Prince
'Albums — remember those? Albums still matter. Like books and Black lives, they still matter.' — on stage at the 2015 Grammy Awards
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
The people around him ⏳🌊
- FamilyJohn L. Nelson
His father, a jazz pianist, whose stage name became his son's name; the son worked his father's musical ideas into songs and credited him as a co-writer.
- PatronBernadette Anderson
The mother of his friend André, she gave a teenage boy with nowhere to go her basement, his first rehearsal space.
- RivalryMichael Jackson
Born the same year, 1958, the two were rivals keenly aware of each other throughout the 1980s, and “Thriller” and “Purple Rain” became the twin peaks of Black pop in that era.
- ColleaguesWendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman
On guitar and keyboards in the Revolution, they were musical partners deeply involved in his sound and arrangements from “Purple Rain” through “Parade.”
- FriendshipMadonna
In 1989 he co-wrote and sang “Love Song” with her on her album “Like a Prayer.”
- MentorLarry Graham
Bassist for Sly and the Family Stone and, around 2001, the spiritual mentor who led him into the Jehovah's Witness faith.
I. A boy from the North Side · 1958–1976
(Birth) Prince Rogers Nelson was born in June 1958 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His father, John L. Nelson, worked in a factory by day and by night played piano in a jazz band called the Prince Rogers Trio. The boy's name came from that stage name. His mother, Mattie Shaw, was a jazz singer who sang with the trio. Two years later his sister Tyka was born, and there were half-siblings as well, from each parent's earlier marriage. (Frailty) He was a sickly, small child. In a 2009 interview he revealed that he had suffered epileptic seizures as a boy and had been teased for them at school. To make up for those wounds, he explained, he chose to be as flamboyant and as loud as he possibly could. (Separation) His parents split up when he was about seven. Picking out by ear the melodies he heard on his father's piano, the boy taught himself the keyboard. After his mother remarried he clashed with his stepfather and moved to his father's house, but he could not stay there long either. In his mid-teens Bernadette Anderson, the mother of his friend André Anderson, took him in, and he lived in her basement. (Basement) That basement became his first rehearsal room. With André and his cousin Charles Smith he formed the band Grand Central and played the stages of the Black neighborhoods on the city's north side. He taught himself guitar, bass, and drums, and listened deeply to records by James Brown, Sly Stone, Jimi Hendrix, and, unexpectedly, Joni Mitchell. Funk rhythm, rock guitar, and the delicate harmonies of folk singer-songwriters blended in one boy's ear in those years.
II. A contract at nineteen · 1976–1980
(Demo) In 1976 he began frequenting the small studio of recording engineer Chris Moon. Moon handed the teenager the studio keys and taught him how to work the recording gear. A demo tape made there reached local advertising man Owen Husney, who became his first manager and drew interest from a number of labels. (Contract) In 1977, at nineteen, he signed a three-album deal with Warner Bros. That a newcomer would produce his own records was a rare condition at a major label in those days. His insistence on controlling his own music began with this very first contract. (Solo) On his 1978 debut album, “For You,” he handled the writing, arranging, singing, and producing himself, and the credits listed twenty-seven instruments that he played. The recording ran far over budget, and sales fell short of expectations. The next year “I Wanna Be Your Lover,” a single from his second album, reached No. 1 on the R&B chart, and at last his name became known. For the stage he put together a band with André, Dez Dickerson on guitar, Matt Fink on keyboards, Bobby Z. on drums, and others. (Provocation) In 1980 he opened for funk star Rick James on tour. The friction between the two was famous, and James reportedly complained that his young rival was copying his act. That same year “Dirty Mind,” recorded almost entirely alone in his home studio, combined a frank way of talking about sex with the sharp-edged sound of new wave rock. Sales were modest, but critics embraced it as a new voice crossing the line between Black music and white rock.
The song that first made his name after his debut album faltered. Made by a twenty-year-old who played nearly every instrument himself, it is the fruit of his one-man studio era.
- He sings it from start to finish in a light voice pitched far above his usual range (falsetto). The boyish voice gives the courtship a feeling at once shy and bold.
- Over the steady beat of the disco era, guitar played in short, clipped strokes (cutting) locks in with a bouncing bass. He played every one of these instruments himself.
