Happy Birthday to Prince, in Rock n’ Roll Heaven

Prince would have turned 60 today if he were alive. However with his sudden passing still a shock and surreal (even two years later) many dedicated and loyal fans around the world, including myself, take this special occasion to celebrate and remember the iconic, legendary musician on his birthday.

Back in 2016, the Governor of Minnesota, Mark Dayton officially declared June 7 as ‘Prince Day’, in honor of Prince’s loyalty and love to his roots.

Born Prince Rogers Nelson on the 7 June, 1958, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the son of Mattie Della and John Lewis Nelson. Prince’s father was a pianist and songwriter and his mother was also a jazz singer.

Prince was named after his father, whose stage name was Prince Rogers and performed with a jazz group called the ‘Prince Rogers Trio’.

In a 1991 interview with the Australian program, A Current Affair [click here to view], Prince’s father said at the time, “I named my son Prince because I wanted him to do everything I wanted to do”. 

So today, in celebration of his birthday, I decided to do a post on my absolute favorite “7” Prince songs and you may wonder why I’ve only chosen “7” songs and not a-lot more. Well, apart from that it being the most obvious, Prince being born on the 7th of June, he also had a strong affinity, fascination with the number 7 as he believed it was a connection to God, to a higher being.

The number has appeared in so many of his songs, and if you researched it – you will notice references to the number in such songs as:

  Mountains – “Once upon a time in a land called fantasy / seventeen mountains stood so high”

  17 Days – “U’ve been gone seventeen days / seventeen long nights…”

  7 – “All 7 and we’ll watch them fall… / 1 day all 7 will die”

  I Wish U Heaven – “If I say it’s 7, u will say 11 – from I wish u heaven”

  Sign O’ The Times – “At home there are 17 year old boys and there idea of fun is being in a gang, high on crack and totin’ a machine gun.”

  My Name Is Prince – “In the beginning God made the sea, But on the seventh day he made me”

According to religious scholars, the number seven is believed to be considered as one of the most sacred numbers and that it’s associated with God, and all things spiritual & mystical.

So, to continue on with the number 7 tradition, here are my list of my all-time favourite Prince songs. Now let me first just say, it was INCREDIBLY difficult as Prince has an extensive music catalogue and there are sooooooooooooooooo many songs of his that I love, so to whittle it down to 7 was so hard. Some songs you may recognize and others, you may not have heard of them.

So without further a-do, in true Prince fashion, repeating the intro to his music video, The Most Beautiful Girl In The World:

 Straight up, this song is about casual sex (if you already didn’t know). Plain and simple. Any song that you hear that sings about cars, are really just using that as metaphors for women and sexual body parts.

If you listen really carefully to the words throughout the song, you will hear the built in objectification.

The song starts off slow, and slowly builds up to a crescendo of pure perfect erotic fusion of funk and rock, with a guitar solo thrown in the middle, and falsetto moments  sung by Prince towards the end, building up the passion to sweaty m

The sexual innuendos are so perfectly written and hidden that you never really know what you are singing along to, that it gives the impression of the guy longing for the love of his crush. and the girl playing him for a lovesick fool. After 35 years, I still cannot get enough of this song!

 Funny story I have to share (well, it is to me haha). I was incredibly lucky and blessed to have seen Prince one last time on his, The Piano & A Microphone Tour (six weeks before his untimely death), he performed this song – the audience screamed in excitement of hearing the piano tickering of the start of the song.

During the performance of ‘How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore’, there was a section in the song where he breaks it down, in the middle and he ad-libs with lots of ‘Oooohs’, ‘Owwwws!’ and ‘Ohs!’.

Now it’s hard for me to really describe it well in this post (unless you were the unlucky person who sat beside me) – BUT during that section of the song (and I swear on my life that it’s true), as he’s getting down, soul funky with his ‘oooooohs’, ‘owwwww!’ and ‘ohhhhhs!’  … I couldn’t help myself and repeat it after him, singing it very very very LOUD!!!

I may, have gone off key – just a tad, and in that moment, Prince stood up from his chair, faced the audience and screwed up his face in jest at hearing my (poor) efforts – and it happened twice! Haha! I couldn’t help it, I was lost in the moment of the song. The rest of the audience laughed, and Prince continued on performing. Still ’til this day I claim that was my one-on-one moment with Prince – my own experience that will live forever in me.

The song has that late-night feel of a bar vibe, with the piano being the main instrument being played. Prince creatively multi-tracked his vocals upon one another, pushing the expression and torment to new levels of emotional crescendo.

 This song is the true definition of the words, ‘epic’ and ‘anthemic’.

Undeniably this song was the one cathartic tune that the whole world played over & over, on heavy rotation upon hearing of the legendary musicians sudden passing.

The eight minute climatic song is a mixture of rock, blues, soul, that bends in pop and r&b.

