Purple Rain Review

What separates this from everything around it is the band. Up to now he had played nearly everything himself. Here the Revolution is a working group, and several tracks were captured live in front of a few hundred people and then overdubbed, which gives the record a physical push no drum machine can fake. Let's Go Crazy opens with a sermon and ends with a guitar solo that eats the fade.

When Doves Cry is famously missing a bass line, a decision made at the last minute, and the absence is what makes it sound so airless and strange. The title track is eight minutes of gospel structure and a solo that goes on exactly as long as it should. Darling Nikki got a warning sticker onto every record sold in America. It is nine songs and there is no weak one, which is rare in any catalogue. It sits a fraction below his very best only because the album that came three years later covers more ground.