Saturday (Sept. 30) at The Rooftop at Pier 17 (one of NYC’s most scenic venues), the
the music and funky fresh magic of Prince will come to life when covers band Princess takes the stage.
While there are plenty of Prince tribute acts, two things make Princess a bit of a glam slam: Prince himself gave them his seal of approval; plus, the outfit is led by SNL GOAT Maya Rudolph and singer-songwriter Gretchen Lieberum.
Friends since college, Rudolph and Lieberum are lifelong devotees of the Purple One. And while they’ll go to bat for his underappreciated comic chops, Princess is a musical endeavor they take as seriously as Morris Day takes his hair in the Purple Rain film.
Billboard asked the band to come up with a list of their favorite Prince songs — a difficult task likely to leave any fan delirious. “It’s like choosing our favorite child,” they joked.
“This list is a reflection of how we’re feeling today, it could change tomorrow,” Rudolph told Billboard of their selections, which include B-sides, deep cuts and a handful of Billboard Hot 100 hits. “There’s some dark sh-t on here.”
“We’ve tried to play a lot of these songs live,” she continued. “The thing about Prince that was so amazing was that if there was a Prince single out, there was always a 12-inch version out. You were always going down this extra road, like finding out your favorite book has more chapters. His live shows were like that, too, and we try to incorporate that into our live shows to make it a little extra special.”
Lieberum: To me, that whole album (1999) is the first album that sounds like Prince and no one else. That song is maybe the most unique song on the entire album. It’s beautiful and funky and weird.
Rudolph: I have to agree with you on that. I might have been a tween (when it dropped) and was just starting to see darkness and light sometimes as one, and that song was very moving to me at that time.
Lieberum: For me, personally, that was my gateway drug to Prince. I remember where I was when I heard it the first time. I was sitting in a car in a parking lot of the supermarket while my mom was grocery shopping. It came on the radio and it just knocked my socks off. “What the hell is this?”
Rudolph: Your mom came in and was like, “where are your socks?”
Lieberum: “Mommy, they’re gone. They’re knocked off.” It’s another song that sounds like nothing else.
Rudolph: That was a time in the world where because of MTV and the (Purple Rain) movie, that song was such a big deal and such an exciting combination of footage from the movie. (Before then) you’d have to go back into the theater to see it, but this was like a montage of clips from the movie and this cool dance from a cool band. I have so much nostalgia for the time when music and MTV and the movies were combined. It was a beautiful explosion.
Rudolph: I’ve always been a huge fan of the 12-inch of “Raspberry Beret” because there’s a secret sauce in it that gets me every time. It’s a song that you love that encapsulates the Around the World in a Day album, and now that Prince is a part of your life, it takes this melancholic turn with orchestral strings that I’m a very big fan of.
Lieberum: It was a radio hit and you think, “oh, it’s a Prince pop song,” but when you really listen to it, it’s really a beautiful song. Spike Lee used it in the show he did of She’s Gotta Have It. He did a whole Prince episode that’s kind of amazing.
Rudolph: We both agree on “Hair” as a B-side. Lovely song.
Lieberum: It’s romantic and sweet and weird in all the best Prince ways. It’s a fun, sexy, hot metaphor too, which is what he does so well.
Rudolph: For me, “Computer Blue” and “Darling Nikki” are fraternal twins and cut from the same cloth. Every single time we play “Darling Nikki,” it always sounds good. It’s a weird one; it’s meant to be the turn in the story when he’s going dark. With “Computer Blue,” there’s something about it that scratches an internal itch for me, sound-wise.
Lieberum: Here’s a lighter one. It’s one of the songs that makes me so joyful and happy. That album (Around the World in a Day) is a culmination of the influence of Wendy & Lisa on him. Maya and I had the pleasure of getting to know Wendy & Lisa in real life — they were our idols as kids — and then we got to know them as human beings. They shared with us how much writing they did on that album and that song in particular.
Rudolph: We even got to perform it with Wendy & Lisa. There’s a sound that they brought to his songwriting and brought out of him which is so deeply rooted in my love for music.
Lieberum: That one is incredible. I heard that one a month after he passed away in a yoga class. The teacher put it on and I just started crying in the middle of class.
Rudolph: I had a weird experience with it. An old, good friend sent me an email in the middle of the night, saying, “listening to Prince and thinking of you,” and then I woke up, saw it and I was like, “oh no, I hope Prince isn’t dead.” And I listened to the song and it was really moving. And then hours later, I found out he was dead.
Rudolph: My first album I fell in love with was Dirty Mind, and I still to this day feel like “Sexuality” is one of the greatest.
Lieberum: That’s got great lyrics too, especially in this day and age.
Rudolph: His very early stuff, when he was politically vocal, when we it play today it feels just as powerful. He was clearly so aware of the injustices going on, and they’re still alive today. That stuff is exciting to play live.
Lieberum: Hot take: I like “Forever in My Life” even more (than “Adore”). I think that’s the sweetest song he ever wrote. Hot, controversial and yet moist and fresh.
Rudolph: 150 percent.
Rudolph: It reminds me of being a kid in my jazz class — we used to do a combination to “Let’s Work.” Even then I was like, “damn, this song is good.” It slaps harder than ever.
Lieberum: We don’t play anything from Sign o’ the Times, but “Dorothy Parker,” I love that song.
Rudolph: “Dorothy Parker” might just be perfect.
Lieberum: I do love “Controversy,” I think that song is more valid now than ever, lyric-wise. It’s a song that lures in non-fans. And I love performing it in this political climate.
Rudolph: I feel that way about “Erotic City” in terms of blowing people’s minds. It reminds me of dancing with a boy at a bar mitzvah and it’s such a f–king banger to this day. It never ceases to bang. It does slap, quite hard, to this day.
Ed. note: Following the interview, the band sent the following note: “We forgot to include ‘Automatic’ from 1999. How could we forget?”
Let the record show that “Automatic” is formally included on this list.