{"id":540740,"date":"2026-04-20T08:43:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T08:43:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/540740\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T08:43:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T08:43:11","slug":"why-sometimes-it-snows-in-april-is-better-than-purple-rain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/540740\/","title":{"rendered":"Why ‘Sometimes It Snows In April’ is better than ‘Purple Rain’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Prince<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n

Mon 20 April 2026 4:00, UK <\/p>\n

There are only a precious few songs that are able to stop time the way that \u2018Purple Rain\u2019 does whenever someone throws it on. <\/p>\n

Prince<\/a> was a God-given talent, and while he worked every single room until it was as hot as it could be whenever he played, his magnum opus is that one moment where it feels like everything goes into slow motion and all that exists in the world is you and that guitar part. The whole thing feels like watching a musical miracle play out in real time, so what if I told you that it wasn\u2019t even the best ballad of its kind that Prince ever made?<\/p>\n

Granted, that comes with a lot of qualifiers. \u2018The Purple One\u2019 is forever going to be associated with his trademark song, and there isn\u2019t a soul on this Earth that would disagree, right? Well, yes, but if you\u2019re talking about a song that captures the right emotion perfectly, \u2018Sometimes It Snows in April\u2019 does actually go the extra mile when talking about the feelings of loss and breaking things off with an old partner.<\/p>\n

Then again, these are very different circumstances depending on which movie you watch. Admittedly, Purple Rain is a much better movie than Under the Cherry Moon, but when you\u2019re listening to the song in isolation, the whole thing feels like a straight breakup song if you look at the lyrics. Prince didn\u2019t want to cause his other half any sorrow, and even if they have to move on, they will always have those nights laughing in the purple rain as the greatest guitar solo of all time<\/a> plays beneath them.<\/p>\n

But \u2018Sometimes It Snows in April\u2019 is the kind of song that doesn\u2019t really offer that sense of closure in the same way. In the context of the movie, Christopher Tracy is fatally shot by an officer and ends up passing away in the arms of his friend, Tricky. The whole thing doesn\u2019t seem to have the same dramatic heft that you would see out of Prince\u2019s other movies, but as the postscript for the entire movie, the song hits on a feeling that \u2018Purple Rain\u2019 really isn\u2019t able to touch on: emptiness.<\/p>\n

The characters in Prince\u2019s masterpiece are always content to have loved and lost rather than not having had anything at all, but when looking at the chorus of this tune, you can tell that the singer isn\u2019t quite ready to move on. They were working towards something special with Tracy, but even as they walk through life from day to day, they know that all good things were never meant to last.<\/p>\n

And if I can get technical for a second, \u2018April\u2019 is a much better encapsulation of that feeling thanks to the chords it\u2019s using. There\u2019s no one that was looking out for the musical construction of \u2018Purple Rain\u2019 when they first heard it, but on the line \u2018sometimes I wish that life was never-ending\u2019, there\u2019s a crunchy chord that really describes the entire song to a tee. Sometimes people are dead set on following their dreams, but that chord is dark reality setting in when you know that the love of your life is gone.<\/p>\n

While saying something like this is enough to be considered blasphemy, the real turning point for this song came when listening to D\u2019Angelo sing the tune in tribute to Prince after he passed away. That final verse of the song was already an absolute gut punch, but hearing the line about wondering whether they will be reunited with \u2018my Tracy again\u2019 is enough to give me goosebumps as I\u2019m writing this out. We\u2019d all like to think that we can reach a point where all of our dreams are fulfilled, but we\u2019ll all have to wait until that fateful day when we all get to the other side.<\/p>\n

So, as I\u2019m trying to stop any tears from hitting my keyboard, I will raise you this one last question about \u2018Purple Rain\u2019 and \u2018Sometimes It Snows in April\u2019. The first one will forever be immortalised as the perfect example of what Prince could do when he was still here, but what\u2019s important at this point: a song that celebrates his life, or a song that reminds us of what might happen when we can hear that beautiful voice again?<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy) Mon 20 April 2026 4:00, UK There are only a precious few songs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311689,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,30646,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-540740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-prince","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}