Prince’s ‘Purple Rain’ at 40: Here’s What Happened When It Stormed Our Charts
Four decades ago, Prince & the Revolution ruled the Billboard charts.
Big Brother was supposed to take over in 1984 — not a 5’2”, 26-year-old musical polymath from Minnesota. But with the June 25, 1984, release of
Purple Rain, Prince took his throne as a global pop star. The album “was like a magic bullet,” Revolution guitarist Wendy Melvoin tells
Billboard ahead of
Celebration 2024, a five-day Minneapolis party with performances from The Revolution, Morris Day and New Power Generation. “He knew there was lightning in a bottle.”
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