The 20 best Prince songs ranked
It seems we all have one album that comes along and changes everything at some indefinable period, early on in our lives, but there’s also a second formative blow that resonates a little later on and scores our coming-of-age years. The epic perturbing allure of Prince provided that for a generation. His strange yet seamless ways welcome you into a more bohemian world, and this is perhaps why he is also a true artist’s artist, inspiring a legion of future musicians with his singularity.
Dougie Payne of Travis was one of those and he told us: “I first saw the video for ‘When Doves Cry’ and I fell in love. I was about 12 when it came out and I bought the 12” straight away. That was like striking oil because you had this brilliant back catalogue. From that moment on, I was a pop kid and any pocket money I got; I was straight to the record shop to buy pop music, and this record, in particular, is pure pop perfection. For me, Prince bestrode that decade like a little colossus.”
Indeed, the 1980s belonged to Prince in the same way that The Beatles straddled the ’60s. It was an age of invention and Prince perfectly had a foot in both camps, as he said himself: “Technology is cool, but you’ve got to use it as opposed to letting it use you.” He had more than enough skill in his little finger to master technology and make it his servant. So, progression and dazzling dalliance become the central tenets of his work and he created one of the most celebrated discographies in history with this potent purple combination.
We’ve delved into that discography and picked out 20 gems from his various projects. We’ve then gone to the trouble of ranking these classic tracks for you considered perusal. Above all, the list proves the breadth of what Prince was capable of. He was a unique talent and these masterpieces just about scratch the surface.
The 20 best Prince songs ranked:
20. ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’
Of course, it would be Sinead O’Connor’s version of the epic ballad that would captivate the globe in the early 1990s. However, Prince’s version of the track is arguably more pertinent. Aside from the obvious connection an artist imbues their work with, Prince’s original take is far spikier, tinged with resentment and retaliation, than O’Connor’s more emotional version.
Written for his side project, The Family, and featuring on the eponymous 1985 album, the track should always be remembered as a sign of Prince’s indefatigable versatility. He was as able to make you weep as well wiggle your backside on to the dancefloor. The only downside is that this track’s attempt to make you weep has always seemed just slightly obvious failing to capture the true complexity of heartbreak. A point hilariously proven by the fact he wrote it pining for his housekeeper to return from holiday.
19. ‘Let’s Go Crazy’
Album openers are a tricky thing to master. However, in his opus, Purple Rain, Prince delivered perhaps the greatest of his career. The greeting chords are deeply morose, with a funeral-style organ delivering a melancholy moment before ‘Let’s Go Crazy’ erupts into pure and unbridled joy.
Making good o the title of the song, Prince kicks things into overdrive right away, blasting out the blocks and infiltrating the airwaves with a sense of enthused electricity that is hard to escape. It may not be regarded as Prince’s most artistically sound piece, but there’s something in ‘Let’s go Crazy’ that captures the dancing soul within us all.
18. ‘Sexy MF’
One feeling that Prince always exuded was an unstoppable sense of sexiness. Despite his diminutive figure, Prince operated as a giant of sexy tunes. As time went on, he became more and more overt in his explicit lyrics. In 1992’s ‘Sexy MF’, he went gung-ho and laid it all out in the title.
Released before he would devote himself to his faith and become a Jehovah’s Witness, the lyrics are as sordid as a back-alley love affair. “I got wet dreams comin’ out my ears,” is one of the more vivid lyrics that make this one of Prince’s rawest forays into the art of lovemaking.
17. ‘Pop Life’
Prince getting psychedelic is something any music can should be able to get behind. He already had the outfits to match so when his sound turned paisley with 1985’s Around the World In a Day, it somehow seemed like the most natural evolution of his progressive exploration towards future focussed music.
That alone is a feat given that at the time psychedelia had slid well out of favour. This came during a period when Prince was “swallowing up Magical Mystery Tour and Sgt. Pepper” according to his cohort ‘Z’, and the Beatles’ ability to take something wildly inventive and make it digestible for the masses shines through with tracks like the dazzling ‘Pop Life’.
16. ‘Baltimore’
Prince was gearing up for a new chapter when he sadly passed away and the stirring strings on his Black Lives Matter inspired track, ‘Baltimore’, is evidence that it might have been his most emotive and engaged. There are shades of Nina Simone’s ‘Mississippi Goddam’ about the directness of this melodic rally cry.
His experimentation is parked in favour of boldness evocative of the journey of music gone by. With heart his impressive and somewhat underrated vocals also shine through as he wails with passion and sincerity: “4 Michael Brown or Freddie Gray / Peace is more than the absence of war.”
15. ‘Soft and Wet’
“Hey, lover, I got a sugarcane / That I want to lose in you,” is certainly a startling opening line. From then on, the song continues to be dirtier than a coal miner’s shovel, but this is no mere smutty show-off – the year was 1978 and such overt sexuality was emblematic of Prince’s desires to subvert commercial norms. In an authentic fashion he really didn’t care that this would surely be censored to obscurity by the mainstream.
