Prince's first TV appearance was in 1980

Watch the live debut of 'Purple Rain'

Prince debuted the song at Minneapolis' historic First Avenue venue on Aug. 3, 1983. That live version was recorded and released on the "Purple Rain" album with minimal overdubs. You can watch that performance below.

Watch a long, personal interview with Prince from 1999

Prince often avoided press junkets, especially after he became a superstar. In 1999, though, in advance of a televised New Year's Eve concert, he sat down for a lengthy interview with Larry King, speaking about his childhood, career, and his conflicts with Warner Bros. He noted that it was uncharacteristic for him to spend so much time reflecting. "As I go through this journey, I don't look back much at all," he told King. "I try to stay in the now and live in the now."

Prince was known as a genre-crossing polymath

The son of two Minneapolis jazz musicians, Prince was surrounded by music from a young age. His full name, Prince Rogers, was actually derived from his father's group, the Prince Rogers Trio. He eventually learned how to play his father's piano, teaching himself the themes to popular TV shows. Eventually, he learned other instruments and expanded his music tastes, indulging in records by Sly and the Family Stone, Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, and more. Below is his junior high school yearbook photo.

In 2022, a Minneapolis news station stumbled upon footage of Prince as a child

A production manager at the city's CBS affiliate was looking through the archives for footage of a 1970 teacher strike when he noticed a young boy he believed was Prince. The newsroom worked to extract the audio and identify the childhood friends of the famous musician, who confirmed it was indeed him in the video.

After Warner Bros signed him at 18, Prince wrote a song to thank them

The label scooped the young artist in 1977, eager to ink a deal with the promising young savant. In response, Prince wrote a song called "I Hope We Can Work It Out," which suggested together they'd make "Music for the young and old, music bound to be gold." An official recording of the song was never released, but the Minnesota Historical Society acquired the original handwritten lyrics in 2017. You can see them below.

Prince often used pseudonyms when working with other people

Prince was seemingly everywhere in the '80s, though his ubiquity wasn't always apparent on the surface, thanks to a number of pseudonyms he used when contributing to other artists' projects.

Prince's Super Bowl halftime show is widely considered one of the best

The 2007 performance was idiosyncratic, featuring a handful of songs by other artists (including Foo Fighters' "Best of You" and Jimi Hendrix's rendition of "All Along the Watchtower" and a torrential rainstorm. Its differences, along with Prince's legendary stage presence, have led many critics to call it the best Super Bowl halftime performance ever.

Prince removed the bass from 'When Doves Cry,' creating the song's unique sound

It was an unorthodox choice, especially for someone associated with funk music, a genre that relies on prominent bass lines, but Prince wanted the song—written in the 11th hour for "Purple Rain"—to have more space. It worked: The song wound up as the lead single for the album and went to number one on the Billboard Hot 100.

A collection of Prince's hilarious encounters with comedians

Charlie Murphy's story about Prince on "Chappelle's Show" became an oft-quoted touchstone in the 2000s, but it's not the only funny story a comedian has about the Purple One. This article collects some of the best from Conan O'Brien, David Alan Grier, and, yes, Charlie Murphy.

Warner Bros eventually released 'The Black Album' in 1994

After years of relentless bootlegging of the notoriously deleted album, Prince and Warner Bros. finally released the album in 1994—for just two months. As part of a promotional campaign, the record label took out a full-page ad in Billboard announcing that the first 1,000 fans to turn in their bootlegged copies would receive official, legal copies of the album.

Prince's 'Sign O' the Times' was considered a major artistic milestone

The double album was an ambitious collection of songs that traversed musical styles—drawing on the emerging hip-hop records of the genre's golden age and technological experimentation—and explored social issues, including the AIDS epidemic, addiction, and violence. It would go on to be one of the most critically acclaimed albums of the year and eventually be considered one of the most important in pop music history.

Prince's sexually explicit 1984 track 'Darling Nikki' attracted the ire of the Parents Music Resource Center, an advocacy group that inspired the Parental Advisory sticker, even though the song ends with a Christian message.

Ironically, Prince's infamous 'Darling Nikki' ends with a Christian message

The Parents Music Resource Center targeted the "Purple Rain" cut as being a particularly dangerous example of sexually explicit music. The song ends with nearly 30 seconds of indecipherable backwards vocals. When they're reversed, however, you can hear a Christian message: "Hello, how are you? / Fine, fine, 'cause I know that the Lord is coming soon / Coming, coming soon." That might've surprised the members of the PMRC, but it wouldn't have surprised fans of Prince, who spoke often about being a Christian.

Elvis Presley's first 'Ed Sullivan Show' appearance was his first public controversy

His 1956 appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show" featured a raucous performance of “Hound Dog” and an abundance of suggestive hip-shaking from the fresh-faced 21-year-old. The appearance rocketed Presley to superstar status and threw him into his first public controversy.

