Dearly Beloved, We Are Gathered Here Today

… 2 get through this thing called life. Electric word life, it means forever and that's a mighty long time but I’m here 2 tell u there’s something else… The afterworld. A world of never ending happiness, u can always see the sun, day or night. So when u call up that shrink in Beverly Hills, u know the one - Dr Everything Will Be Alright. Instead of asking him how much of your time is left, Ask him how much of your mind, baby. ‘Cuz in this life things are much harder than in the afterworld. In this life you're on your own. And if de-elevator tries 2 bring u down: Go crazy.

And with those lines starts the greatest movie soundtrack of all time. And unlike other soundtracks that cherry pick the best from multiple artists, the only one who wrote and preformed all the songs on the soundtrack to Purple Rain was Prince, along with The Revolution who get their first billing on the album, which is why it is this month’s induction to the Scooter Hall of Fame. Even over twenty after the fact, that opening, Let’s Go Crazy can kick start any party into high gear with its infectious beat and sing along lyrics. I Would Die 4 U which morphs effortlessly into Baby I’m a Star is another great dance track that is sometimes lost amidst all the classic songs on the album but still hold up to this day.

But without the classic tracks on the album, there is still one song that stands above the rest, be it this album or the broader range of eighties songs: When Doves Cry. The song actually does a much better time conveying the message of the movie in six minutes than the actual movie does itself. And you have not lived until you have heard my drunken karaoke version of When Doves Cry. The Beautiful Ones is in the same vein as When Doves Cry but instead of family the song deals more with other personal relationships but is just as funky as well as delivered in Prince’s trademark falsetto. Plus “the beautiful ones always seem to lose” is one of my favorite lines to quote. The album closes with the title track which doesn’t get the deserved credit of being one of the greatest epic songs of all time up there with Free Bird, Stairway to Heaven and November Rain.

Aside from being one of the best albums of all time, the Purple Rain Soundtrack is historic in a different way. You can thank it for the Parental Advisory stickers that sporadically pop up on album covers. As the legend goes, Tipper Gore, as in Al’s wife, and her young girls enjoyed Let’s Go Crazy that they kept on hearing on the radio, she decided to buy the album. Apparently Tipper didn’t like her young children hearing the opening line to Darling Nikki, “I knew a girl named Nikki I guess u could say she was a sex fiend. I met her in a hotel lobby (expletive deleted) with a magazine.” Instead of placing the blame on herself for being a horrible parent who didn’t fully monitor her children’s life, she instead got her senator husband to call a Congressional Hearing on the matter which led to the stickers. If only Tipper had listened to the song backward she would have heard the subliminal message, “Hello, how are you? I'm fine, ‘cause I know that the Lord is coming soon. Coming, coming soon” playing at the end of the song.

Prince will most likely be playing one or two songs from this album during the Super Bowl halftime show this weekend even though he said he was retiring his old hits a couple years back. I really doubt the Super Bowl committee signed him up to play the song from Happy Feet. Anyways, it is someone an odd choice to have Prince play considering I believe the last time CBS held the Super Bowl the term “wardrobe malfunction” was coined even though the first “wardrobe malfunction” I ever remember seeing on television was during Prince’s performance of Gett Off during the MTV Video Music Awards. Hopefully this time around he doesn’t have any holes in his pants.