10 Greatest Posthumous Rock Songs
8. Purple Rain (demo) - Prince
It seemed like the entire music world was rocked the moment we all heard Prince passed away. After years of giving us some of the most delightfully strange music that the mainstream world had ever known, the mad scientist of the '80s was now going to remain forever silent. Though we wouldn't see any new material coming down the pipeline, the Purple One's estate did gift us with a rehearsal tape a year after his passing.
On the surface, Piano and a Microphone 1983 is exactly what it sounds like, with Prince left with nothing but the ivories as he works out what amounts to a rehearsal. Though he goes through various different movements within the span of a half an hour, we see the germs of his greatest work come up in this demo of Purple Rain.
Coming out of songs like International Lover and even a little slice of Joni Mitchell's A Case of You, those opening chords will never fail to send shivers down the spines of any fans, almost as if Prince is putting on a subtle concert in your mind. Even though most of this record just amounts to a bunch of fragments, the fly on the wall feeling as Prince starts to paint his masterpiece is not something many artists can really capture on tape.