As has been so aptly said so many times over the years, music is the universal language. Age, gender, race, language, income level, and fame do not make for separate qualifications when it comes to a love for lines of melody. Just different types of taste, which only adds to the intrigue when a celebrity talks about some of the music that's essential to the formation of their life and experiences.

Celebrities, they're just like us - not that it should ever come as a surprise, especially when the topic is music. Despite the perceptible obviousness of that statement, there's something noteworthy to be said about the feelings and reactions that come from everyday people knowing they share common enjoyments or interests with someone with a high profile. As though, despite the popular notoriety or the mountainous echelon these individuals have risen to, they can still form regular, lasting bonds with the everyday folks who like them and their art by finding similar, (somewhat) parasocial ground.

Pedro Pascal Describes "Purple Rain" As Exactly What It Is: A Masterpiece

An Anthem Of A Title Track

Take The Last of Us and The Mandalorian actor Pedro Pascal and his "lifelong" love of the iconic musician Prince, for instance. In an interview with spicy chicken wing-based chat show Hot Ones, Pascal revealed that he has such a deep affection for the artist from Minnesota that he'd like the musician's song "Purple Rain" to be played at his funeral (via Louder Sound):

It's my favorite song. It's the most moving song. I don't know why it always emerges, even before I actively started implementing it into my spiritual routine, essentially. I didn't go to church; I was raised by HBO, Spielberg, and Prince, and for me, Purple Rain is the most emotionally cathartic, the most musically sophisticated song that I can think of. If it's casually or spontaneously playing somewhere... I don't have the emotional space to go there, because it just moves me so deeply.

On the one hand, it certainly resonates that an actor as emotionally savvy and in touch with his performances as Pascal would find such deep and weighty ground that strikes a chord for him within "Purple Rain." But then again, that almost isn't a surprise either, given the standing that "Purple Rain" is not only an iconic Prince's creative catalog.

Prince's Purple Rain Has The Legacy It Does For A Reason

The Heavenly Ascension Of Signature Songs

For Prince, Purple Rain was not only his sixth album, the title track of that record, and the soundtrack to a movie of the same name released the same year, but it was also his 1984 magnum opus. Purple Rain is a powerhouse of audio and visual musicality, with Prince as the figurehead of an equally fiery hot backing band in The Revolution. Together, they all took the world by storm in a way that not only enraptured the public in 1984, but also put a stamp on the back of the culture that's still being recognized today.

The peak of that Mt. Everest of heights, the heart of this thesis, the North Star in these constellations, is the title track. (The song) "Purple Rain" is euphoric. It is a guitar deity on Mt. Olympus, dining with the spirits of the blues, gospel, rock, R&B, and soul, making a heartfelt, all-aboard feast for a Prince that a king is only left to envy. While "Purple Rain" was far from Prince's final creative crown jewel in his spacious and otherworldly artistic career, the song and the album are arguably his most complete work.

Pascal hits the nail on the head with "Purple Rain." It's moving, emotional, musically sophisticated, and holds that energy for over eight minutes.

Pascal hits the nail on the head with "Purple Rain." It's moving, emotional, musically sophisticated, and holds that energy for over eight minutes. It's as cathartic as a great acting performance, and unlike The Mandalorian, you don't need to have the Force to sense the strength of the power coming down in "Purple Rain."