The singer Prince said influenced him more than anyone: “I used him as a role model”
In the grand scheme of musical history, is there really an accurate way to describe what Prince has done for the world?
Sure, he had one of the best runs as one of the almighty kings of the 1980s, but there are more than a few times when he seemed to defy trends and make the kind of career moves that no one else could have thought of. A lot of it seemed like it was coming from another planet, but ‘The Purple One’ always knew the effort it took to make the greatest songs of his generation.
After all, he had modelled himself after the hardest-working musicians of his time, and he didn’t take a second of time on this Earth for granted when he got behind the microphone. It was going to take a lot for him to break through, and by combining the poetry of Joni Mitchell, the stage presence of James Brown, and the guitar stylings of Santana, he created this unbelievable middle ground between taste and catchiness that was impossible to turn away from whenever he played.
But what’s even crazier is how prolific he could be with any instrument. The number of albums that he put out in such a short timeframe almost defies explanation half the time, but that only comes from someone who’s treating music as more than a hobby. This was a higher calling for Prince, and long before he had his first hits, artists like Stevie Wonder were showing him how to use his talents for good.
Wonder was far from the first Motown artist to become a mainstream success, but when looking at his track record, there’s hardly anyone who comes close to what he could do. His run throughout the 1970s is some of the most enriching music anyone has ever made, and when he reached Songs in the Key of Life, rarely has an album provided the musical equivalent of a ray of sunshine across its runtime.
Prince wasn’t about to compete with Wonder, but he knew the piano legend was playing something that he seemed familiar to him, saying, “I use Stevie Wonder as an inspiration, whom I look up to a great deal just for the way that he crafted music and his connection to the spirit. And boy, back then I used him as a role model in trying to play all the instruments and be very self contained and keep my vision clear.”
But if Wonder used his music to express joy in the world, Prince could use his songs to say whatever was on his mind. While a lot of the records he released during his Warner Bros debacle featured a lot of internal frustration, you can hear every single piece of his soul on his classics records, whether that’s him writing a pop juggernaut like ‘Raspberry Beret’ or making every single person cry their eyes out on tunes like ‘Sometimes It Snows in April’.
Even when looking at his later records, Prince had evolved into the kind of artists that could hold his own with Wonder. The pianist already had the kind of chops to compete with the greatest jazz artists of all time, but listening to how Prince approached his craft, he was more than welcome to play in nearly any genre he could think of, whether that was rock and roll, jazz, funk, or the kind of styles that don’t even have a name yet.
A lot of his best work was still wrapped up in Wonder’s influence, but it wasn’t a case of Prince ever trying to copy what his idols were doing. He was his own unique entity, and even years on from his death, people are still trying to unpack just what the hell he had left for us after years in the limelight.
