“Purple Rain” by Prince

"Purple Rain" gave its name to Prince's 1984 album, the soundtrack to the film he starred in that year, and it went out as the record's third single with the Revolution right there behind him. He wrote every word and note of it himself, and it's the big one: a slow, aching ballad that keeps swelling and swelling until it feels less like a song than a weather system, part hymn, part heartbreak, part stadium-sized benediction.

It stopped one spot short of the top of the Hot 100, holding at number two for two weeks that November, though Cash Box put it at number one, and it went gold. Prince kept going back to it. At the 2004 Grammy Awards he kicked off a run through his greatest hits with it, Beyonce by his side, and at the Super Bowl XLI halftime show in 2007 he saved it for last while real rain came down and the stadium glowed purple, a performance that has since topped lists of the best halftime shows ever staged.

It was also the last song he played at his final concert, on April 14, 2016. After his death a week later it climbed back to number four on the Hot 100, reached number six in the UK and went all the way to number one in France. In 2021 Rolling Stone ranked it 18th among the greatest songs of all time.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.