What’s That Sound? The creaking in Prince’s classic ‘Sometimes It Snows in April’
It’s no secret that Prince was in a league of his own when it came to music, but his contributions to film are far more polarising.
Purple Rain, for one, has been criticised for countless reasons, from the placement of its musical cues to the execution of its heavier themes, like home life dynamics and treatment of women. Perhaps the most notable is that it’s been accused of misogyny with little effort to resolve these issues, even though some argue that these dynamics are themselves a comment on sexism in the family in a more constructive and thought-provoking sense.
Prince’s follow-up, Under the Cherry Moon, was even less popular. A story about a scammer, Christopher Tracy, who falls for the rich woman he’s attempting to scam, Under the Cherry Moon was ripped apart for prioritising style over substance and not knowing what it was actually trying to be. The soundtrack, however, Parade, seemed better as a standalone, and not just because it gave us the timeless hit ‘Kiss’.
Parade wasn’t immune to criticism at the time, either, and some considered it a stray from Prince’s roots as well as a direct disregard for the communities he emerged from. But most people saw it as a major progression from his earlier records and a masterful blend of styles he hadn’t previously been associated with, like jazz and psychedelic pop.
More than anything, the album showed just how sharp Prince was when it came to storytelling – knowing exactly when to pull things back or build them up to take you through the same emotional arc the film was aiming for. Take the final track, ‘Sometimes It Snows in April’. It’s a quiet reflection on loss that lands after his character dies in the film. Slower and more stripped-back, it’s the kind of song he’d sometimes use to close his live shows, easing the mood before sending everyone off into the night.
The lyrics also discuss the hope of one day reuniting in heaven, providing a softer moment among the more energetic tracks on the record, and it’s incredibly intimate, too, achieved through accompanying sounds like a chair creaking, making it feel like you’re right there in the room, feeling all of the emotions that Prince is singing about.
This is what you hear on the song: that subtle creaky noise throughout is actually the sound of a chair that they left in to make the emotion feel more raw and palpable, as though the song is closer than it actually is. As his sound engineer, Susan Rogers, recalled to Uncut, “He didn’t normally do that. We lit candles, the lights were dimmed. Lisa was on piano, with Wendy right next to her. We wanted him to play it – all he would do was the vocal.”
She went on, “We realised that the chair that Wendy was sitting in was really creaky. I went out to change it, and Prince said, ‘No, leave it, I want it like that.’ It was done live, in a darkened room. Quite stunning.”
While Under the Cherry Moon might have been a forgettable experience for anyone who actually saw it, Parade was a major moment for Prince and a definitive reset that proved his place as one of the most innovative players in the game, but it also showed off his knack for emotive storytelling and setting the scene, transforming music from a transactional experience to one far more visceral.
