Some albums don’t just define an artist they define a decade, an aesthetic, a sound, a state of mind. Purple Rain is one of them. It marks the moment when Prince, already a rising star, became something more: an icon, a prophet of pop, a limitless genius. It’s the exact point where R&B, rock, funk, and psychedelia didn’t just cross paths… they fused forever.
An artist beyond imitation:
In 1984, Prince didn’t just release an album he launched an entire universe. Purple Rain was a record, a film, a spectacle, and a declaration of absolute artistic power. While artists like Michael Jackson and Madonna ruled the charts with clear-cut formulas, Prince dove into the unclassifiable. His voice could shift from tenderness to a moan. His guitar was a scream. His presence was a collision between the sacred and the profane.
And yet, it was all pop.
Anthems, eroticism, and electric spirituality:
Opening the album with Let’s Go Crazy feels like stepping into a funk church with distortion. “Dearly beloved…” welcomes us to a sermon about life and death, delivered through riffs that could’ve easily belonged to Queen or even Muse, had they been born in Minneapolis wearing lace blouses.
Take Me With U, with its dreamy tone, plays like an emotional prequel to everything The 1975 would do years later. Meanwhile, Darling Nikki scandalized conservative America in the ’80s with its explicit mention of masturbation before becoming one of the most influential songs in the realm of sexual rock (yes, Nine Inch Nails and Deftones definitely took notes).
“Purple Rain”: the climax of an entire era:
The album’s closing track the titular ballad isn’t just Prince’s most famous song; it’s one of the most emotionally powerful in pop history. It’s rock, but also soul. It’s blues, but also gospel. It’s a farewell, a plea, a hymn.
If Bring Me The Horizon ever wrote a ballad with Prince in mind, it would sound like this. If Coldplay had been a little braver on Ghost Stories, maybe they could’ve touched something this raw.
And that guitar… it weeps, it prays, it explodes.
Purple Rain sold over 25 million copies. It won an Oscar and multiple Grammys. And yet, none of that truly does it justice. Because beyond the awards, what it left behind was a blueprint no one has ever been able to replicate.
Its impact can be felt in Beyoncé, The Weeknd, Bruno Mars, and every artist who believes pop can be theatrical, dirty, brilliant, and spiritual all at once.
Purple Rain doesn’t age because it was never bound by time. It was and still is a phenomenon that redefines what it means to be an artist.
Prince didn’t ask for permission he just left us speechless.
