Mission: Impossible

Ten years ago today, Prince passed away at his Paisley Park complex in Chanhassen, MN. One of the best things I read at the time was written by Bomani Jones from a hotel room in Paris. 

I was reminded of that last week when Bo recorded a pair of podcasts remembering the Purple One. And I remembered listening to Prince on SiriusXM with my kids on a long car ride - was likely their first extended exposure, and the first time in more than a decade that I really dug into the genius' catalog.

Jones' podcasts got me thinking about Prince's music. In particular, my favorite of his songs. The ones he recorded, not the ones he wrote - that list is far too long to contemplate. So I set a challenge that's described by the title of this post. I decided to pick my five favorite Prince songs.

I'll get to the list in a minute. Couple of explanatory notes first. My faves are gonna tilt heavily to his early records (one in particular), or at least from "1999" forward. That's when I was turned on to his stuff, and when I spent the most time with it. I leaned hard into progressive tunes when I first heard The Smiths' "Louder Than Bombs" in 1987, and didn't get back around to Prince until much later. And I never really got into his post-"Love Symbol" records. So we're really only talking about "Dirty Mind" in 1980 through the aforementioned Symbol in 1992 as the consideration set. 

And it's still fucking hard to pick just five songs.

For fuck's sake, the list doesn't include When You Were Mine, Uptown, 1999, Delirious, Let's Go Crazy, Darlin' Nikki, Purple Rain, Raspberry Beret, Pop Life, Kiss, Sign O' the Times, U Got the Look, If I Was Your Girlfriend, I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man, Gett Off, Erotic City, and Sexy MF, among a lot of others.

If you're a connoisseur, you could probably figure out my top five from the omissions above. Because I'm a man of the people, I'll make it easy for you.

In no particular order, my top five Prince songs:

In the fall of 1984, I was a painfully naive young lad coming to terms with my utter inability to talk to/attract girls at the same time that I was completely enamored of them. In the basement of a friend's house, a mixed group danced to "Purple Rain", and the girls went nuts when I Would Die 4 U came on. That was the very first time I ever danced with a girl. It left a mark. Music as memory, as we've discussed at length here before. (And I was this week old before I realized it was about Jesus.)

I'd heard Little Red Corvette many times before I caught onto the way its fundamental raunchiness masked the vulnerability of a dude not quite sure he was gonna measure up. But when I got it, I certainly got it, though it didn't help with that previously noted naïveté with the ladies. Corvette edges out its thematic cousin Raspberry Beret because it's just that much sexier.

The chronologically latest song on my list hit me out of the blue in 1992 upon the release of the "Love Symbol" album. 7 didn't sound like any Prince tune I'd heard before, but its chorus got me right in the tuning fork in my chest. It's definitely the wild card on this list.

I'd argue that Prince's guitar virtuosity was an under-discussed topic until relatively recently. Folks focused on his hypersexy lyrics, funky grooves, brilliant live shows, and prolific musicianship. But "Purple Rain" is a guitar-forward record, and the opening lick of When Doves Cry is a damn call to arms. 

Returning to a theme for our final tune, Purple Rain showed that shy and clueless young man a glimpse of something entirely new. In the short term, it accelerated feelings of longing for amorphous but assuredly sexy and sweaty and not at all dorky possibility. Take Me With U felt like that kid asking a more mature, experienced and cute girl for a favor. And that seemed very real at the time.

This version has a naaaasty guitar solo. 

And as a lagniappe to keep the groove rolling, get some of his 1985 live show from Syracuse. It's fucking bonkers. In the best way.

New to Me

Not long after the time he killed Prince, the artist formerly known thereas got to work in his Paisley Park studio to produce a compilation of the work done under his once and future name. According to Prince Vault, the video was creating to satisfy the wishes of the promoters of 1995's Ultimate Live Tour, who wanted him to play the hits. Instead, the video was played as an introduction to those shows. The resulting mashup was released as a CD single called The Purple Medley. And until this week, I'd never heard it, nor of it. 

Just in case you're in the same boat, enjoy this funky mix.

Super Bowl Halftime Show Open Post

According to press reports, The Weeknd is spending millions of his own dollars on the production of his performance at halftime of today's Super Bowl. Color me skeptical, unless "his own" means "his record company or other corporate interest". This little feature from Forbes is a bit more credulous about the topic.

In any event, I don't care all that much. I like The Weeknd's stuff, but that opening paragraph was really only a device to get to the real point of this post, which is the best halftime performance in Super Bowl history. And it ain't really all that close.

By my count, we've mentioned Prince's Super Bowl XLI performance thrice here, but I can't find evidence that we've actually posted video of it. Consider that rectified.

You've probably seen that clip before. Doesn't mean you shouldn't watch it again. You might not, however, have seen video from the pregame press conference. Prince brought his whole band, and they tore the roof of that mutha in front of a bunch of dudes in ill-fitting khakis (sorry, OBX Dave). 

Kinda still can't believe that genius is gone.

