It's borderline cruel, after the exuberant let's-party-all-night groove of "Crazy," to get dropped into the drab Apollonia duet "Take Me With U."  And "Computer Blue," with its possibly pornographic intro ("Wendy?/Yes, Lisa?Is the water warm enough?/Yes, Lisa") never really achieves the launch velocity we want in a Prince song before devolving into an unlisted instrumental that's not that interesting.  And is very, very 80s.

Listen, it's a great album, and would be a career-defining moment for most musicians, but this is not most musicians, this is Prince.  And if you're going to put a Prince album in the top 10 (and you should put a Prince album in the top 10), it's not the one I'd pick.  

Is this album in my personal Top 100? No.

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