Prince: Writes a beautiful soundtrack to life

1980 My life's soundtrack begins with this K-tel album. I'm sure mom bought me this because it had the Empire Strikes Back Theme on it. Yet, I listened to my first album over and over and over again. I knew all the songs by heart. Then play side B over and over again. With only one record as a 9 year old it's all I had so I just wore it out.

Then just 3 short years in 7th grade later art class Kurt Cradic, who had an older brother in High School, mentioned an album to me I may like. Having an older sister I missed out on many things. One of which is music, Oh I was engulfed and educated about The Carpenters, Air Supply, The Bee Gees, and later Journey and Loverboy. Although, in my conversations with Kurt I was smart enough not to breath a word of these groups. All I had to talk about was a few singles I had and my K-Tel Albums. Well, Kurt had so much more to let me in on and it started with an album entitled 1999. I vividly remember him telling me about this guy Prince and his music and how it was..well....dirty and naughty. Candy to a 7th grade boys ears! I soon had the cassette tape and listening to "Lets Pretend We're Married" over and over and over. Wow, I thought, this guy is really cool. Soon, it was "Little Red Corvette", "1999" and then "Delirious". I had heard this was this guys 5th album so, I knew I had some catching up to do - but wait....Kurt says "Dude, hes making a movie!" We both knew with lyrics like these it has a have cool music and girls in it. *Spoiler Alert: (it does)

With that background, lets now discuss our title. Will children today have a single artist that will weave their music in and out of their lives like many of us have from the 70's and 80's? Or has music gone to one hit wonders. Who will be around in 20 years and continued success? Taylor Swift is the only one I can think of. 7th grade 1983 at birthday parties my friend and I would see if we could sneak "Let's Pretend Were Married" into the deck in between songs for a good laugh. Then came 1984 and I would begin to have real girlfriends to go to movies with, talk to on the phone with, and talk to about music. I do recall that Prince was never talked about very much with girls. Although, I did remember after one girl broke up with me telling her "It's just like in The Beautiful Ones...they really do hurt you every time I guess." She had a quizzical look on her face, not sure if she knew what I was talking about or not.

1985 and Around The World in a Day - I really began to pay attention to lyrics and notice things like how the line "Whatcha puttin in your nose?" was printed in white. I thought HOW COOL was that...he's singing of Cocaine and he's made this white to bring attention to it.

Then the album Parade came out...as if Prince was observing my day to day life and understood what I was going thru. After a major break up with a girl that had broke up with me and I hear she had already begun seeing someone else I hear "Anotherloverholeinyohead" probably not a song of his that will be remembered more than most others. YET, to me (even today) I love hearing how he was able to put my feelings to words and music.

If you can see on this page when it was first written it was on April 17th 2016. I had just attended Princes last concert. I had ever intention of continuing to finish this story....yet, after the 21st. I couldn't bring myself to write anymore on this topic. Today is Jan. 18 2017 and I wanted to finish this up and begin another article.

I'll end this with something a very old and dear friend of mine told me about attending his last concert in Atlanta. "That was a gift from God you were able to get tickets on the make up date and go to that." I really feel she was right. It comforts me in some way that I was present in that building that night. The greatest venue in America!