Thread by @scottwoodssays

Welcome to the sixth installment of multi-authored Twitter threads dedicated to #Prince's Purple Rain album. Each day is dedicated to one song, posted by one author, and today is my turn. Keeping with the order of the album, my song is “When Doves Cry.”
#PurpleRain9on9

(Before we get down to business, check out the previous 5 songs by @EdgarKruize @NightEthereal @arrthurr @antski74 and @CaseyRain and then come back after mine for the rest of the album, done by @Miss_EThompson @PrincesfriendYT and @deejayUMB )
#PurpleRain9on9

For the 3 of you that will encounter this thread having never heard “When Doves Cry,” here is the song we have gathered here today to talk about.

Let’s just get this out the way: There is nothing material I can tell you about WDC that hasn’t been said a hundred times over. My goal isn’t to drop a bunch of notes. We got several books and a whole internet for that.
My goal is to get you to appreciate the song anew.

So: What is "When Doves Cry" and why is it important?

Picture it: America, 1984.
Reagan was president, and gunning for a second term.
America was becoming more conservative.
“Dirty Mind” and “1999” had already made Prince the poster child for everything wrong with music.

I distinctly remember 11-year old me sitting in an evening church lecture in front of a projection of the 1999 album cover and my Sunday School teacher outlining the hand drawn penis over and over again.

In a glaring refusal to acknowledge the separation of church and state, Congress was actively seeking McCarthy-esque censorship measures to protect America’s children from bad music (proving they didn’t know anything about music or children).
(Shout out to Tipper Gore, left.)

Musically 1984 was an up and down year, neither the best or worst of the decade up to the point that “When Doves Cry” dropped.

Here's is the big deal about WDC: “When Doves Cry” is sui generis, sounding like no song before or after it.
No shade, but any attempt to sound like this song only ever sounds like an attempt.

And (too) many people have tried.

TOO. MANY.

It was released May 16, 1984 as a single, 5 weeks prior to the album's release, and 2 months ahead of the film and musician it would usher into the zeitgeist.

WDC sold 3 million copies & was the biggest song of the year. The industry then moved the goalposts, making it the last single released by a solo artist to receive Platinum certification before the stats were lowered. In '84 it was 2 million. Now you can get it with 1 million.

That has less to do with Prince than it does with the music industry making itself look good, but it’s dope to recognize the accomplishment, as well as knowing he would have still beat the spread.

The last version of Prince the public had seen prior to WDC was in August 1983 with the release of Automatic, although by then it’s safe to say we were already hip.
The “1999” LP came out in October 1982 so fans had been playing it for 10 months by the time Automatic dropped.

He wrapped up the 1999 tour in April 1983, which means there was a huge window of audience downtime (that wasn't downtime for him) between then and May 1984 to get complacent. We may have been good on Prince by the time early 1984 rolled around, but he hadn't forgotten about us.

Nine months after the last 1999 single drops, the baby that is "When Doves Cry" is born, and with it a new and market-improved Prince, a Prince primed to take over the world or die trying.

It was not Prince’s first reinvention.
By this point he had reinvented himself 3 times - but it is the reinvention which transformed his status from celebrity to icon.

As musical statements go, WDC is an aggressive doubling-down of what made 1999 Prince so hip. It is electric Prince, synth-loving Prince, guitar-squealing Prince, crying drums Prince, screaming Prince, purple Prince. It is all of these but even more over the top and refined.

While there are many Princes, ultimately there are only two Princes: the Prince before “When Doves Cry” and the Prince after it. WDC Prince was a clear elevation in style, production and mission, and a bar he would try over and over again to leap and bury.

(Aside:)
Then there was Thriller.
In December 1983 the biggest music star in the world released the music video that would transform the entertainment industry in almost every way: Thriller.

Between 82-84 MJ and Purple Rain, Black folks felt like we’d elected a Black president. Black art was literally taking over the world. Every nation loved our titans, and they were pushing mad envelopes to boot. 82-84 was like watching a religion be born.

Back to Doves.

Some of the songs for Purple Rain (film) were written before there was a proper script for the movie, evolving over time. (Looking at you, “Baby I’m A Star”.)
Some were recorded several months before shooting started.