The lyrics provoke questions, intense discussions, multitude of thoughts, and still has fans questioning still ’til this day, what the hidden meanings reveal in the lyrics.

The guitar solo towards the end, growls and if you ever watch a Prince video of him performing this song – you can see how lost is in that moment as he plays the guitar, like there is nothing else on earth but him, his guitar and the music. He plays it with such intensity that it almost looks like he is making love.

The song is pure raw emotion, blistering on passion and epic all rolled into one, that you cannot help and sing along with Prince til the very end, “ooooh ooooh oooh” over and over.

Probably one of all-time greatest songs ever written, sung and performed in our life-time. Pure unadulterated musical perfection. Never to be ever repeated by any other artist, never ever again of that multitude.

 This song since Prince’s passing has become more poignant than ever. So much so, that it has been theorised to such a mystical level.

Confirmed by ex-band member of The Revolution, Wendy Melvoin, the song was written and recorded on the 21 April 1985 – 31 years to the day, before Prince’s on transition to the other world (.i.e. heaven).

The song was never released as a single, and appears at the end of his movie, Under The Cherry Moon – however, among the hardcore Prince fans, it is a powerful standout whenever he performed it live.

On his last tour in Melbourne (The Piano & A Microphone Tour), it was the first song he played. Prince was known for never sticking to the same set list every night. He always changed it up. The morning of the concert, I had a dream about Prince. I dreamt that he had announced a spur of the moment show at his home (like he did many in Minneapolis), which was tweeted out, and I just so happened to live near him (which of course I actually don’t).

He walked over to his piano, sat down and looked directly over at me (as he naturally would, of course) and with that sexy deep voice of his he asks me, ‘what song would you like me to start with?

The 15 year old girl inside of me screamed out loud, ‘Sometimes It Snows in April!’

Prince’s fingers glided over the piano and he goes straight into the chorus and sings, ‘Sometimes it snows in April, Sometimes I feel so bad, So bad …so bad.’ Then my alarm goes off and I wake up to reality.

Halfway through his show, after he covered a beautiful rendition of Bob Marley’s Waiting in Vain. He went into the next song, which happened to be Sometime It Snows In April.

I turned to the guy beside me, and screamed, ‘I dreamt that this morning!’ The poor guy laughed his head off, although I’m not sure whether it was in fear or that he thought I was a complete lunatic. 

Alongside Purple Rain, these two songs are one’s that have captured the undeniable feeling of loss to his fan base.

 Prince was one of the first musical artists back in the mid to late 80’s that wrote and sang about the serious problems of the world such as drug abuse and the AIDS epidemic.

Written in such a way that it was confronting but yet not in your face.

It’s compelling in such a way that the narrative tells of interluding stories, educating you all the while the drum bass and synthetic keyboard pulsates throughout the song.

This song has stood the test of time, and is more than ever that relevant.

 This song was written at a painful time for Prince, when his and Mayte Garcia (his first wife) new born son Amir passed away after a week of being born due to a rare genetic disorder.

The song is sung and performed to an acoustic guitar, and reveals a rare personal moment from Prince in allowing the listener to hear his sadness, and the sound of his heart breaking. It’s a moment that the artist is stripped back.

Prince poured his heartache and pain into this song: “If you ever lose someone dear to you / Never say the words, ‘they’re gone’ / They’ll come back”. 

Those words, and belief was realized to Prince in another passage of the song where he sings about crying and feeling a, “sweet wind” near him. It was in that moment that he realized, “…it was you”.

Writing this song allowed for Prince to grieve for his only child in a way that he wasn’t able to in person. Music has always been Prince’s refuge and salvation.

 When hearing this song, for a split moment you think it’s an old song of his from the 80’s, that he went inside his famous well known music vault and picked it out, refreshed it and re-recorded it.

Nope. Not at all. It was a brand new song he recorded back in 2013 and released in 2014 on the Art Official Age album.

It has that old school classic sound of Prince: a funky, dialed-up bass line and added electro-synth inflection in the chorus.

The lush epic ballad is layered with vocal harmonies and Prince’s voice ascending into a falsetto holler, which then proceeds to build up in intensity and explodes into such a powerful rage of yearning in the delivery towards the end of the song.

Prince had said at the time when he appeared on the rebooted Arsenio Hall Show, that this song was one of his favourites. And it is one, that I constantly play repeatedly and extremely loud. It’s epic.

The world lost its best singer, songwriter, producer, visual artist and guitarist all on that same day, because let’s face it – Prince was all of them, and more.

He was the most out of this world, talented musician that this world has ever seen. A musical virtuoso, multi instrumentalist, a super human singer, and the greatest songwriter that walked this earth.

Prince was a once in a life time, he was a miracle, a gift that we will never see or experience again.

I would love to know what song’s of Prince you love or any other thoughts about Prince in the comments section below xoxo