Beyond the potency of the eroticism, Prince pairs the whole thing with a disco energy with jazz inflections that singled him out as an entirely original musician. The synths are ahead of their time while the funk riffing is decidedly rooted in Parliament illustrating the breadth of his knowledge even at the age of 20.
14. ‘Money Doesn’t Matter 2 Night’
It might have only peaked at 23 in the US charts, but retrospectively the full scathing force of the song has increasingly been felt. Perhaps it was the economic climate that it was welcomed into that subdued the reaction, but now the attack on consumerism and the undemocratic way that politics conducts itself holds an air of scary prescience.
Instead of matching this with an angry wall of noise, Prince masterfully does the opposite: he produces a silken soundscape that simply serves as a bed for his political derision to roar up from. In the end, with nothing to mask it, this protest was deemed too political for MTV to even air the track.
13. ‘Sing O’ The Times’
Prince was unbeatable in his ability to flit between genres. It’s one of the reasons he can be considered the greatest guitarist of all time. As well as delivering pop gems, danceable grooves and songs to make you cry giant tears, he also had the odd baroque pop epic up his perfectly purple sleeves. ‘Sign O’ The Times’ is proof of such skill.
After sacking his backing band in 1987, few thought the little genius could match up to his previous work, but the titular album would become one of his greats. In this track, he not only manages to address crucial issues such as the Challenger space disaster, AIDS, and the crack epidemic, but does so without feeling contrite or conniving. This was an artist doing what artists do best: observing and retelling the world in their own view.
12. ‘Screwdriver’
If Prince was in Cheap Trick it might sound a little like ‘Screwdriver’. This power-chord chocked garage rock riff carries the air of rock ‘n’ roll at its most simple. And it suits him. He’s always got the ability to switch up the simplicity on a dime, and as such there is always a sense that the song is liberated rather than restricted by its driving riff.
With a punchy chorus, this deeper-cut offers up one of the most direct tracks in his entire discography. He tossed out 39 albums into his work and with it he proves that he can anything, and, indeed, he did do everything. He also ties it in with the whole Prince oeuvre by pinning it on a double entendre.
11. ‘I Would Die 4 U’
This, the seventh track on his immortal Purple Rain album, sees Prince make one of the most important and revolutionary declarations of his career: “I’m not a woman /I’m not a man / I am something that you’ll never understand.”
The song’s origins date back to at least 1982 when it was tried out during soundcheck for a Controversy Tour show in San Francisco. In the studio, Prince used the LM-1 drum machine to programme the reverberant drum track that underpins this innately danceable offering. One of only 500 models, Prince used his faithful LM-1 even when better drum machines came onto the market, running various guitar pedals through the line input to create unique beats.
10. ‘Raspberry Beret’
Originally recorded in 1982, this uncharacteristically innocent track was eventually reworked by Prince and his re-formed Revolution backing band, which was then made up of Brown Mark, Bobby Z on, Wendy Melvoin, Lisa Coleman and Doctor Fink. This classic incarnation of the lineup would part ways in 1986 but is immortalised in this groove-laden Around the World in a Day single.
Apparently, Prince had planned to release ‘Paisley Park’ as the album’s lead single on February 27th, 1985, the day after he bagged three awards at the Grammys. However, he ended up not releasing anything at all, probably in an effort to avoid negative publicity after he refused to turn up for the ‘We Are The World’ superstar charity collaboration.
9. ‘Mountains’
While his pop star chops are clear for all to see, Prince also delved into the depths of classic psychedelia n occasion too. ‘Mountains’ is perhaps the final foray into such territory, but the 1986 song is still as potent as a Grateful Dead birthday cake.
With the decade of the synthesiser truly taking hold, Prince creates a soundscape that is inescapable. Swirling notes work together to create an, at times, impenetrable wall of sound. All topped by Prince’s perfect falsetto vocal, the song likely takes inspiration from Kate Bush’s effort from the prior year, Hounds of Love.
8. ‘When Doves Cry’
Another track written for Purple Rain now. ‘When Doves Cry’ is arguably the most poignant track in Prince’s catalogue. It sees the musician explore his anxieties about becoming just like his parents while conjuring up a series of incredibly ornate images, ‘An ocean of violets in bloom’ being one of the most intoxicating.
Prince played each and every instrument on ‘When Doves Cry’, later removing the bass part to give the track that characteristic sense of weightlessness. Pegg McCreary, Prince’s engineer on this song, told Billboard that Prince knew he was on to a winner as soon as he decided to remove the bass track:” He felt this was the best and he knew he had a hit song… so he decided to do something really daring. That’s what Prince was all about.”
