Purple Rain
How a semi-autobiographical film gave birth to one of the greatest rock ballads of all time
A song born from pain
Prince grew up in Minneapolis with a father who was both his inspiration and his wound.
John L. Nelson was a jazz musician: talented, complicated, and hard to be close to. He gave his son his first guitar. But warmth was not something he gave easily.
Prince watched him from a distance for most of his childhood. That distance never really went away.
The movie that told the truth
In 1984, Prince made a semi-autobiographical film called Purple Rain.
He played a character called The Kid — a young musician in Minneapolis trying to make it, while surviving a violent and broken home. His father in the film is abusive, unstable, and ultimately attempts suicide.
It was fiction. But it was also, in many ways, Prince’s own story told through a character.
In the film’s climax, The Kid performs Purple Rain at the First Avenue club and dedicates it to his father. The crowd is moved to tears.
It is the moment where music does what words never could.
What does purple rain actually mean?
Prince never explained it fully. And that was almost certainly his choice.
Some people hear an apocalyptic sky in it — red blood and blue rain mixing into purple, the color of a world falling apart.
Some hear Minneapolis — that specific shade of a midwestern sky before a storm, the color anyone who grew up there carries in their memory.
Some hear the sky at dawn — purple as the moment just before a new day begins, and rain as the thing that washes the old pain away.
And some hear a wound that hasn’t healed. Purple as pain. Rain as the thing that keeps falling whether you want it to or not.
Maybe all of these are true. Maybe none of them fully are.
Prince never explained it and that was the point. He wanted the song to mean something different to everyone who heard it.
What this song still says
Purple Rain became one of the best-selling singles of 1984. The album went on to sell over 25 million copies worldwide. The film won an Academy Award.
But none of that is why the song has lasted forty years.
It has lasted because it sounds like something you already know. Like a feeling you’ve carried without ever finding the right words for it.
Prince didn’t give you the meaning. He gave you the space to find your own.
That’s the rarest thing a song can do.
Recommended listening
Purple Rain – Prince and The Revolution
When Doves Cry – Prince and The Revolution
I Would Die 4 U – Prince and The Revolution
Little Red Corvette – Prince
Sign ‘O’ the Times – Prince
Nothing Compares 2 U – Sinéad O’Connor
With or Without You – U2
Running Up That Hill – Kate Bush
What does Purple Rain mean to you?
A memory, a person, a moment you can't forget?
Leave a comment, drop me a message, or share this with someone who carries a song they've never fully explained.