Purple Rain

The basic track was recorded on 3 August 1983 at First Avenue in Minneapolis, during a benefit concert for the Minnesota Dance Theatre. It was Wendy Melvoin's first show with the Revolution. The producer David Z recorded it with a mobile unit from the Record Plant in New York. Strings were added at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles, arranged by Lisa Coleman, who called her brother David Coleman and asked him to bring a few friends. A solo and a verse were cut to shorten it, and Coleman said the dropped verse did not match the other two. Bobby Z. said Prince was an incredible editor in the days of splicing tape. Coleman remembered him telling the crowd that night, "We're making history tonight."

Prince had first written it as a country song, hoping to share it with Stevie Nicks. She received a ten-minute instrumental and said it was too much for her. At rehearsal he asked the band to try something mellow. Melvoin began playing big chords, and Coleman said that took it out of the country feeling. They played it for six hours, and by the end of the day it was mostly written and arranged. Afterward Prince asked Jonathan Cain of Journey to listen, worried that it resembled Journey's Faithfully, and Cain told him they shared only a few chords. Prince said purple rain was about the end of the world and being with the one you love, and Coleman called it a new beginning.

The single reached number two on the Hot 100, held off the top by Wham!'s Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, and number one on the Cash Box Top 100. After Prince's death it reached number four on the Hot 100 in May 2016. Rolling Stone ranked it 18th on its 2021 list of the greatest songs, and Pitchfork named it the best song of the 1980s.

Live

He played it on nearly every tour after 1984, apart from a stretch after his name change. At the Super Bowl XLI halftime show on 4 February 2007 it closed his set in a downpour, and that performance has topped lists of the best Super Bowl halftime shows. In 2004 it opened his Grammy medley with Beyonce. A version of about twenty minutes, with a ten-minute guitar solo, was played in Syracuse in 1985, and it was the last song of his final concert in Atlanta on 14 April 2016. Logged performances number 1,024, the earliest being the First Avenue show of 3 August 1983 on which it was recorded. After his death Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band played it on The River Tour.