© 2024
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
🎧 Help keep the Spring Membership Drive short! Support the Buy-Back Campaign today before the Friday, March 29th deadline. Tap here to donate 💖

After Last Week's False Start, The Unreleased Prince Music Starts Rolling Out

Prince's classic 1984 album <em>Purple Rain</em> is about to get <em>two</em> deluxe reissues.
Courtesy of the artist
Prince's classic 1984 album Purple Rain is about to get two deluxe reissues.

Last week brought a flurry of news about a new batch of unreleased Prince songs — six, to be exact, culled from sessions the late star had recorded between 2006 and 2008 — most of which remain unreleased after Prince's estate obtained an injunction blocking their distribution. Just one week later, we're getting word about the kind of posthumous releases fans can expect through official channels.

June 23 will bring not one but two deluxe reissues of Prince's 1984 masterpiece Purple Rain, each of which will feature not only a remastered version of the original nine songs, but also a set of 11 more tracks from the vault. (Most have never been heard before; for a full track listing, see below.) Purple Rain Deluxe – Expanded Edition, the one for true diehards, will feature two bonus discs, containing both a live concert DVD (Prince And The Revolution Live At The Carrier Dome, Syracuse, NY, March 30, 1985) and another CD titled Single Edits & B-Sides.

For now, fans can soak up the first little preview of the unreleased material: "Electric Intercourse," a previously unheard studio version of a song Prince had slipped into the occasional live set, from Purple Rain Deluxe's first bonus disc.

Purple Rain Deluxe Track Listing

Disc One: Original Album (2015 Paisley Park Remaster)

  • Let's Go Crazy
  • Take Me With U
  • The Beautiful Ones
  • Computer Blue
  • Darling Nikki
  • When Doves Cry
  • I Would Die 4 U
  • Baby I'm A Star
  • Purple Rain
  • Disc Two: From The Vault & Previously Unreleased

  • The Dance Electric
  • Love And Sex
  • Computer Blue ("Hallway Speech" version)
  • Electric Intercourse (studio)
  • Our Destiny / Roadhouse Garden
  • Possessed (1983 version)
  • Wonderful Ass
  • Velvet Kitty Cat
  • Katrina's Paper Dolls
  • We Can F***
  • Father's Song
  • Purple Rain Deluxe – Expanded Edition Track Listing

    Disc Three: Single Edits & B-Sides

  • When Doves Cry (edit)
  • 17 Days
  • Let's Go Crazy (edit)
  • Let's Go Crazy (Special Dance Mix)
  • Erotic City
  • Erotic City ("Make Love Not War Erotic City Come Alive")
  • Purple Rain (edit)
  • God
  • God (Love Theme From Purple Rain)
  • Another Lonely Christmas
  • Another Lonely Christmas (extended version)
  • I Would Die 4 U (edit)
  • I Would Die 4 U (extended version)
  • Baby I'm A Star (edit)
  • Take Me With U (edit)
  • DVD: Prince And The Revolution, Live at the Carrier Dome, Syracuse, NY, March 30, 1985

  • Let's Go Crazy
  • Delirious
  • 1999
  • Little Red Corvette
  • Take Me With U
  • Do Me, Baby
  • Irresistible Bitch
  • Possessed
  • How Come U Don't Call Me Anymore?
  • Let's Pretend We're Married
  • International Lover
  • God
  • Computer Blue
  • Darling Nikki
  • The Beautiful Ones
  • When Doves Cry
  • I Would Die 4 U
  • Baby I'm A Star
  • Purple Rain
  • Purple Rain Deluxe and Purple Rain Deluxe — Expanded Edition come out June 23 via NPG/Warner Bros.

    Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

    Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)