3. PrincePurple Rain
See? Again, only the best. Apparently, I was in a certain mindset when I made this list. I’m the same with dessert. I refuse to eat shitty ice cream, if it’s sub-par then I’d rather not have it. It had better be the best fucking ice cream you can get. That’s what this album is. From front to back, all of the tracks are flawless. A couple of years ago, I was at a Michael Jackson vs. Prince club night. I noticed that for Jackson, it was solely the well-known songs that were making people move, but for Prince, the DJ could put on anything – literally anything – from his back catalogue and everybody still loved it. Even the weird, obscure stuff was just as fun and funky as say, ‘Thriller’ or ‘Off The Wall’. As amazing as Michael Jackson was (despite having been an allegedly horrendous person) it’s only the chart-toppers that people like. No one ever listens to the deep cuts because there aren’t any. Purple Rain probably the first record I brought with my own money. I guess it got burnt into my brain when I was a kid. My dad was in the music industry, so ‘adult’ records were always on in our house. Aged about seven or eight, I’d boogie to Prince in my underwear in the living room (which I’m sure he would approve of). It’s funny, with canonical artists, it’s hard to place yourself when you first encountered them. Like, Bob Marley, right? Of course, he’s great, but because you’ve heard him so many times, it’s like a fucking Barbie commercial. Thank god, that never happened to me with Prince.
