Prince dying was clearly bad news. Can’t say I was ever a massive fan – certainly never disliked him/his music.  Prince was one of THE pop stars when I was growing up. Michael Jackson, Madonna, Prince, Shakin’ Stevens. They were just the big stars of music. You get older and you become aware of talent being a thing rather than just that they’re pop stars. 

Prince was unquestionably talented, his guitarring is beyond compare. He had a run of success with amazing songs. Purple Rain, 1999, Diamonds and Pearls, Sexy MF….I could go on. Not for long and I’d be talking about things like Batdance. 

Then he stopped being the pop star and was kind of the odd former pop star. TAFKAP and the a symbol. He was a slave, considered himself emancipated by record labels (he wasn’t the only one), of course he was Prince so he made his point with words and images and people got confused. 

The story of him not being called Prince anymore replaced the story of him being part pop music’s elite.

Then there didn’t seem to be a story for a while.

Then he was the amazing-but-infrequent live performer but there didn’t appear to be hits anymore. There would be the odd rumour about odd things in his personal life. He was a bit like the adult Michael Jackson¹,  a bit hidden away (which, of course, proves any rumours) and not really doing popular music anymore. 

In the background of pop culture little things would happen like he’d become religious or seem like he was a bit down on women (not sure why I’ve used ‘or’ there as this was very much an ‘and’ moment, the ‘women as inferior to men’ phase seems to be an example of a bad things one hears regarding Jehovah’s Witnesses).

Then he gave an album away with The Daily Mail. Which is a bit like **find simile for something you’re not really that interested in being given away by something you really dislike**.

And then he died. And that’s my rushed biography of Prince. You can see why the papers and media outlets go with other people to write obituaries.

It had been a while since I’d listened to any version of Purple Rain. That’s a fucking good song isn’t it? What I never had any idea about was that the version released was basically a live track from the first time it was performed publically. He took a chorus/verse out and added some instrumentation but not much. I’ve embedded the video below, might not last long because I think it gets taken down. You HAVE to not be impatient about the intro: STAY WITH IT. (The commentary is interesting)

RIP Prince Rogers Nelson

¹Sex with adults, deep voice (different) often looked quite white, pop megastar, weird (same).