“When Doves Cry” was not one of those songs.

WDC was commissioned by director Albert Magnoli, who needed a song to go with a mid-movie montage.
Prince recorded it in 1 day, spent another day fattening it up, spent another day mixing it, then 1 more day editing.

And if you think losing 2 Grammy nominations to Michael Jackson 2 days before didn’t affect what he did in the studio to this song, you’re not the Prince fan I thought you were.

That pic of MJ with Quincy reminds me that I need to point out that Prince is the only performer on this song.
Listen to that song and let that sink in.

#PurpleRain9on9

Those drums, programmed within an inch of at least 3 genres of music.
The guitar, with one of the most identifiable opening riffs in the last 35 years.
The keyboards, most notably that accordion synth solo near the end.
ALL THOSE VOCALS.

Then there is what isn’t there: Prince recorded the song with bass and later opted to drop it out.
This is the feature most people think is most progressive about the song.
They’re not wrong, but it’s hyperbole to lay what makes the song work at the feet of a missing bassline.

Even the people in his camp - from fellow band members to his label - didn’t think the track had hit legs.

Black artists weren’t dropping no bass lines. 99% of rap songs had basslines in 1984, and this was before wholesale sampling. Funk artists weren’t doing it. Pop artists weren’t doing it. And Prince was all of those things at the same time.

It’s not the only time Prince ever released a song without bass (hey “Kiss”), and he certainly wasn’t the first to do it, but it was notable that he was doing it, and that people were eating it up. His genius had been vindicated.

But a lot of Prince’s career was about remixing elements at the right time, and he was really awesome at that for much of his career.

Dropping what would become a popular hit without a bassline in 1984 was not a move that changed the field in a way that influenced popular music moving forward.
There are a lot of sonic risks in WDC that, combined, make for a unique track.

His Linn drum tunings in WDC were more influential than the lack of a traditional bass.

I even wrote an essay about tracking down his use of the side stick a few years back.

scottwoodsmakeslists.wordpress.com/2015/11/03/how…

As a producer and a musician, Prince has proven over and over to be something of a tinkerer. He likes to hit all of the buttons, mess with all of the levels.

And let’s be honest: most people who listened to this song didn’t even catch that it didn’t have a bassline. If you weren’t a musician or a music journalist, you just thought it was a hype track.

I went a few years without recognizing it didn’t have a bassline. Granted, I was 13 at the time, but I was taking piano lessons. It might have occurred to me that my left hand had nothing to do whenever WDC came on, but I couldn’t play it anyway. And neither could anyone else.

Bottom line: Dropping the bassline was a game changer, but it was a game changer for Prince, less so for the rest of music.
Dropping bass was the layup, but the dunk was the establishment of Prince as a premiere songwriter of incredible range wielding bold production values.

Here’s a chilling thought: Can you imagine PR without that song? Probably not - I know I can’t.
But one thing we can know for sure is that none of the success he had with PR would have been quite the same without WDC leading the charge.

Even if he had used another song off of the otherwise great album, it would not have left the same crater in the culture that WDC did.

Prince had already risked his entire career on a movie that no one believed he was ready to do. If Purple Rain flopped at the box office, his career would have stalled out on the spot and he would have been ordered to churn out “1999 Part 2” for the next 5 years.

He needed to come out strong, risky, different, and considering the video is essentially a modified rip of the montage from the film, the meat of the necessary video was already there.
So let’s talk about the video briefly, because it’s impossible to not mention it.

The video first aired in June 1984, a month after the single dropped, but still well before the movie opened in late July.
Think about what that chain of events was like in 1984:

1) WDC drops, blows people’s minds.
2) The video drops the following month, and it shows us that there is some amazing (we assume) cinematic experience to go with this insanely good song.
3) The month after that, the movie opens and everything goes purple for the next 30 years.

It was a time-release capsule of dopeness designed to unveil this new Prince in a graduated way. This wasn’t just next level Prince. This was Final Boss Level Prince. This was the chrysalis cracked open.

It bears mentioning that while Prince videos have directors listed, almost none of them did the work of a director. With few exceptions, Prince would hire, fire and then subsume the work to date of whoever he sacked for his own purposes, effectively directing his own videos.