- It is told as the confession of a young man with nothing to his name, laying out his circumstances as he declares his heart, so a quiet urgency seeps into a song that sounds light.
- After the singing ends, a long instrumental stretch follows, with keyboards and guitar trading lines as if improvising. It is a passage that conjures a band playing on stage.
III. The Minneapolis sound · 1981–1983
(Sound) His sound soon came to be called by the name of a city. Sharp synthesizers took over the short, punchy lines once played by horns, and chopped funk guitar and the cool texture of new wave were laid over the rigid beat of a drum machine. Critics called it the Minneapolis sound. In 1981 “Controversy” refined that grammar and revealed his habit of mixing sex, religion, and politics on a single album. (Alter egos) He gathered musicians from his hometown to form the band The Time and the female trio Vanity 6, writing and recording most of their songs himself while putting the pseudonym “Jamie Starr” in the credits. In 1983, when Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis of The Time were snowbound while working on another artist's record and missed a show, he dismissed the pair. Striking out on their own, the two made Janet Jackson's “Control” in 1986, and the Minneapolis sound spread even beyond his hands. (1999) The 1982 double album “1999” made him a national star. “Little Red Corvette” became his first single to reach the top ten of the Billboard singles chart, and MTV, which rarely played videos by Black artists, aired his music videos often. On the album cover the band name “The Revolution” was tucked away in small print. Keyboardist Lisa Coleman was joined in 1983 by guitarist Wendy Melvoin, and the two became his closest musical partners. (Rival) Michael Jackson's “Thriller,” released the same year, was a mountain he had to climb. Born in the same year, 1958, the two were rivals who watched each other closely. When renewing his contract with his managers, he set a condition: that they get a major studio to make a film starring him.
The song that carried the Minneapolis sound across the country. The title track of the album on which the name the Revolution first appeared, it captures the moment he began sharing his voice with a band.
- In the intro, a voice slowed and pitched down enters as if speaking, laid beneath the festive song like an eerie warning.
- He does not sing the first verse alone but trades it line by line with Lisa Coleman, Jill Jones, and Dez Dickerson. The voices follow one another like runners passing a baton.
- Over the rigid beat of a drum machine (the Linn LM-1), a fat synthesizer line imitating horns repeats. It is a textbook example of how the Minneapolis sound is built.
- Set against the Cold War fear of nuclear war, it pours into buoyant party music the paradoxical feeling of dancing before the world ends.
IV. Violet rain · 1983–1986
(Film) The film “Purple Rain” was shot in Minneapolis in the fall of 1983. Its hero, “the Kid,” grows up with quarreling parents, and his father is a pianist who lets no one hear his songs. It was fiction, but many passages resembled his own youth. He did in fact credit his father as co-writer on songs such as “Computer Blue” that were built on his father's musical ideas. (Peak) Released in July 1984, the film and its soundtrack stood at the very center of American popular culture that year. The album held No. 1 on the Billboard album chart for 24 weeks, and “When Doves Cry” became the year's best-selling single. For a time he had the No. 1 film, the No. 1 album, and the No. 1 single in America all at once. The following year he won the Academy Award for music (Best Original Song Score). (Shadow) Success brought turmoil as well. The campaign of the parents' group PMRC, which took issue with the explicit content of the track “Darling Nikki,” led to parental advisory stickers on records. His failure to show up in January 1985 for the recording of “We Are the World,” the African famine relief song, also made the papers. Instead he contributed an unreleased song to the charity album. (Turn) He did not repeat the same formula. In 1985 “Around the World in a Day” veered toward psychedelic pop, and in 1986 “Parade” was the music for “Under the Cherry Moon,” a black-and-white film he directed himself. The film was shunned, but the album's “Kiss” reached No. 1 on the singles chart. When the tour ended that fall he disbanded the Revolution, and Wendy and Lisa left his side as well.
Used in the scene in “Purple Rain” where his parents' fighting and his own romance seem to overlap. It became the best-selling single in America that year.
- The bass found in most pop songs is absent here. It is a well-known story that he pulled the bass track near the end of recording, and because of that gap the song sounds strangely suspended in midair.
- After opening with a short, flashy guitar solo, the song is carried throughout by the dry beat of a drum machine and a simple keyboard line.
