Prince

In the 80s Prince produced some sensational and catchy tunes like “When Doves Cry” and “Purple Rain”. It was a hit back then because the songs were featured in a movie called “Purple Rain”, where Prince him selves acted as the leading role. This movie was the top musical cinema of the 80s. The album “Purple Rain” subsequently sold more than 13 million copies in the U.S alone and spends 24 consecutive weeks at the top of the Billboard 200. Prince is one remarkable talented person. He is capable of composing his own music, even for others, a stylish guitarist, moreover a very wise person. He is wise because the symbol he uses (some calls it “The Love Symbol”) was introduced by him way back in the 80s. He was the only artist who aggressively promoted and marketed his own symbol, where you can find it on most of his albums, even his guitars are shaped like it. In a way, that unique symbol helped him to prevent form financial losses, following a contractual dispute with his record company. Smart, a very smart person indeed. I wonder if Michael Jackson’s glove will help him one day. So if you are an artist, you better start designing and promoting your own symbol. Anyway, I got to find my own symbol too. I will introduce one soon.

Prince plays "The Kid", an aspiring Minneapolis musician with a difficult home life. He meets singer Apollonia Kotero and they become involved in an untidy relationship. The plot centres on Prince trying not to repeat the pattern of his abusive father (Clarence Williams III) and keep his band, The Revolution, and his relationship with his girlfriend, together. His main antagonist is fellow musician Morris Day and his group The Time. Excluding Prince and his on-screen parents; almost every actor in the movie uses his/her actual name for his/her character.

The movie idea was apparently developed by Prince during his "Triple Threat" tour. Initially with a rather darker and more coherent script (One early idea he had was for his character to be a musician with a drug addiction.), Prince had intended to play opposite girlfriend Vanity, until their relationship ended. Her role was initially offered to Jennifer Beals, who turned it down because she wanted to concentrate on college, before going to Apollonia. The movie won an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score.

Purple Rain's sequel, Graffiti Bridge, was released in 1990 and universally panned.

Music from the Motion Picture Purple Rain (also called just Purple Rain) is a soundtrack album by Prince and The Revolution. It was released by Warner Bros. Records on June 25, 1984 and was Prince's sixth album. As was often the case, Prince wrote all of the songs on the album. Some of the tracks had portions recorded live when Prince performed on August 3, 1983 at the First Avenue club in Minneapolis. This show was a benefit concert for the Minnesota Dance Theatre. It was also the first appearance in Prince's band "The Revolution" by Wendy Melvoin, his guitarist in the Purple Rain film and for a few years afterwards.

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Sign 'O' the Times is Prince's 1987 follow-up to Parade and his first "solo" album since splitting with The Revolution; the symbol between the quotes is a peace sign. The double album was a synthesis of three projects from 1986, including some work with The Revolution. The bulk of the tracks originate from the final Revolution project known as Dream Factory and a later solo project called Camille. These projects, along with some other songs merged into a 22-track, 3-LP opus called Crystal Ball. Prince's record company, Warner Bros. Records, balked at the idea of a 3-LP album considering the lukewarm performance of Parade and Under the Cherry Moon and forced Prince to trim the album down. The result was Sign 'O' the Times, which quickly became widely regarded as Prince's crowning achievement amongst fans and critics alike. It was ranked 8 in Spin's "100 Greatest Albums, 1985-2005" In 2003, the album was ranked number 93 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

Two of the album's songs were first recorded back in 1982: "Strange Relationship" and "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man". Prince did additional work on both for their placement on the Dream Factory project and involved Wendy and Lisa on the former. When the project was cancelled, "Strange Relationship" was further updated for Camille. The remaining tracks were recorded between March and December, 1986. The surviving Camille tracks feature a playful speeded vocal. "U Got the Look" was also recorded in this manner, though it was not intended for the Camille album.

The double album is Prince's most diverse album to date, featuring a wide array of musical styles — rock, pop, soul and funk. Much of the song writing is of high quality: indeed the album yielded 3 top-ten hits, the most from a Prince album since Purple Rain. The subjects range of the depressing state of the world in the title track, party funk in "Housequake", sexual lust in "It" and spiritual enlightenment in "The Cross". It also showcases Prince's first live song released on an album: "It's Gonna Be a Beautiful Night" (though it was heavily overdubbed in the studio). Though selling modestly, somewhat akin to Parade, Sign 'O' the Times was almost universally applauded by critics and has since been overwhelmingly considered Prince's finest album and a standard of comparison for all of his albums to follow.

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