Written by Gabe Fine
The indelible lyrics that begin “Let’s Go Crazy,” the first track on Prince’s iconic 1984 rock musical album Purple Rain, took on a very different sentiment when the groundbreaking musician was declared dead at 10:07 a.m. on April 21: “Dearly beloved/ We are gathered here today to get through this thing called life…/ But I’m here to tell you/ there’s something else:/ the after world.”
Outpourings of praise, gratitude, and mourning began to flow almost immediately from all over the world and from all sorts of professions. Broadway musical casts like The Color Purple sang versions of his songs in homage. Actress Jada Pinkett Smith remembered with pride that Prince showed her early “the power of living one’s own life by one’s own rules and no one else’s,” while musicians like Jill Scott and Questlove, both outspoken fans, expressed a more intense pain, tweeting, “I just wanna wake up from this nightmare,” and “I can’t breathe right now,” respectively. President Obama issued a statement, Bruce Springsteen started out his next show with a cover of “Purple Rain,” and Reverend Jesse Jackson offered words of condolence. The vast array of friends and fans that found it necessary to honor the pop star is indicative of the wide influence Prince had in the world, not only as an innovative musician, but also as a visionary entertainer and as a symbol for sexual exploration and minority rights.
Famous from a young age, Prince quickly began to make a name for himself, not only for being a stunning musician but also for pushing the limits of what was possible—and even acceptable—in the music industry at the time. Albums like Dirty Mind, 1999, and Purple Rain all immediately made an impact, whether it was due to “Little Red Corvette” becoming one of the first music videos with significant airtime on MTV to feature an African-American frontman, or due to his raunchy, controversial lyrics about sexual encounters with women “masturbating to magazine[s]” or with “pocket[s] full of Trojans, some of them used.” In fact, lyrics such as these actually led to some of the first attempts to put content advisory labels on albums that contained thematically mature subject matter (interestingly, this movement was headed by then Senator Al Gore’s wife, Tipper Gore).
Yet, what Tipper Gore and many others in the late ‘70s and ‘80s were offended by in Prince’s image and sound is exactly what inspired millions of other young Americans to explore or open up about their sexual identities, to pursue their passions, and, as Pinkett Smith so wisely put, to live their lives by their own rules. In fact, Prince’s highly sexualized lyrics were much more than simple prurience. “War is all around us/ My mind says prepare to fight/ So if I gotta die/ I’m gonna listen to body tonight,” he sings on 1999. For Prince, sexuality and love were some of the only ways to find hope and joy in a dark, often harrowing world. His sexual revolution was, more than anything, political. And this is exactly what keeps Prince’s music just as alive and relevant today as it was when it was first released.
Prince’s untimely death at the age of 57 stunned people around the world, and left his fans with many questions (“Why so young?” “What about all the stores of unreleased music he made?” “What was he working on, apparently for six days straight, just before he died?”). However, Prince’s music was so full of life (and thus also so attuned to death), that many have found a hope and comfort in his very words. Though some may secretly hope that Prince returns to us on a chariot of fire like the modern Messiah, many more of his fans are contented with the image of Prince looking down on us from the clouds, donning his infamous purple tuxedo, his ever-changing locks of hair glistening in the breeze, singing the words, “Life is just a party, and parties weren’t meant to last.”
Must Watch Performances: Appearance on stage with James Brown, Michael Jackson, and B.B. King in 1983; jaw-dropping solo to “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” at the 2004 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony; unforgettable (and now sorely missed––thank you Coldplay) Superbowl halftime performance in 2007.