After your masterplan succeeds and so many of your dreams come true… then what?
That is a question a 26-year-old Prince may well have been asking himself after “Purple Rain” transformed him into a global superstar virtually overnight (or whatever passed for “overnight” in 1984). While his rise was gradual — “Purple Rain,” released on this day 40 years ago, was Prince’s sixth album — there’s no disputing the remarkable speed with which his fame skyrocketed during the summer of “Ghostbusters,” the Los Angeles Olympics and “Born in the U.S.A.”
Granted, musical careers, like nearly everything else, moved more gradually back then. But that’s also how Prince revealed himself. Launched as an R&B loverman with 1978’s “For You,” he began incorporating pop, new wave, heavily NSFW lyrics and other influences over the next few years. As one of the first Black artists to be featured on then-new MTV, his epic “1999” album and its videos showed a Prince that few outside of his fan base had seen: “Wow, did you know he could dance like that? And look, he can shred on guitar too!” That album’s slow build from its October 1982 release set the stage for “Purple Rain,” thanks to video play and hard touring, the pressures of which would inform the inter-band conflicts featured in the film — not to mention the blazing rock music he would adapt for this phase of his career, and which brought him to mainstream white audiences.
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