Prince - Purple Rain

Dearly beloved. We are gathered here because we all know full well i can't stop. We'll just pretend to not notice last night's album ended with us fantasizing our own funerals, and i just happened to need card stock and paper towels.

There are a few records mandatory for every record collection. I have quite a few, but i didn't have Purple Rain. Now i do. It's one of the specific albums Tipper Gore and the PMRC used to demand those important warning stickers. Darling Nikki is a bit of a freak. Golf claps all around for Tipper, how else would we know which albums to hide from the impressionable minds of our parents? It's also not lost on me that it's the soundtrack of Prince's movie about Prince's early days in the Minneapolis club scene and i had to unplug the USB cable from the mixer i'm using to record me reading my books about the things my ears heard over the last 3 years. The coincidences are astonishing.

You might be under the impression that it's Prince, just a totally normal dude in a purple suit singing love songs or that one about a fruit colored hat. That's a big no, this is THE what the hell am i listening to album par excellence. The guitars are insane, the bleep bloops and noises and incredibly detuned synths are mind melting. Everyone says this was his most Pop album to date, but he's screaming, shredding, there tons of New Wave and Hard Rock hiding underneath.

This remastered at Paisley Park pressing on 180g from Target is spectacular, by the way. You should definitely pick it up if your Target has copies.

People often point out how often people forget how amazing a guitarist Prince was, but that's barely half of the amazingness. The songs themselves are masterpieces in their own right, his vocals and overdubs are totally crazy, this is real art. 

Paranoid, Breakfast In America, Rumours, Purple Rain. You might have others, but if those 4 aren't there then i don't think you can really call it a collection at all.