Prince Was Worried That “Purple Rain” Sounded Too Much Like This Journey Hit From 1983

In 1984, along with a movie and an album of the same name, pop icon Prince gave the world “Purple Rain”.

However, before releasing what would go on to be his biggest hit ever, Prince actually called Journey member Jonathan Cain to get his opinion on the track. The reason being, he was afraid some of the chord changes sounded a little bit too much like those in the Journey song “Faithfully”.

“Faithfully” was released in April 1983 and gave the band their second Top 20 hit on the album, Frontiers. As frontman Steve Perry noted to The Current, the songs have the same chords. They are also around the same tempo and have similar outros.

However, that didn’t seem to bother the Journey band members in the slightest.

“Back in those days, they weren’t like today,” Perry explained. “John and I and Neal looked at each other and went, ‘So what, it’s incredible!’ He’s singing his own thing on top of those [chord] changes, they’re just the same changes. It’s not a big deal, you know. And we loved [Prince] by the way, we were crazy about him. So I was a fan, right from the get-go.”

People nowadays are always worried about getting into legal trouble for having similar chord progressions in songs. Not that they shouldn’t be, but that wasn’t the worry here.

“Faithfully” Writer Jonathan Cain on “Purple Rain”

Similar to Perry, Jonathan Cain, who wrote “Faithfully”, was actually more impressed by “Purple Rain” than bothered by its similarities to his own.

“I thought it was an amazing tune, and I told [Prince], ‘Man, I’m just super-flattered that you even called,’” Cain shared with Billboard. “‘It shows you’re that classy of a guy. Good luck with the song. I know it’s gonna be a hit.’”

When it came to asking for credit on Prince’s smash hit, Cain wasn’t to be bothered. Apparently, he didn’t want the karma that comes with that.

“No, no, that’ll just bring bad juju on you, and you don’t want to do that,” Cain explained. “I just thought it seriously showed the kind of caring, classy guy Prince was. He wanted to check in with Jonathan Cain and make sure I wasn’t going to say that sounds like ‘Faithfully…’”

Photo by: Ross Marino/Getty Images

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