What was the final song Prince ever played live?
Not many artists are usually conscious that they are playing their final show during the event. For every travelling musician, their time onstage is usually just one of the many highlights of their day, and putting together songs that will make audiences go crazy is just the happy payoff of working hard in the studio half the time. Prince would always give his audience a show, though, and even with his death weeks away, he would give his fans their money’s worth with a trip back to the ‘Purple’ glory days.
Because if there was any one thing that Prince should be remembered for, it’s his ability as a performer. He may have been brilliant in the studio, but he was willing to put himself through hell onstage until he dropped, to the point where he even struggled to walk towards the end of his life and often was seen using a cane.
He still wanted to deliver his music wherever he could, and the ‘Piano and a Microphone’ tour was meant to be a more mellow affair than most were used to. No more of the sexual being strutting his stuff like at the Super Bowl. That same man was much more fragile these days, but he could still deliver whenever a microphone was in his face.
Aside from putting together more new music in January of that year with the album HitNRun Phase Two, this tour was a look at the more intimate side of Prince’s catalogue. There were still some classics spread throughout the night, but this felt like Prince was embracing his inner Joni Mitchell, down to his posthumous album, Piano and a Microphone 1983, featuring him performing the song ‘A Case of You’.
There were even a few surprises spread throughout the night of April 4th, 2016, including Prince performing a cover of the holiday favourite ‘Linus and Lucy’ from the Peanuts franchise. Even if you don’t know anything about Prince’s back catalogue, you know there was only one way for him to cap off the night.
So, what was the final song Prince ever played live?
For his final encore, Prince exploded into ‘Purple Rain’, eventually blending it with a medley of other songs like ‘The Beautiful Ones’ and ‘Diamonds and Pearls’. While fans had already gotten a look at his delicate side when performing tracks like ‘Sometimes It Snows in April’, hearing him go through this short medley of songs feels spiritual in the way he delivers them.
Originally, Prince had worried the song was too similar to a hit by Journey. “I want to play something for you, and I want you to check it out,” Prince told him. “The chord changes are close to ‘Faithfully,’ and I don’t want you to sue me.”
Considering that ‘Purple Rain’ was meant to be the kind of ballad that could compete with any other pop star on the charts in 1984, hearing him sing weeks away from his death makes the entire sound almost like a gospel song, especially when he gets into the ad-libs when ‘The Beautiful Ones’ begins.
If anything, this performance just affirms the status of Prince as a god amongst musicians. For all of the great contemporaries that he had on the charts during his prime, like Madonna and Michael Jackson, Prince was the kind of musician who could still wow a crowd even without the need to put his body through that much. A tour called ‘Piano and a Microphone’ may sound a little bit drab on the surface, but when you get someone of Prince’s calibre to do it, one piano and a microphone are all you really need.