This was less obvious with WDC since so much of it is taken from the film, but the parts that aren’t are Prince on fleek.

Larry Williams is listed as director but producer Simon Fields says Prince whispered to him before the first shot that “He (Larry) doesn’t have to be here.” Williams was delegated to reading magazines outside of the shoot.

Prince ran numerous directors off in similar fashion.

Several bathtubs had to be found the day before the shoot so Prince could decide which one to rise out of. Doves had to be acquired. Prince had a pair of woolen underpants trimmed as tight as could be managed, then dyed purple, which is what he wears when we think he’s naked.

WDC was the first time the band had to perform actual choreography, which Prince of course rehearsed them to do to death.

It is important to remember that Prince knew the song would be consumed visually from the outset.

He had a fresh opportunity to make his music work on more than one level, this time not just showing his band onstage, and with higher production values than any of his previous video fare.

He wasn’t trying to capture the energy of a live show with the WDC video. He was trying to capture a life. Like any rock fantasy, Prince was dabbling in a bit of world building.

Until the WDC video he had not been so nude, so vulnerable, so sensitive, so aggressively sensual, so regally adorned, so active and alive, so surrounded by something other than music, so surrounded by story. But since we don’t know the story, so surrounded by mystery.

Let's talk about lyrics briefly.

There are many interpretations of the lyrics, but for my symbology money, it’s important to keep the song in the context of the film. He was asked to compose a song that fit a narrative laid out visually by Magnoli, and the lyrics line up with the emotional beats of the film.

The lyrics traffic hard in contradictions and oppositional imagery, which is a popular tool in Prince’s toolbox.

If you look at his catalog up to that point in 1984 on a single song basis, he is, at any given turn, the forlorn lover, the tragic romantic, the despot, the unrequited poet, the cast-upon, the friend-zoned, the dom, the freak, the sap, and the misogynist.

WDC combines many of these angles, which makes it as emotionally complex as the music. One is absolutely allowed to make what you will of the lyrics as you apply them to yourself, but in March of 1984, Prince had a job to do: score the scene and tie the film together.

In its original state, WDC is a cinematic narrative device. It conveys information about the characters. It provides backstory on the characters of his parents, and the desperate sense of predestination his character grapples with.

Finally, let’s solve the most important question swirling about WDC for years: do doves actually cry?

Doves have tear ducts, and use them the same way we do: moisturizing eyes and cleaning. Doves also emit a sound that comes off to humans as mournful, but is actually a mating call.

In short, doves do in fact produce tears, but they do not cry in the sense that humans cry.
There is no evidence that doves shed tears out of sorrow.

Here is one of several fine and scientific articles from experts that breaks down the biology of it all.

vox.com/xpress/2014/10…

One of my favorite Prince instrumentals features his pet doves, Majesty and Divinity. “Arboretum” was recorded in the atrium of Paisley Park, consisting largely of piano with effects added later. When the piano stops, you can hear the doves at the end.

In closing, When Doves Cry is largely the reason why we’re still talking about Prince 36 years after its release. Would he have gone on to do great things? Almost certainly. But would they have been things on the level of the catalog we know today? Almost certainly not.

You don't get the Prince we did without a lot of freedom and compulsion. Neither of those things would have come as readily to him without the success brought on by this one song

Prince has better songs. He has songs that took more chances, that arguably should have been hits on the same level, that are more complex. He has songs that have richer, deeper meanings. But he may have no greater song, no song more responsible for the Prince we came to revere.

I hope you enjoyed this dive into this track.
Again, come back over the next few days to see entries for the remaining tracks from the Purple Rain album by @Miss_EThompson @PrincesfriendYT and @deejayUMB

If you dug what I had to say about this song, you’ll like my entire book of Prince ramblings, “Prince and Little Weird Bklack Boy Gods”. Get the print version. It has content the earlier ebook doesn’t.

amazon.com/gp/product/193…

And if you want to see what other things I write about (but also, more Prince), boom: scottwoodswrites.net

Thank you for stopping in. May you live 2 C The Dawn.
Also, if you read this thread backwards it has a secret religious message.

(Just kidding. It's the devil.)

I had a graph for this i forgot to insert, even though I made it. WHAT TIME IS IT ANYWAY.