- Voices overdubbed many times rise and fall from low notes to a high falsetto, and at the climax a cry close to a scream bursts out.
- At the end a keyboard melody reminiscent of Baroque music flows in, and the song seems to settle calmly to a close.
The film's climax, and the song that became synonymous with his name. It began as a live recording at a hometown club and carried all the way to the rain of the Super Bowl 23 years later.
- It is built on a 1983 live recording from Minneapolis's First Avenue club, over which strings and other sounds were added in the studio (overdubbing). The air of the audience lingers at the song's foundation.
- It opens with a widely ringing guitar chord, and Wendy Melvoin is said to have had a large hand in that chord's voicing. The construction blends the slow gait of gospel with the rock ballad.
- After the singing ends a long guitar solo follows, topped by falsetto wails. What the song truly wants to say seems to lie in this playing more than in the lyrics.
- At the end only piano and strings remain, slowly fading away. A song of more than 8 minutes closes like a ritual.
- His performance of the song in actual pouring rain at the 2007 Super Bowl halftime show in Miami is often ranked as the greatest halftime show ever.
The song reached No. 1 on the singles chart in the year the film “Under the Cherry Moon” flopped. He took back a song he had originally given to another band and remade it.
- It was originally a demo he gave to the band Mazarati; he reclaimed the recording, arranged by producer David Z, and laid his own vocals and guitar on top.
- There is no bass; only a short, repeating figure on dry acoustic guitar and a drum machine are left. The arrangement shows that the more instruments are stripped away, the sharper the rhythm becomes.
- He sings the entire song in falsetto, using breaths and short cries as if they were instruments. A playful, self-assured manner rides on that voice.
- Here and there a sharply clipped electric guitar cuts in, flaring like sparks in the empty space.
V. Signs of the times · 1986–1992
(Camille) Even after the band scattered, he never stopped recording. One project after another took shape and then collapsed: an album by 'Camille,' an alter ego whose voice he sped up on tape until it turned high and androgynous, and a three-disc set called 「Crystal Ball.」 When Warner refused the three-disc version, he pared it down to two, and in 1987 「Sign o' the Times」 came out. Sales fell far short of 「Purple Rain,」 but critics still name it his finest album. (Home base) In 1987 he opened Paisley Park, a recording studio and rehearsal space in Chanhassen, a suburb southwest of Minneapolis. It became the base where, for the rest of his life, he would make music, stage concerts, and finally live. Late that same year he pulled 「The Black Album,」 already pressed, just before its release. His explanation was that it felt too dark and too full of anger, and the following year he released the deeply spiritual 「Lovesexy.」 (Collaborations) He crossed paths often with other stars. On Madonna's 1989 album 「Like a Prayer,」 the two co-wrote and sang 「Love Song.」 That same year his soundtrack for the film 「Batman」 reached number one on the US album chart. 「Nothing Compares 2 U,」 which he had written in 1985 for The Family, a band he had assembled, went to number one around the world in 1990 when the Irish singer Sinéad O'Connor recorded it. (Generations) In 1991 he released 「Diamonds and Pearls」 with his new band, the New Power Generation. On this album, which brought a rapper into the band and embraced hip-hop rhythms, 「Cream」 topped the singles chart. Past thirty, he was learning the language of the generation that had grown up listening to him, and competing with them on their own ground.
Having disbanded the Revolution and been left on his own, he recites the news of his time with quiet composure. It is the opening track of the album of the same name, regarded as his finest.
- The dry bass tones of a machine that summons recorded sounds from a keyboard (a sampler) and a drum machine alone create an almost empty space. Stripped of flash, the sound gives the song its weight.
- Over a blues framework whose chords barely change, the song circles the same spot to the very end. That monotony only builds the tension.
- In a calm, unraised voice he lays out the news of the 1980s, such as AIDS, drugs, gang violence, and the space shuttle disaster. His delivery is closer to reportage than to song.
- Between verses, a short blues guitar breaks in like a sigh. The song also opens the show in the concert film released the same year.
