Track Listing

1. Let's Go Crazy
2. Take Me With U
3. Beautiful Ones
4. Computer Blue
5. Darling Nikki
6. When Doves Cry
7. I Would Die 4 U
8. Baby I'm A Star
9. Purple Rain

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #405 in Music
• Released on: 1984-08-10
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Soundtrack
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .23 pounds
• Running time: 111 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Maybe this music by Prince & the Revolution will never quite sound as, well, revolutionary as it did in 1984 (and nothing else has ever sounded like the extraordinary cooing and fluttering of "When Doves Cry"), but it's a pop landmark in Prince's Artistic career. The hit movie was really just a big-screen showcase for Prince to perform these songs (some of them in tear-the-roof-off "live" versions set in a Minneapolis club). It's unclear why that warped sermonette introduces "Let's Go Crazy" (one thing you've got to love about Prince: he's always been weird), but somehow it works. Other highlights include the sexual scorcher "Darling Nikki" (with its crazy backwards coda) and that anthemic title tune. Don't you miss Wendy and Lisa, too? --Jim Emerson

CD Description
A soundtrack to a movie so appalling that it is infinitely wiser to let the record stand on its own merits. While Prince cavorted in purple kitchen foil and rode his Harley in high heels, the real star of the film, the music, was doing allthe talking. A knit of funk and rock, a heavily stylised Hendrix guitar lick here and there, and a wilfully danceable backbeat all made for a huge commercial smash, and the first real international introduction for many people to a star-in-waiting. 'Darling Nikki' accidentally set the PMRC ball rolling, but the heady lilt of the title track and the crushing'When Doves Cry' can pardon him that.

Customer Reviews

Prince's masterful 6th album...
In 1984 Prince released what would come to be his biggest selling album: 'Purple Rain'. The soundtrack to his highly successful film of the same name; the album catapulted him to superstardom.
'Purple Rain' isn't just a movie soundtrack though, but a collection of some of the most electrifyingly impressive songs you will ever hear from this decade , or any other for that matter.

Crammed with highly distinctive melodies and sharp hooks; 'Purple Rain' remains one of Prince's most accessible albums, yet it still manages to surprise the listener on multiple playing, and it's the more unorthodox and intriguing songs, such as 'Computer Blue', that impress the most.
Every track on the album is brilliantly crafted, with many of the songs building from gentle openings to fiery climaxes, tracks such as 'When Doves Cry' and 'The Beautiful Ones' have an incredible amount of emotion poured into them and reach heights rarely reached in other Prince songs.

Picking a greatest track is impossible, EVERY song stands out.
The 4 singles taken from the album ('When Doves Cry', 'Lets Go Crazy', 'I Would Die 4 U', and the title track) still impress, but the real masterstroke of the album is with the threesome of 'The Beautiful Ones - Computer Blue - Darling Nikki'.
These three tracks complete what is possibly the greatest sequence of songs on any Prince album ever.

'The Beautiful Ones' is a phenomenal ballad with an outstanding vocal delivery from Prince. The song builds from a wonderfully gentle opening to a conclusion of keyboard bursts and screaming vocals. The song has been a fan favourite since its release and it remains Prince's greatest ballad ever, which is quite a feat considering the quality of his slow jams.
'Computer Blue' has to be the most un-noticed song on the whole album when it comes to critics, which is such a shame because, other than 'The Beautiful Ones', it is probably the strongest song on 'Purple Rain' and deserves much more attention then it gets.
The suite-like 'Computer Blue' is a magnificently structured funk-rock song, containing amongst other things, some fantastic guitar work from Prince.
Introduced by a monologue between Wendy & Lisa the track begins with a clean, crisp drum loop (the drum programming, as with most Prince records, is excellent throughout) and descends it to a frantic clash of synth-bursts and screaming guitar riffs as the song progresses. It's the most fascinating track on the album and completely blew me away when I first heard it. The version found on 'Purple Rain' though is in fact an edit of the full length 11 minute version...the song was cut down to make room for 'Take Me With U' and 'When Doves Cry' at the last minute. As impressive as the album cut is, the extended version is quite magnificent and stands as one of Prince's greatest tracks from the 80's.

'Computer Blue' segues almost seamlessly into 'Darling Nikki'; the only song on the album that caused some controversy upon its release due to its masturbation reference.
The track is wonderfully raunchy featuring some (as usual) excellent synth & guitar work, and is easily the funkiest song on the album.

The rest of the tracks on 'Purple Rain' including the anthemic title tune, the frenzied 'Let's go Crazy', and the pop-perfect 'Take Me With U' impress just as much as the previously mentioned songs and shouldn't be overlooked.

