Prince was a musical phenomenon, a singular talent, a virtuoso, a genius. Everyone seems to agree. Well, not everyone: I’m calling bullshit. Now, I realize I’m in the tiniest of minorities here, but I’ve never been impressed with Prince, and maintain that much of his music and his act were just ripped off from James Brown. In fact, I believe Prince to be the single most overrated artist in rock history. There, I said it. But what I didn’t realize until recently is that he also blatantly stole from the band America.
Yes, America, those folky, soft-rock, sort-of British harmonizers (America’s members, sons of US Air Force ex-pats, actually met in England), famous for ‘Tin Man,’ ‘Horse With No Name,’ and ‘Sister Golden hair’ – as well as the first band I ever saw in concert. So, what connection could Prince possibly have had to them? This: Purple Rain. Arguably Prince’s biggest song, his movie, shit, basically his whole identity was wrapped up in those two iconic words. And then last week I was chilling to some mellow tunes on Sirius channel 32 The Bridge when they played America’s well-recognized top-10 hit ‘Ventura Highway,’ and as I was singing along it hit me. There it is, in the last stanza (starting at 1:45):
“Wishin’ on a falling star / Waitin’ for the early train / Sorry boy, but I’ve been hit by purple rain / Aw, come on Joe, you can always change your name / Thanks a lot son, just the same.”
Aha! And in case you’re wondering, that ‘Ventura Highway’ phrase appeared in 1972, 12 years before Prince’s purloinment in 1984. Stick that in your raspberry beret.
Well then, now that we’ve exposed this obvious pop plagiarism, let’s agree that Prince is really a derivative purple sham and give a listen to the original usage by the real geniuses. Screw the Prince of Thieves, and God Bless America.
Mark Zucker
June 18, 2018 7:14 pmNot sure repurposing the words Purple Rain is as egregious as you suggest, but big props for exposing America as a British band! I’ll chalk it up to either great marketing or the band just messing with us.
Matt Daly
June 18, 2018 9:50 pmI understand you’ve been running from a man who goes by the name of the Sandman
Furthermore, did you know that he rides the sky like like a Beagle baking pie like a journeyman that’s in her Canyon?
M. Daly
Dan Bernstein
December 4, 2018 9:19 pmNot sure it counts as plagiarism, but America was my first concert too…and I was there with…you!
Bill G.
December 4, 2018 9:36 pmPlagiarism, I say! Screw Prince. Fun America concert though. Somehow I doubt that they were many people’s “first.”
Thomas Pirko
July 1, 2022 1:40 pmI cannot understand the enthusiasm people have singing along and dancing to 1999. Prince’s music would have been better if he hired skilled musicians instead of playing all of the parts himself. Nothing he writes is catchy. And I don’t know why Raspberry Beret gets any airplay. Now I am off to the rest of the blog where the music makes everybody happy.
So Much Great Music
July 1, 2022 4:21 pmI’ve been continually surprised (and gratified?) that my extreme minority opinion of Prince being junk…isn’t nearly as minority as I’d have thought.
Richard Pickel
July 24, 2022 1:26 pm“Steal from the best” is an old show business saying. The last I knew, James Brown was the most-sampled musical act in the history of music sampling. And Prince was the biggest-selling musical act of the combined 1,980’s – 1,990’s decades. I had every Prince album through Purple Rain. A tape-eating cassette tape player/recorder, plus, mostly, me just wearing them out by playing them a million times, resulted in me buying five or six cassette tape copies of his debut album, For You. I’m white, male, hetero, and a rock and roll fan mostly, but when all the other young white kids were buying Sergeant Pepper (your generous $0.05 or $0.10 per week allowance only allowed you to buy one or two albums per year back then) I bought The Supremes Greatest Hits. Same release year. I thought Purple Rain was a kind of a disappointing step back from Prince’s – in my opinion – career peak of 1,999 (just before the Grammy awards ceremony the next year, Michael Jackson said that if Thriller didn’t win the Best Album Grammy, 1999 should) and the beginning of a slow descent from the top of the pop music heap for Prince. Becoming a kind of Jesus freak to try to save themselves from early death from alcohol and/or hard drug (legal and/or illegal) addiction is a common trick for addicts. But, as with Prince, not always a successful one.