VI. A name without a name · 1992–2000
(The contract) In 1992 he signed a new contract with Warner. The press reported it as a 100-million-dollar deal, and he was even given the title of company vice president. But conflict soon surfaced. He wanted to release records as fast as he made them, while the company, with the market in mind, wanted to space releases further apart. Above all, he could not accept that the company owned the master rights (the masters) to the recordings he had made. (The symbol) On June 7, 1993, his thirty-fifth birthday, he announced that he was changing his name to an unpronounceable symbol. The press called him 'The Artist Formerly Known as Prince,' and he took the stage with the word 'slave' written on his cheek. He was mocked for it at the time, but today it is reassessed as an early case of a musician confronting the question of ownership head-on. (Independence) In 1994, bypassing Warner, he released 「The Most Beautiful Girl in the World」 through an independent label, and it reached number one on the UK singles chart. Having fulfilled the rest of his contract, he left Warner in 1996, and that November he released 「Emancipation,」 a three-disc album whose title means liberation. In 1998 he sold 「Crystal Ball」 directly to fans through telephone and internet orders. (Marriage) In February 1996 he married the dancer Mayte Garcia. (Inheritance) Meanwhile, musicians who had grown up listening to him were stepping forward. In 1994 TLC covered his 「If I Was Your Girlfriend」 on 「CrazySexyCool,」 and in 2000 D'Angelo made no secret, on 「Voodoo,」 of the rhythms and vocal textures he had learned from him. When his music publishing contract ended in late 1999, he returned in May 2000 under the name Prince.
In the midst of his fight with Warner, he released this song on an independent label, bypassing the record company. It reached number one on the UK singles chart during the period when he worked under a symbol instead of a name.
- A soul ballad that begins in soft falsetto from the very first note. Rather than belting, he holds his voice back and sings almost in a whisper.
- In the chorus, layers of vocal harmony pile up, and the song swells with warmth.
- Credited to a symbol rather than a name, the song's success is often cited as proof of his claim that a hit could be made without a record company.
VII. The final stage · 2001–2016
(Faith) Around 2001, guided by Larry Graham, the former bassist of Sly and the Family Stone, he became a Jehovah's Witness. 「The Rainbow Children,」 released that same year, was a jazz-tinged album built around the theme of faith. He is said to have increasingly rewritten the explicit passages of his old songs when he performed them onstage. That year he remarried, but this marriage, too, ended in 2007. (Return) Opening the 2004 Grammy Awards, he performed a medley of 「Purple Rain」 and her 「Crazy in Love」 with Beyoncé, and he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with introductions by Alicia Keys and OutKast. The album 「Musicology」 and that year's tour were both major successes. At the Super Bowl halftime show in February 2007, he sang 「Purple Rain」 in a pouring rain. (Ownership) When he reunited with Warner in 2014, he was reported to have regained the master rights he had long sought. The following year, from the Grammy stage, he declared that albums still mattered, and he held a concert for peace in Baltimore, then roiled by the death of Freddie Gray in police custody. (Exit) In 2016 he toured with nothing but a piano and a microphone, playing old songs and telling stories from his childhood. In the early hours of April 15, the private jet carrying him home from a show in Atlanta made an emergency landing in Moline, Illinois, and six days later, on the 21st, he was found dead at Paisley Park. He was fifty-seven. The cause of death was an accidental fentanyl overdose. He left no will, and the settlement of his estate was not concluded in court until 2022. Paisley Park became a museum.
Lesser-known stories
The title track of 「Purple Rain」 is easily taken for a studio recording, but its foundation is a live recording of a benefit concert for the Minnesota Dance Theatre, held on August 3, 1983, at First Avenue in Minneapolis. It was also the night Wendy Melvoin first appeared as the Revolution's guitarist. In the studio, strings and other sounds were layered over this recording and parts were cut, and that version went on the album. The concert scene in the film was so powerful that the original night stayed hidden for a long time. He often used pseudonyms on songs he gave to others. 'Jamie Starr,' the producer of The Time and Vanity 6; 'Christopher,' the writer of the Bangles' 「Manic Monday」; and 'Alexander Nevermind,' the writer of Sheena Easton's 「Sugar Walls」 were all him. Because he deliberately hid his credits, many listeners at the time had no idea these songs came from the same hand. After his death, his longtime friend, the political commentator Van Jones, revealed that Prince had quietly supported a number of social causes, including #YesWeCode, a program that teaches coding to young Black people. He reportedly wished his name to stay out of it. Paisley Park had a storage room called the vault (vault), and it is said to have held an enormous trove of unreleased recordings. Posthumous releases drawn from it include a 1983 solo piano recording, 「Piano & a Microphone 1983」 (2018); 「Originals」 (2019), a collection of his original demos for songs given to others; and 「Welcome 2 America」 (2021), recorded in 2010.