That's My Fun Day

As you certainly know, because you're an educated crowd and you dig your music, the late Prince Rogers Nelson was a prolific songwriter. Wikipedia credits him with writing (or co-writing) 171 songs, which seems low, given that he recorded 260 songs on his own. In any case, the dude wrote a lot of tunes.

That first paragraph isn't particularly relevant to the topic at hand, but I needed a way to stretch this somewhat thin post idea. Some filler, if you will. You see, one of the songs Prince wrote was Manic Monday, recorded by The Bangles (and the supercute Susannah Hoffs).



"It's just another Manic Monday. I wish it were Sunday. 'Cause that's my fun day."

And today, in a complete lack of coincidence, is Sunday. See how it all comes together?

What I really want to talk about is statues. Not the ones Nazis are defending, though they've probably got an opinion on this one. No, we're talking about a different rapacious and divisive historical figure than those from the Confederacy.

The State Capitol building in St. Paul, Minnesota features a statue of Christopher Columbus. And Wintana Melekin and 2,000 others want to replace it with a monument to a son of their city. They want Columbus to come down, and Prince to rise in his place.

Says their petition, “Across the nation, city governments are choosing to remove statues of white supremacists, slave owners, and those who threatened the livelihood of Black people. Here in Minnesota, communities are reigniting the demand to bring down state’s monument to Christopher Columbus, a man who murdered, raped and enslaved Black and Native peoples in the Americas. We, the undersigned, do not believe that Columbus represents the values Minnesotans carry. Rather than glorify a man who wanted to extinguish Black and Native peoples, we should honor members of our community whose leadership we find inspirational.”

I think we can all agree that this is an inspired solution to a problem that's plaguing us as a nation. It might even be a sign...o' the times.



But why let Minnesota have all the fun? Let's get rid of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville and replace him with Dave Matthews. Let's raze Birmingham's Confederate monuments in favor of Patterson Hood and Jason Isbell (Muscle Shoals is close enough) and the Blind Boys of Alabama. Down comes Stonewall Jackson in Atlanta, and up goes Outkast.

We could do this for a while. It'd be more fun than arguing with ignorant revanchist assholes. Play along in the comments if you've got a mind to.

New (Old) Prince. Same Old Awkward

Legend has it that Prince left behind hundreds of unfinished tracks upon his far too early passing a few months ago. Hopefully, that means we can expect scenes like this one to be repeated.

Somehow, ABC News got the hookup to drop the world premiere of 'Moonbeam Levels' recorded originally during the 1999 sessions, but never released. Enjoy it, but dig if you will the reactions of the live Prince fans who had the pleasure and/or torture of listening to it while being filmed.



It's probably safe to ignore the last 18+ minutes of this. But if it's not, maybe let me know.

Rest in Purple

I'm not remotely qualified to write about Prince. His musical and cultural impact is difficult to overstate. I remember exactly where I was when I heard that Michael Jackson had died. I'd argue that Prince's musical legacy is greater.

It's hard to put into words how revolutionary Purple Rain sounded when it dropped. To this then-14 year-old, it was a complete revelation, from the sprint start of 'Let's Go Crazy' to the lovesick pop of 'Take Me With U', the blush-inducing (for a way too innocent suburban kid) 'Darlin Nikki' all the way through the sublime 'I Would Die 4 U' to the transcendent title track. That shit opened my eyes in ways music really hadn't before.



The little purple dude's Super Bowl halftime show set the standard by which those things should be judged, and his musical influence impacts us today in ways we don't even know. He put out a critically acclaimed record just last year - there's no telling how much great music we'll never hear now. He was, to use a cliche, a force of nature.

My favorite Prince track isn't one of the big ones, at least by his standards, but I've always loved it:


Prince  Seven by jeetprince7

Game over, Blouses.

Funk Sneak Attack

In this age of over-stimulation and exponential information expansion, it's paradoxical that music is
both easier and harder than ever to find. Easier, in that a couple keystrokes or a quick perusal of Pitchfork gives us a treasure trove of discovery. Harder, though, in the sense that all of this information about artists and releases sometimes means that we miss signal in the noise.

Case in point: did you know that Prince released an album last week? Two, actually.

It's okay. I didn't either.

I'm not the world's most avid Prince fan, but I'm reminded anew every time I hear anything he's recorded how revolutionary his sound was to a bunch of white suburban kids back in the mid-80s. Dig if you will the picture/She and I engaged in a kiss/Sound of her father coming up the stairs scared the shit out of me/Can you my readers...can you picture this?

The aforementioned Pitchfork gives Art Official Age/Plectrum Electrum a relatively pedestrian 6.5 rating, but seems a bit more enthusiastic about the record in saying, "Musically, Art Official Age is all over the map—gloriously so, in fact—as though Prince is trying to cram a triple album into a single disc."



If FUNKNROLL is any indication, it seems like he's trying to cram a triple album's worth of sounds into each song. There's a Trombone Shorty-esque horn break, some electronica, a bit of old school Princely naughtiness, and a beat that can't decide whether it's funky or spacey. I'm not even sure yet if I like it.

But I do enjoy the accident of discovery. And the trip back in time.