Following a smattering of interest and perhaps an excess of indulging myself, I present to you The Purple Rate, in which the (mostly) greatest works of Prince - AKA TAFKAP, The Artist, Love Symbol, etc - are here for your perusal and judgement.

 

Undoubtedly, one of the most iconic and defining artists of the 1980s, who for a good while rivaled Madonna and Michael Jackson in the public consciousness and who has an immense body of work but somehow remains overlooked by comparison to the aforementioned.

 

And so in the interests of redressing the balance here are all of the Purple One's UK chart singles* combined with the lead single off of all his major album releases. This encompasses his solo work and that with his backing bands The Revolution and The New Power Generation as well as a couple of NPG tracks where he featured as either lead or joint lead vocals.

 

I have dropped two UK 'hits' in The Purple Medley and The Beautiful Experience as they are simply remixed versions of other chart hits and bring nothing new to the table. Given the huge volume of work he created I will also allow each voter to nominate a wild card entry if they wish to. Please state which track you would like to include. However, it must have Prince as the named recording artist and not one where he only provided backing vocals etc.

 

THE SONGS -

 

Soft And Wet

I Wanna Be Your Lover

Why You Wanna treat Me So Bad?

Dirty Mind

Controversy

1999

Little Red Corvette

When Doves Cry

Let's Go Crazy

Purple Rain

I Would Die 4 U

Take Me With U

Raspberry Beret

Paisley Park

Pop Life

Kiss

Mountains

Anotherloverholeinyohead

Girls & Boys

Sign o' the Times

If I Was Your Girlfriend

U Got the Look

I Could Never take the Place of Your Man

Alphabet St.

Glam Slam

I Wish U Heaven

Batdance

Partyman

The Arms of Orion

 

 

Thieves in the Temple

New Power Generation

Gett Off

Cream

Diamonds and Pearls

Money Don't Matter 2 Nite

Thunder

Sexy MF

My Name is Prince

7

The Morning Papers

Peach

The Most Beautiful Girl in the World

Letitgo

Get Wild

I Hate U

Gold

Dinner With Delores

Betcha By Golly Wow

The Holy River

The Truth

Come On

 

 

The Greatest Romance Ever Sold

The Work Pt. 1

Supercute

Musicology

Cinnamon Girl

Black Sweat

Fury

Guitar

Dance4Me

Rock N Roll Love Affair

Breakfast Can Wait

Pretzelbodylogic

Fallinlove2nite

 

Wild Card Additions so far -

 

Sometimes it Snows in April (chartjack2)

The Cross (jimwatts)

Scandalous (Bjork)

A Case of U (dandy*)

Starfish and Coffee (popchartfreak)

Delirious (Julian T)

 

You have two weeks from today to submit your wild card (deadline 11.59pm on 26th Oct) and until 11.59pm on Saturday 16th November to get your final votes in -

 

 

Rate your favourite 30 Prince tracks using the scoring system below -

 

30 (your fave)

29

28

27

26

25

24

23

22

21

20

19

18

17

16

15

14

13

12

11

10

9

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1 (30th fave)

 

 

I will post a playlist tomorrow to provide easy listening opporunties and I hope you will join me in celebrating the legend that was Prince Rogers Nelson

 

 

 

The following are not available on Spotify -

 

Get Wild

Come On

 

Additionally, I have used single edits wherever possible but not all are available on Spotify but the following have edits that can be found on Youtube -

 

All of the above are on this playlist here -

Sometimes It Snows In April for my wildcard please!

Definitely taking part in this. I'm a gigantic Prince fan. Please remind me if I haven't voted before the deadline 🙏

My wildcard nomination is 'The Cross'

Wildcard:

Prince-Scandalous

If someone wouldn’t mind giving me a potential wildcard list of 10 or so songs I’ll give them all a listen. :)

If someone wouldn’t mind giving me a potential wildcard list of 10 or so songs I’ll give them all a listen. :)

It's hard to know where to start as there's so much stuff out there but the following are all either well known songs or promo singles -

 

I Feel 4 U

Delirious

Darling Nikki

Nothing Compares 2 U

Manic Monday

Damn U

The Continental

Pink Cashmere

Dolphin

Endorphinmachine

 

 

 

 

Edited October 12, 2024Oct 12 by Severin

The Spotify playlist is in the updated first post.

did he release Manic Monday solo besides giving it to the Bangles?

did he also release Nothing compares 2 U himself?

did he release Manic Monday solo besides giving it to the Bangles?

did he also release Nothing compares 2 U himself?

Yes and no. He himself didn't release them but both of them were recorded by him prior to giving them away and were eventually given an official release on the posthumous album called Originals

 

There was a live version of Nothing Compares 2 U on his The Hits collection as well

Edited October 13, 2024Oct 13 by Severin

I like his version of Love Thy Will Be Done of the songs he wrote for others

Don't think i've heard his Martika song solo by him either

Predictably my favourite Prince version of the songs he gave away is Kiss. He obviously agreed as he gave it to Mazarati, then as soon as he heard what they'd done with it he nicked it back!

 

The beat, backing vocals and stripped back arrangement are all down to Mazarati and they never got any credit for it

I'm only going to like a few of these songs but I'll always take part in a rate in this part of the forum.

Starfish & Coffee one of my album track faves, maybe Question Of U too or anything off Purple Rain that wasnt a single, and I have memories of playing Lemon Crush a lot but best not mention that one, I didn't realise what it was about!

It's hard to know where to start as there's so much stuff out there but the following are all either well known songs or promo singles -

 

I Feel 4 U

Delirious

Darling Nikki

Nothing Compares 2 U

Manic Monday

Damn U

The Continental

Pink Cashmere

Dolphin

Endorphinmachine

Thanks! I will go for “Delirious”.

Great, I will add Delirious and Starfish & Coffee to the playlist tonight

Voted. There was a lot of rubbish but I found 30 songs good enough to give my points to.

Just a reminder everybody that there is one week to get your votes in