The classic album that Prince was scared of: “It’s my albatross”
There’s a good chance that Prince could have put out anything in the 1980s and made it work. Although the decade may have gotten off to a rough start, ‘The Purple One’ started to garner a massive following as soon as MTV kicked in, making him one of the darlings of the channel off the back of songs like ‘Kiss’ and ‘1999’. For all of the adoration, though, one project hung like a shadow over Prince for the longest time.
Then again, Prince seldom got the chance to become one of the biggest stars in the world. Coming out of the late 1970s, the singer was still virtually unknown out of his native Minneapolis, pioneering the sounds of the city and channelling them into his music on albums like Dirty Mind and Controversy.
Once the pop world started to shift to the visual medium, Prince would be a natural on MTV, with albums like 1999 becoming his first significant foray into the world of music videos. Although Prince had already been pioneering his trademark approach to videos, he wanted to dream bigger when making his next project.
Being one of the few times that he featured his backing band, The Revolution, Purple Rain would become one of the most iconic musical entities of the early 1980s, with songs like the title track and ‘Let’s Go Crazy’ remaining staple of his catalogue until the day he died. While the idea of a blockbuster album was good enough, Prince wanted to branch out into a true blockbuster.
Leading up to the album’s release, Prince decided that he wanted a movie deal, working with Warner Bros to help him secure any kind of feature film to go along with the project. While contemporaries like Michael Jackson were turning music videos into their medium, Purple Rain’s cinematic counterpart would be the ultimate example of a rock and roll-themed movie.
Set in the tradition of Elvis and Beatles movies, Purple Rain was a dramatic depiction of life in Minneapolis, showing Prince playing a down-and-out musician from a broken home. Although the movie would become one of the biggest attractions in movie theatres that year, Prince would say that he was scared by how much success the movie and album garnered.
When talking about the film’s legacy, Prince would say that he was intimidated by how well the album did, remarking, “In some ways, Purple Rain scared me. It’s my albatross, and it’ll be hanging around my neck as long as I’m making music.” Considering what went on to get the album and movie made, Prince would go on to make even more daring strides with each subsequent project.
Testing the limits of his creative potential, Prince would go on to make another album/movie combination with the album Parade, which was to feature as the soundtrack to his dramatic role in the film Under the Cherry Moon. Prince didn’t limit himself to the movies he starred in, either, later turning in an album of funk-rock classics to use for Tim Burton’s iteration of Batman.
Then again, Prince wasn’t afraid to celebrate his legacy, either, turning in classic takes of ‘Purple Rain’ whenever he took to the stage. Prince may have been scared of the legacy he was leaving behind, but that “albatross” of Purple Rain is just a reminder of how well the music resonated on first listen.