7. ‘Kiss’
One of the sexiest tracks in Prince’s red-blooded catalogue, ‘Kiss’ was originally written for the band Mazarati, formed by Revolution bassist Brown Mark. They were signed to Prince’s Paisley Park record label and asked Prince for a song for their debut album. He obliged, dashing off a short blues-infused demo in a break between Parade sessions. Mazarati worked with producer David Z to transform it into something, funky, tactile and utterly new.
After listening to the reworked track in the studio, Prince promptly took the song back, re-recording the vocals and adding a chorus-drenched guitar break in the chorus. He then tacked it onto his Parade album and ran for cover. Mazarati, meanwhile, were left without a hit song or a paycheck.
6. ‘Little Red Corvette’
Prince’s first Top Ten Hit, ‘Little Red Corvette’ helped propel Prince into the upper echelons of pop stardom. The track was dreamt up by Prince after he fell asleep in the back of singer Lisa Coleman’s 1964 Mercury Montclair Marauder after a long night in the studio. As Prince drifted in and out of sleep, fragments of lyrics arrived in his head. Eventually, he had enough material to finish the song and bring it into the studio.
The track would go on to inspire Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks to create ‘Stand Back’. Nicks and her new husband Kim Anderson were driving North to Santa Barbara for their honeymoon when she first heard the single. Humming along to the track, she found new lyrics coming to her, leading her to demand her husband pull over and buy a dictaphone from the gas stations so she could record a rough demo.
5. ‘1999’
What exactly was Prince is a question you often find yourself asking in a multitude of ways. What genre was he? Was he a mainstream star or an avant-garde artist in disguise? Like a little package of purified artistry, he seemed unburdened by any of the external shackles that usually creep into the creative process.
Most musicians would think ‘Well, I have such a catchy radio-friendly riff here, perhaps I should get rid of the odious introduction’, but Prince wasn’t most musicians, and although seems strange to get hung up on the opening seconds of the song, they really do seem to say so much about him. Thereafter, he seems to almost wade into the repetition of house music to whisk up a wild storm with just enough flourishes to keep things as fresh as the North Sea.
4. ‘Darling Nikki’
The risqué lyrics to Darling Nikki landed Purple Rain in hot water upon release. However, it is a mark of Prince’s uncompromising approach that when a commercially damaging Parental Advisory label was slapped on the record, he refused to yield on his tale of a “sex fiend”.
This lude recital is a daring one and it still gives the song a bristling edge even if his liberated approach to sexual lyricism is now widespread. In truth, Prince was a daring artist and the sparse instrumentation of the track seems to lay that bare. On top of that, you’ve got a groove that would even encourage a condemner’s hips to shake at least a little bit.
3. ‘I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man’
Prince bestrode the 1980s like a little colossus. His dominance was so valiant that even when it appeared that things were falling apart, his glittering purple armour was never chinked. In a few short years prior to Sign O’ The Times, his trusted band, the Revolution, had disbanded and his attempts to craft the alter ego ‘Camille’ had run aground without a release. None of these setbacks even came remotely close to hindering his progress. In fact, he barely even viewed them as setbacks.
His talent was simply bursting at the seams, and that made him inviolable to flippant little things like failed projects or not having a band. His only issue was his own unwavering perfectionism, and that’s the best achilleas heal in the book when you’re on a golden run. Through good grace, determination and pure awe-inspiring artistry, Sign O’ The Times not only kept that run going but, depending on who you ask, sailed it to its peak. The beauteous melody to this jam is such a toe-tapper, that it becomes clear that music merely poured out of Prince like spiritual sap from a tree, and this is some of the sweetest.
2. ‘The Beautiful Ones’
Prince produced, arranged, composed, and performed ‘The Beautiful Ones’ without any external input. For the track he laid down all the vocals, bass, electric piano, synthesizers, electric drum machine and cymbals. And yet, like a freshly pampered poodle, not a hair is out of place in his pine for passion.
Sweet, sparse and sultry, the song comes to a scintillating conclusion when he breaks out with a shredded vocal volley at the end. In a classic post-modern songwriting style, this isn’t just Prince showing off his skills are injecting a bit of pace to the track but telling the story with an uptake of angsty pace.
1. ‘Purple Rain’
When Prince asked none other than Stevie Nicks to help him with this track, she simply responded: “’Prince, I’ve listened to this a hundred times but I wouldn’t know where to start. It’s a movie, it’s epic.” Indeed it was a movie and it was cinematic to the nth degree.
This was the measure of Prince as an artist. As Waterboys frontman Mike Scott said, artists like Prince “seemed to see so much and explore issues much more deeply than most people.” Prince’s ballad is not just a timeless radio hit, beyond the catchy and emotive instrumentation is the following motif: “When there’s blood in the sky… red and blue = purple. Purple rain pertains to the end of the world and being with the one you love and letting your faith/God guide you through the purple rain.” Not many artists could turn such profundity into an ear-worming success.