One thing that is always notable about 'Purple Rain' is how raw, yet fresh the music sounds. Prince never bettered the guitar work on this album and only his 95' album 'The Gold Experience', comes close to showing why Prince is as rated on guitar as he is.
Prince's 1984 album isn't his best ('1999' or 'Sign O' The Times would get the credit for that) but no other album quite sounds like it and it's essential buying...I mean it's what made me a Prince fan. ;o)

Truly a purple reign!
What can I say about this album. I discovered Prince by accident and was surprised many years ago when I found out that When Doves Cry was his song. The moment the first guitar riff hit the radio, I was in love with that song.
Buying the album years ago then opened the flood gates of my appreciation for Prince. His music, his style and his charisma and daringness to push the boundaries of conventional music are totally unique. Purple Rain was the pinacle of his success. Still relelvant today, his album as well as his other albums should have a firm grasp in the music history books.
Allthough the album didn't do as nearly as well in the UK as it did in the US, this album is still remembered even by thopse who weren't born yet.
Let's Go Crazy, the song which Prince used to talk about God and the devil in a time where it was taboo is a fantastic way to start a album off. Take Me With U is a fantastic road song. The Beautiful Ones made me cry the first time I heard it. A touching song about love, this can raise goosebumps on anyone's arms. Computer Blue and Darling Nicky. Maybe not as recognised as they should be. Computer Blue has a wonderful tune while Darling Nicky I think is one of the best break up songs. When Doves Cry. My favourite Prince song. Just plain genius. I Would Die 4 U and Baby I'm a Star is a great sogn to wake up to. It just makes you wish that you were in the club while he was singing to it. Purple Rain. The best ending to a magnificent album. A behemoth that should of gotten number one in the UK. The lyrics are soulfull, the guitars are spectacular. This song along with The Most Beautiful Girl from The Gold Experience album are the two songs that are nearly just as genius as When Doves Cry. But it's hard to choose a favourite song. Virtually all his albums are great except for a couple hiccups. But this album is a standout for its time and still immensely enjoyable today.

Iconic and influential 80's pop album.
Still probably best known for its relationship with the film of the same name (which I haven't actually seen), Purple Rain continues the pop-direction that Prince had been moving towards with 1999, with songs like Little Red Corvette and Lady Cab Driver being taken to their logical conclusion with songs like Let's Go Crazy, the first track on the album, and that perennial favourite, When Doves Cry. I love the way the album begins, with that slightly gospel sounding synth-organ and Prince preaching the opening lines "dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life... electric word life means forever and that's a mighty long time, but I'm here to tell you, there's something else... the after world" before the whole thing takes off in a shimmering burst of production-heavy pop.

Certainly, the production is a little dated in many places, particularly on a song like Take Me With You, with Prince and his band relying heavily on dreamy keyboards, synthesisers, drum machines and a dominant bass, with interweaving female harmony vocals (in the case of Take Me With You, curtsey of Purple Rain co-star and Prince-protégé Apollonia, but also iconic turns from Wendy and Lisa, most notably in the intro to Computer Blue) and the odd stab at the guitar breaking through the 80's slush. As a result, it may sound a little anachronistic to listeners weaned on more recent acts, though certainly, from a rock and pop perspective, if you can overlook similarly dated arrangements of certain albums from Madonna, The Cure, Kate Bush or any early electro-act, then you can probably over-look the production/instrumentation here.

Prince elevates at least three of the songs to a more epic, cinematic sphere by adding string arrangements, sometime organic, sometimes synthetic, but always adding a further layer to the songs and the overall mood of the piece. The Beautiful Ones is a great ballad that has a much more organic sound that the previous tracks, and features a fine falsetto vocal from Prince and some great instrumentation, whilst Darling Nikki, at the time the album's most controversial moment, is a great grinding, seedy, sexed up vignette that finds a libidinous Prince playing every instrument himself and, in the process, creating a remarkable album high that manages to sound humours and edgy simultaneously. This brings us to When Doves Cry, one of the three or four solid classics on the album and easily one of the purple one's defining moments.

When Doves Cry seems like a more personal song for Prince, or perhaps he's just expressing the themes and ideas of the tie-in film (I don't know... I'm not that familiar with the man's biography), but regardless, his vocals are fantastic, his range of instrumentation (once again, a track that Prince played every instrument on) is peerless, as he creates a contrasting drum/keyboard hook to complement the lyrics, and adds some outstanding heavy-metal style guitar playing. Certainly, this could be considered one of the greatest American pop singles of the 1980's (...or, of all time) and really, hasn't dated in the slightest. Baby I'm A Star is a nice bit of fluff, nothing remarkable, though it does act as a nice coda to that other great single, I Would Die 4 U (I fell in love with a cover version of this from a few years back... and then discovered Prince's original), an up-tempo pop song with lyrics that seem culled from the most heartbreaking of ballads.

Speaking of which, we then have the closing track... eight and a half minutes of searing emotion, fantastic playing and a great overall performance from Prince and the Revolution. Along with Let's Go Crazy, Darling Nikki, When Doves Cry and I Would Die 4 U, Purple Rain is another fine reason to buy this album. The vocals are impassioned, the instrumentation minimal and in keeping with the emotion at the heart of the song, and, if that wasn't enough, the storming (and decidedly epic) guitar solo during the last few minutes is perfectly judged and shows that Prince's musical influences go beyond pop, funk and old style R&B, to embrace rock bands like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and (if we recall the other guitar solo on When Doves Cry) early Van Halen.

As I said before, I tend to prefer more stripped down and personal music, in which we can hear the songwriter really expressing something personal... a style that Prince doesn't necessarily favour. Regardless, if you can overlook the occasionally 80's style production and look beyond the bombastic arrangements, you'll find a great, up-tempo pop album, with some absolutely astounding (and really quite beautifully created) pieces of music.