After spending an entire month looking back at the 80’s, I realized one thing. I need more. Luckily, a couple of fellow music fans on Twitter came up with the brilliant idea to highlight #30DaysOf80sMovieSongs during the month of April. I couldn’t resist at the opportunity to keep going, to keep listening, and to keep celebrating the decade that has meant more to me than any other from a musical standpoint. Each day I’m playing a different soundtrack favorite on the Mental Jukebox.
Movie: Purple Rain
Is there a more quintessential soundtrack from the eighties than Purple Rain? I’m not so sure there is. Pretty In Pink and Footloose both deserve to be part of that conversation. But Purple Rain gets the nod because it covered so much musical ground. On it, Prince explored numerous tempos, genres, instrumentation and lyrical themes. “I Would Die 4 U”, “Purple Rain”, “Let’s Go Crazy” and “When Doves Cry”. They’re all classics. Each one with its own distinct personality. But “When Doves Cry” is the track that pushed musical boundaries the most. It’s the one track that packed the most punch, but never felt excessive at any given point. Prince may be considered one of the greatest pop artists of our time, but he did it by going against the mainstream, which is the essence of the song.
Play back “When Does Cry” and you’ll hear a myriad of genres. No one blended them better and so effortlessly than Prince. There’s the hard rock-infused guitar solo in the opening, the dance pop and funk blend fueling the rhythm from beginning to end, and even a classical music-inspired synth solo at the 5:00 mark. Structurally, “When Does Cry” also veered from the expected — becoming one of the few songs in pop history to be recorded without a single bass line. I love bass, but I really love what Prince did by stripping it out entirely from this recording.
“Why do we scream at each other? This is what it sounds like when doves cry.”