Doves, Then Crazy: Prince's Long Climb and the Summer of 1984
The first time Prince appeared on the Hot 100, almost nobody noticed. "Soft And Wet" showed up the week of November 4, 1978, crawled to #92, and was gone after four weeks. That's the kind of debut most careers quietly bury. A Minneapolis kid on Warner Bros. with a strange, breathy little record that barely cleared the bottom of the chart. Nothing about it announced what was coming.
A year later he got close enough to touch the top ten and couldn't. "I Wanna Be Your Lover" debuted on November 24, 1979, hung around for sixteen weeks, and stalled at #11. One spot short. I've always found #11 a crueler number than #92, because #92 is a shrug and #11 is a door closing. Then came "Controversy" in October 1981, and the door didn't just close, it moved. Peak: #70. On paper, three years in, he was going backwards.
The paper was wrong. "1999" debuted on October 30, 1982, and only reached #12, but it stayed on the chart for twenty-seven weeks, the longest run of any Prince single in this archive. That's the number to watch. A record that won't leave is a record that people keep discovering. "Little Red Corvette" followed on February 26, 1983, and became his first top ten, peaking at #6. "Delirious" went to #8 that fall. "Let's Pretend We're Married" limped to #52 in December. Four singles from one album, two of them top ten, none of them anywhere near #1. Six years after "Soft And Wet," he was a hitmaker with a ceiling.
The Summer of Doves
"When Doves Cry" entered the Hot 100 on June 2, 1984. That same week Deniece Williams was finishing a two-week stay at #1 with "Let's Hear It For The Boy," and the chart had settled into a pleasant, restless pattern. Look at the first half of 1984: Yes for two weeks, Culture Club for three, Van Halen's "Jump" for five, "Footloose" for three, Phil Collins for three, Lionel Richie for two, Deniece Williams for two. After "Jump" nothing could hold the top longer than three weeks. Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time" got two. Duran Duran's "The Reflex" got two.
Then Prince took it and didn't give it back. "When Doves Cry" hit #1 on July 7, 1984, replacing "The Reflex," and stayed there through August 4. Five straight weeks. That matched "Jump" for the longest reign of the year to that point, and among records that reached #1 in 1984 only Madonna's "Like A Virgin," which started its six weeks on December 22 and rode them into 1985, would hold the top longer.
Think about what that record is. No bass. A drum machine and a guitar squall and Prince singing about his parents in a voice that sounds like it's arguing with itself. It doesn't sound like "Jump" or "Footloose" or "Hello." It doesn't sound like anything else on that list. And it sat on top of the chart for more than a month in the middle of summer, which is when radio is supposed to be at its safest. Purple Rain the film opened in 1984, and I'll grant the movie helped. But the movie didn't make radio play an R&B record with no bassline five weeks running. The record did that.
The song that finally pushed it aside was "Ghostbusters" by Ray Parker Jr., which is about as perfect a scene change as the Hot 100 has ever written. From doves crying to "who you gonna call." Three weeks of that, three weeks of Tina Turner's "What's Love Got To Do With It," one week of John Waite's "Missing You," and the summer was over.
Crazy, Rain, and the Revolution
Here's the detail I love most. "Let's Go Crazy" debuted on August 4, 1984, the very week "When Doves Cry" was spending its fifth and final week at #1. The follow-up entered the chart while the first record was still on top. Note the credit, too. "When Doves Cry" charted as Prince. "Let's Go Crazy" charted as Prince And The Revolution. The band got its name on the label mid-summer, and the archive records the exact week it happened.
"Let's Go Crazy" reached #1 on September 29, 1984, taking over from "Missing You," and held for two weeks. That gave Prince seven weeks at the top of the chart inside a single calendar year, on two records that share almost nothing beyond a composer. One is a dirge with a drum machine. The other opens with a sermon and ends in a guitar solo. Stevie Wonder's "I Just Called To Say I Love You" took over on October 13, and the year wound down through Billy Ocean, Wham!, Hall and Oates and finally Madonna.
And the week "Let's Go Crazy" was finishing its run, October 6, 1984, the title track debuted. "Purple Rain" itself, the big slow one, climbed to #2 and stayed on the chart for sixteen weeks. It never got to #1. It feels like it should have, but #2 is where it stopped. "I Would Die 4 U" followed on December 15 and reached #8. "Take Me With U," a duet with Apollonia, arrived on February 9, 1985, and peaked at #25. Five singles from one film. Two number ones, a #2, a #8, a #25. Nothing in his six-year climb had hinted at a year like that, and nothing after it quite matched it.
Kiss, Batdance, and the Ones That Got Away
What followed was a strange, brilliant run of near-misses. "Raspberry Beret" debuted May 18, 1985, and peaked at #2. "Pop Life" went to #7. "America" stopped at #46. Then "Kiss," which entered on February 22, 1986, and reached #1 on April 19, 1986, replacing Falco's "Rock Me Amadeus" after its three weeks. "Kiss" held for two, then gave way to Robert Palmer's "Addicted To Love." Two weeks sounds modest until you look at what 1986 did to everyone else. From May through mid-December the #1 spot changed hands almost weekly: Pet Shop Boys, Madonna, Billy Ocean, Simply Red, Genesis, Peter Gabriel, Steve Winwood, Bananarama, Berlin, all one week apiece. In that climate, two weeks was a long tenancy.
Then the near-misses came back. "Sign 'O' The Times" reached #3 in the spring of 1987. "U Got The Look," debuting August 1, 1987, went to #2 and stayed on the chart twenty-five weeks, his second-longest run in the archive. "I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man" made #10. "Alphabet St." went to #8 in 1988. Three singles peaked at #2 across these years, "Purple Rain," "Raspberry Beret" and "U Got The Look," and I'd argue any one of them is a better record than a few of the songs that were sitting above them.
The last #1 came from a bat. "Batdance," from the 1989 Batman film, debuted June 17, 1989, and reached the top on August 5, 1989, wedged between Martika's "Toy Soldiers" and Richard Marx's "Right Here Waiting." One week. It's the shortest of his four reigns and the oddest of his four #1s, a collage of samples and dialogue that has no business being a pop single, which of course is exactly why it's a Prince record. "Partyman" made #18 that fall, and "The Arms Of Orion," with Sheena Easton, reached #36.
The archive closes with a taper. "Thieves In The Temple" debuted August 4, 1990, six years to the week after "Let's Go Crazy," and reached #6. "New Power Generation" entered on November 3, 1990, peaked at #64 and left after five weeks. That's the last Prince line in this archive.
Add it up and you get four #1 titles and ten weeks at the top. Half of those ten weeks belong to one song in one summer. That ratio tells you something the peaks table can't. Prince's chart life was a long, patient climb, a single detonation, and then years of records that got within a spot or two of the top and stopped. If you only had the archive to go on, you'd still know exactly which year mattered. It's the one where a song with no bass held the country for five weeks, and the band got its name on the label while the record was still #1.
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