Prince Rogers Nelson, better known as Prince, was a musical genius; a walking enigma wrapped in velvet and sequins whose contributions to music transcend genres and generations. The man and legend was a pop polymath and a global superstar, and his 1984 album Purple Rain is often the first association casual fans make with his legacy. And as with everything on the Internet, if you talk about how great Purple Rain (the album) is, the die-hard fans will chastise you and tell you that something more obscure is much better.
Whatever the case may be, this doesn’t change the fact that Purple Rain, with its groundbreaking blend of pop, rock, and R&B, is one of the greatest albums of all time. It spent 24 consecutive weeks at #1 on the Billboard 200 and has sold over 25 million copies worldwide. However, there’s much more to Prince than just his exceptional music; he wasn’t just a singer and a songwriter or a multi-instrumentalist. When it came to music, Prince’s blend of pop was as consistently innovating as the man’s esoteric personal style. Here are six things about Prince the average Purple Rain fan might know:
Prince Was Shy
One would think that a person with that much swagger, sex appeal, and genre-defining vision like Prince would be a walking fortress of confidence. Truth be told, he was, and for anyone who heard one of his spine-tingling screams, it’s really had to imagine that Prince was anything but born to perform.
However, that actually wasn’t always the case. Prince was reportedly so shy that he had stage fright — even in a recording studio! According to reports, the artist was so shy that everyone had to leave the studio when he recorded his first track. Not only that, but he also had the lights turned off just to record the vocals.
Da Vinci of Music
Basically, everyone on the Internet has heard of Leonard Da Vinci’s famous sleeping schedule, which allowed him to sleep for two hours a day and maintain productivity. Well, Prince’s creative productivity didn’t come with an OFF switch, and those who had worked with him remember recording sessions that regularly lasted upwards of 15 hours. Apparently, he used to sleep four hours a night, and he demanded that his sound engineers have pagers on them at all times.
In fact, he would often page them in the middle of the night, and each and every engineer who worked with Prince ended up leaving due to burn-out. However, that productivity yielded results. Following his death in 2016, archivists were granted access to his private vault, where they discovered a vast collection of unpublished work.
Great Creative Output
Prince’s massive creative output is known to just about anyone; the artist released 39 studio albums and 106 singles during his 40-year career. However, that’s only a fraction of what he actually produced. The aforementioned unreleased work discovered by the archivists in Prince’s private vault actually contains enough material for Prince to posthumously release a new album annually — during the next century.
The vast array of unreleased material included fully completed albums and over 50 finished music videos. Numerous posthumous collections of his previously unheard work have been issued by his estate, making him one of the most prolific artists in music history. Oh, and haven’t accounted for more than 500 live shows he performed or the songwriting for other artists.
He Feuded with Michael Jackson
It’s no secret that Prince and Michael Jackson had disdain for one another for a very long time, but not many people know that they actually shared a stage once. In 1983, James Brown called them both on stage to perform. Sadly, that was the first and only time the two shared the stage since they would continue to have a rift in their relationship throughout both their lifetimes.
The main cause for animosity between the two remains unclear, but it may have started in 1985 when Prince declined Jackson’s invitation to participate in a charity event. The two were also supposed to collaborate on Bad (Jackson’s 1987 hit) but the deal fell through due to creative differences driven by Prince’s objections.
He Changed His Name into a Symbol
During negotiations surrounding the release of The Gold Experience — Prince’s 17th studio album — a legal battle ensued between the artist and Warner Bros., particularly over the artistic and financial control of his musical output. During the lawsuit, Prince would appear in public with the word “slave” written on his cheek,
He added that he had to change his name into an unpronounceable symbol, now known as the Love Symbol, because he felt that the name “Prince” belonged to Warner Bros. Since the symbol doesn’t exist on a physical keyboard, media outlets either received a digital rendition of the symbol or simply referred to Prince as “The Artist Formerly Known as Prince.” He reverted to using his original name in 2000.
Purple Wasn’t Always His Color
The color purple was long synonymous with Prince’s identity, even long before his estate had that particular hue, named Love Color #2, registered at Pantone Color Institute. However, purple wasn’t always his signature color, and earlier in his career, Prince’s style leaned more towards earth tones and bold reds.
The transition to purple dominance began with the release of Purple Rain, where the color purple symbolized mystery, royalty, and spirituality. Prince wholeheartedly accepted the hue following the album’s success and turned it into a visual and thematic representation of himself.
Final Words
In the end, Prince was more than a musician; he was a phenomenon that redefined pop and self-expression, and his legacy — deeply intertwined with Purple Rain — continues to inspire and captivate fans around the world. His is truly a story of unyielding creativity and passion for music, and while many believe that they know all there is about him, some of these insights reveal that the purple mystery left some room for discovery.