On Friday April 21 died one of the great icons of pop. Multi-talented, multi-instrumentalist, chameleonic… Prince's death leaves a bitter aftertaste, similar to that caused the decline of other bright stars like Michael Jackson or the latest David Bowie. However, few artists have such a rich and varied work as the Minneapolis genius left.
Not only for the works signed under the name had he taken from the group where his mother sang, The Prince Roger Trio. His legacy remains in all the albums produced in her lap, in the songs he wrote for other artists and the hundreds and hundreds of recordings of issues that still remain in their vault. Its multiple nature translates into a variety of sounds, textures and genres with experimenting, playing and finally cohered in a particular work. Although a challenge, we summarize in ten hits the trajectory of an artist who illuminated the world, languished after (like many others) and re-emerged in the last decade, to finally leave us in suspense with his first solo tour, a series of shows he called ‘Piano and a Microphone’.
The first sign came while returning home from a concert in Atlanta. Their flight was forced to make an emergency landing in Moline, Illinois, to end up being hospitalized hours later. The Minnesota Star echoed ensuring the artist “alive and well” was.
On the morning of Saturday, April 16, he is summoned via Twitter a dance party at their home-studio at Paisley Park. According to the chronicle of Minnesota Star, Prince “wanted to show off his new purple Yamaha piano (he played ‘Chopsticks’ and a brief instrumental passage with a classical flourish) and his brand-new metallic purple guitar (he didn’t play it; more on that later)”. Nobody knew that tonight would be his last public appearance, or that next Thursday would find his lifeless body in an elevator of the same Paisley Park. He was 57 years old.
We invite you to a review of the musical career of Purple Prince. His successes and his tears.
His first successes
Early Prince began to discover their talents playing the piano from his father, a legacy that left him when he divorced his mother, telling Prince with only 7 years. Would be followed by electric guitar and even a dozen instruments, highlighting quickly in the competitive music scene of the moment and releasing their first two albums of funk-pop in the late 70s.
His first masterpiece arrives in 1980 with ‘Dirty Mind’, an amalgam of funk, new wave and pop. But the most groundbreaking was the theme, furrowed with stories of a fiery sexuality and explicit references to oral sex, threesomes and even some incest. No rock or funk album had never dared to so much. ‘Controversy’ followed him with an album of the same name that persevered in the same vein. But it was in ‘1999’ where his first smash hit Prince marked, selling nearly three million copies
A step that would make small compared to the rush that represented ‘Purple Rain’.
The rise of Purple Prince
With ‘Purple Rain’, Prince became a superstar. Ten million copies were sold only in the US, and remained two years as number one. His film version not only took their music to the big screen, but also a psychedelic, flamboyant and androgynous styling that would immortalize him in the coming years. Also highlights ‘When Doves Cry’, another essential.
In 1986 he launched the intricate and strange ‘Parade’, penetrating deeper into psychedelia, as ambitious as any art-rock album of the 60's, but with an unmistakable funk sound. 'Parade' gives us 'Kiss', one of his greatest hits.
Unstoppable, defiantly eclectic and chaotic. Prince's ambitions grow with the album “Sign 'o' the time” and the opening song of the same title. Prince delves into the tradition of chaotic double albums that had previously supported The Beatles with 'Exile at Main St'.
Decline and rebirth
By the end of the decade, Prince leaves obscurantism and immorality that characterized The ‘Black Album’ to fall into a commercial disaster after another.
A ‘Lovesexy’ would follow ‘Graffiti Bridge’, the sequel to ‘Purple Rain’. This first, despite the confused ‘Lovesexy’, highlights ‘Alphabet Street’.
Although there were new successes in the coming years, as ‘Diamonds and Pearls’ who coined with his newly formed The New Power Generation, Prince is immersed in a series of legal battles with the Warner label. It was at that time, during the 90s when tattooed the word "slave" to protest for the contractual conditions imposed by Warner, and changed its legal name to an unpronounceable "love symbol", emblem of his twelfth album. ‘The Gold Experience’ becomes a perfect picture of this turbulent decade in which two other great successes appear: ‘The Most beautiful girl in the world’, a manifesto of the will wielding musician, and ‘Gold’.
Of his last albums we remember the symbolic 'Emancipation' and 'HiTnRUN: Phase One', which together with its sequel would be the last studio albums published by the artist. As a bonus track we leave you with the tribute to 'Purple Rain' that Bruce Springsteen gift to us in his last concert in Brooklyn.
