Greatest Albums- I'm that bored....

#1 Prince and The Revolution - Purple Rain
Released: June 25th 1984

1. Let's Go Crazy 10/10
2. Take Me With U 8/10

3. The Beautiful Ones 9/10

4. Computer Blue 7/10
5. Darling Nikki 9/10
6. When Doves Cry 10/10
7. I Would Die 4 U 10/10
8. Baby, I'm A Star 9/10
9. Purple Rain 11/10

Pint-sized perv Prince is sometimes unfairly put out in Michael Jackson's shadow. Of course, in terms of physical stature this happens with everyone in terms of Prince but musically I find it very hard to go along with 'Thriller is the most seminal and greatest album in recorded history'. Don't get me wrong, I love Thriller, it was an unbelievable achievement in 1982 and in the horrible music industry that we have now, it's even more of one. In an album now you get 4 decent songs and up to 10 filler tracks, all poor and hardly noteworthy by white and black acts. The whites are in love with their guitars and tales of 'real life' with tight black jeans and an appalling sense of fashion. With the black people it's delusions of grandeur taken a step further, many believing they are Michael Jackson reincarnate or simply those who came from a rough background and won't stop speaking fast over music because of it.

Michael Jackson made an album of NO FILLER in....Thriller, however, a couple of tracks like Baby Be Mine and even Thriller itself seemed out of place. Prince took it further two years later, when he made an album of NO FILLER and it sounded COMPLETE. There was no filler tracks and everything melded together. That's why Purple Rain is the best album I've ever heard. It certainly isn't as popular as Thriller or even Bad but in my opinion it's a greater achievement.

The songs display Prince's song-writing and composing ability more than any others. The lyrics, written entirely by Prince and more grounded in experience than any of his pop contemporaries are accompanied by experimental pop music, which shifts the gears and genres so many times that although the songs are different entities, they are all bound by the same threads and backbones. Darling Nikki gained the album a first: the Parental Advisory message which we see daubed on so many albums and singles now all spawned from Prince's cheeky (some would say sensual) tale about a sexual encounter with a nyphomaniac in a hotel, who the protagonist saw 'masturbating with a magazine'. Mentions of sex toys further compounded the outrage of the simple, head-scratching church going Americans.

One of the other points of the album is that it's purely enjoyable, there is not a track that you can't dance or cry to, it's just a masterpiece of accessability just like Thriller but without the duff track that a 'masterpiece' usually contains. Computer Blue is the weakest track on the album but by no means is it duff. It's a straightfoward dance number...fuck knows what it's about but that doesn't seem to matter because it fits into the album so well. Let's Go Crazy and I Would Die 4 U are joyous. The first is a song that everyone will dance to because the song simply compels it and the second a lovely...love song which is just as dancable, yet equally rousing and easy to sit and listen to.

The Beautiful Ones is a gorgeous (must stop using this word) love ballad of heartbreak and yearning for a lost love and Take Me With U is a nice, fresh sounding duet which has an ability to make me smile no matter what. Prince sounds demonic and warning in When Doves Cry, a self-confession of fault and flaws sung to the most experimental music on the album, it still sounds fresh now. Baby, I'm Star effortlessly inflames the sense of potential in all of us and confidently breezes through to the last track which is by far the most atmospheric, beautiful and emotional rock song ever written.

Purple Rain feels like sadness and awe at the same time. It's 8 mins 42 seconds of genuis from start to finish. Every note of music has been poured out with honesty and emotion and denotes further Prince's genuis and mastery in flexing his genre-changing muscles (however small they are). The string arrangement is beautiful and Prince, who's vocals i've briefly touched upon, has a pained, howling voice in the end which ecaspulates acceptance, resignation but despair. The work of his backing group The Revolution are brilliant, but that work is all orchestrated by and fitted around the great voice of Prince himself who was and is a fucking star.

The album - soundtrack to the eponymous cult film starring Prince - won an Oscar for Best Original Song Score, stayed at the top of the Billboard 100 for 24 weeks and is certified 13x Platinum as of 1996 achieving 13 million sales. Hey, it may not be as much as Thriller, Bad or even Dangerous, but in terms of quality it's at least on a par with and in my opinion, better than those 3 MJ albums. Purple Rain shows how untouchable Prince is to copycats these days, none sound like him, none look like him. It's simply an important album and a gift from heaven (as Prince may put it).

I suppose I have to mention the film, which I love. It can help those who are finding the songs hard to understand (idiots) to get them in the films framework. For When Doves Cry the comparisions to the singer's parents can be understood with the Kid's parents in the film. Morris Day and the Time are also in the film...which makes it fucking brilliant..but I really could go on about it all day so I'll stop now.

Unfortunately and understandably Purple Rain's 25th anniversary was overshadowed by Michael Jackson's death on the same day. Fake death as a ploy? We can wish. However, just like Thriller this album will stand the test of time and when the unfortunate day comes that Prince pops his 6 inch heels the last star will have died and the music industry will be an even more desolate place, with no messiah to save it.

JPH

P.S. I know I must have mentioned the words 'album' and 'song' many times but fuck it.