Notes on terms 📚🔎
Falsetto
(Meaning) The Italian falsetto comes from falso, meaning false. The Korean word gaseong (假聲, 'false voice') likewise means a false (假) sound (聲). The name itself carries the sense of a voice put on separately, not the one you speak with every day. (In pop) A singing technique in which the vocal cords vibrate lightly to produce notes far higher than one's normal range. The sound is thin and breathy, and it comes across as soft and dreamy. When you mimic a cartoon baby's voice to make a friend laugh, that feeling of your voice suddenly flipping upward is exactly falsetto. Prince sometimes used this voice for an entire song.
Funk
(Meaning) In English, funk was originally a vulgar word for the smell of sweat or a musty odor. Among jazz musicians, it is said to have turned into a term of praise for raw, earthy playing. (In pop) A Black dance music created in the late 1960s by James Brown and others. Rhythm, rather than flashy melody, takes center stage: bass, drums, and short, choppy guitar lock together and get the body moving on its own. Like the shared sense of the beat in gym class when everyone jumps a long rope at the same instant, the instruments snap together on one beat and then scatter. (Elsewhere) Punk, which Korean writes with the very same word, peongkeu, is an entirely different term for the rough, fast rock music of the 1970s.
Synthesizer
(Meaning) The English synthesize means to combine several elements into one, that is, to synthesize. A synthesizer is a machine that creates sound by synthesizing electrical signals. (In pop) An instrument in which electronic circuits produce a sound when a key is pressed. It can imitate pianos, strings, or brass, and it can also create sounds the world has never heard. Prince played on the synthesizer the short, punchy lines once given to brass instruments like trumpet·saxophone. Just as a cook mixes ingredients and adjusts the heat to create a new flavor, you turn knobs to adjust a sound's pitch, thickness, and resonance and shape the sound you want. (Elsewhere) In chemistry, synthesis means reacting several substances to create a new one.
Drum machine
(In pop) An electronic machine that produces drum and cymbal sounds according to a pre-programmed beat, in place of a human drummer. With the arrival of machines like the Linn LM-1 in the early 1980s, it came into wide use in recording studios. Since it never tires or drifts off the beat the way a person does, it gives a stiff, precise feel. Like the notes in a rhythm game falling down the screen to a fixed beat without a hair's deviation, the same pattern repeats exactly. Prince set the machine's cold beat against funk's hot guitar to create a distinctive sound.
Minneapolis sound
(In pop) The name for the sound that Prince and the musicians around him created in Minneapolis in the early 1980s. Its hallmarks were mixing the cool, sharp textures of new wave rock into funk rhythms, and favoring synthesizers over brass and drum machines over human drummers. Just as the same kimchi stew tastes different from one household to the next, it is a case of one city's musicians influencing one another and giving a genre a flavor all their own. Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, who had worked alongside Prince, carried this sound over to Janet Jackson's records and spread it even further.
Master rights (masters)
(Meaning) The English master means not only an owner but also the original from which all copies are made. (In pop) The first original recording completed in the studio is called the master, and the right to own that original is called the master right. When records sell or songs are used in streaming·ads, the money and the decision-making power usually go to whoever holds the master rights. Even when singers wrote their own songs, the record company often held the masters. Picture a class anthology in which you wrote the stories and drew the pictures, but the school keeps the original files, so you can't reprint or revise it as you please. This is why Prince fought his record company for so long. (Elsewhere) At English-speaking universities, a master's refers to a graduate degree.
Overdubbing
(Meaning) A word combining over (on top of) and dub (to add to a recording), meaning to record sound layered on top of something already recorded. (In pop) A method of recording new instruments or voices one layer at a time while listening to a previously recorded performance. Thanks to this, one person can record the drums, then add bass while listening to them, and then guitar and vocals in turn, creating the sound of an entire band alone. It is like finishing a painting in art class by applying paint one layer at a time over a sketch. Prince's debut album was made this way, and 「Purple Rain」 was completed with sounds overdubbed in the studio onto a live recording.