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PRINCE, “The Beautiful Ones” | Purple Rain, 1984
If, while listening to Prince’s “The Beautiful Ones,” you tally on your computer all of his “babies” in the No. 3 track on Purple Rain, it might look something like this:
/// /// / /// /// / //? /// / ? / /// / ? // ///
Prince coos, elongates, trembles, belts, and eventually screeches 30 certain “babies” during the slow-building, five-minute-and-13-second track. Plus, there are what seem to be three “babes,” which we cannot accept for consideration here, but, it should be noted, are still pretty impressive. In other words, the singular focus of the song is “baby” — one of “the beautiful ones” who “hurt you every time.”
Built in a plain 3/4 saunter, the song rises from barely a keyboard beat into a howling Prince-y tornado by the end. And nearly every Prince “baby” is distinct. Some are unadorned and vulnerable; some are as athletic as his dance moves; some crash to the floor in desperation. He accomplishes something beyond vocal flourish on a few, hopping an octave or two and adding something that almost sounds like that hiccup-crying common in toddlers. And then there are the screaming “babies.” It feels like a class: “Pronunciation of Baby 101,” in which we are enrolled.
That said, with so many choices, it’s hard to choose a “best” one. But a trio of delicate “babies” starting at 1:07 of the song, are illustrative of Prince’s powers to woo like no one else.
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A lot of people ask who “The Beautiful Ones” was about. Prince, at one point, admitted that he wrote it on the set of Purple Rain about Vanity, the singer he dated. She had been cast to co-star with him in the film, but she dropped out when she and Prince broke off. Apollonia, fans know, took her place. But it was Vanity who had already stolen Prince’s heart.
And if all this — Prince, Vanity, Apollonia, the beautiful ones, purple rain — sounds like some sort of Greek myth, well then, when you listen to the song, picture Prince in a field of flowers just below Mount Olympus, the gods looking down on him, and some of the gods wanting to hook up with him, and maybe some of them already have … and in return, they gave him these extraordinary powers of song and dance.