Prince was trained in classical ballet during high school

He began taking dance classes with the Minnesota Dance Theatre when he was in high school, something dance critic Caroline Palmer noted could be seen in his stage performances. "For so many dancers, they may start in one dance form and morph into whatever their art requires," she said. "You see that in Prince—ballet in the core, and then he added."

View a guide to Prince's discography

Staring down Prince's catalog, which includes over 40 studio albums alone, can be intimidating for listeners looking to explore the Purple One's work. (It can also be intimidating for fans looking to dive into its depths!) This guide from the AV Club provides a framework for your Prince studies, with entry points for newcomers, casual fans, and more serious listeners alike.

A 6-year-old Bruno Mars appeared on 'The Arsenio Hall Show'

Hall began performing magic as a child and at 15 appeared on "Soul!," the first American late-night show hosted by a Black man (Ellis Haizlip). When Hall got his own show in 1989, he was always on the lookout for young talent. That eventually led him to a young Elvis impersonator from Hawaii who'd later go by Bruno Mars.

Parton hosted two separate variety television shows called ‘Dolly’

Parton became a magnetic television performer on “The Porter Wagoner Show,” something that would pay off in dividends later in her career. Both her 1976 show “Dolly” and the 1987 series of the same name featured musical performances from Parton and various guests, along with lighthearted segments featuring contemporary stars. You can watch the fifth episode of 1987 below, with special guest Kermit the Frog.

HBO premiered the modern stand-up special in 1975

When they appeared on TV, stand-ups were typically limited to five-minute spots on late-night talk shows, like "The Tonight Show." That changed with the fledgling HBO, which offered comics hourlong slots. The first was "An Evening with Robert Klein," a special that would define "the hour" for decades.

How musical guests disappeared from late night TV

The late-night landscape has changed dramatically in the past five years, with the most visible difference being a severe lack of music. This writer set out to learn why that is—and what it means for audiences and artists alike.

Discussing his early life, David Attenborough describes how his TV career began by chance

Growing up on the University College, Leicester campus, where his father was principal, Attenborough uncovered specimens such as coiled shells in the rocks and limestone of the surrounding Midlands, which sparked his interest in nature. A week after not landing an interview for a radio job he had applied for, Attenborough was offered a position on "a new thing called television."

Watch the 'Star Wars Holiday Special,' a 1978 spin-off that became a cult classic

The CBS television special is a hokey variety show that was widely panned after it aired and, as a result, was never officially released on home video. George Lucas had little involvement, though it did feature the original cast alongside guest stars like Bea Arthur. Interestingly, it also features Boba Fett's first appearance.

Watch Billie Holiday's screen debut in 1935's 'Symphony in Black'

The singer appeared alongside Duke Ellington in Paramount's "Symphony in Black," a musical short released by Paramount Pictures in September 1935, when Holiday was just 20 years old.

Taylor Swift was 16 when she released her debut album

When Taylor Swift released her first album, she was a little-known country singer-songwriter. A decade later, she was a world-famous pop superstar. In the first 10 years of Swift's career, her songwriting talent, savvy marketing, and engagement with fans helped propel her into stardom.

USA Television Network fictional series Royal Pains spotlights concierge medicine

This fictional television series, that aired from 2009-16, chronicles the adventures of a doctor who transitioned into offering concierge medicine for a big-spender clientele. As a private physician-for-hire he is on call to provide care 24/7.

The Beatles' US label rejected the band's first two singles, 'Please Please Me' and 'From Me to You,' with one executive calling the band 'dead in the water.'

‘Twin Peaks’ was David Lynch’s ode to the soap opera

In the 1980s, David Lynch was primarily known as the director of art films like “Eraserhead” and “Blue Velvet.” But “Twin Peaks,” his primetime ABC show with writer Mark Frost, was a take on the soap opera, leaning into the genre’s tropes: stilted dialogue, affairs, missing person, and melodrama.

Watch a 1934 short film starring jazz legend Cab Calloway, a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene

The distributor behind 'Rocky Horror' pulled the film from its scheduled national release, believing it would be a failure, though it eventually amassed a dedicated fanbase through midnight showings, a trend that continues over 50 years later.

One disco producer saw 'Star Wars' four times on its opening weekend and was so inspired that he recorded the album 'Star Wars and Other Intergalactic Funk,' which produced a chart-topping single.

Quincy Jones' 'Big Band Bossa Nova' helped introduce bossa nova—a jazz-influenced Brazilian genre—to the US

The first horror movie is believed to be George Méliès' 1986 short 'The Haunted Castle,' which pioneered the use of special effects

'Shogun,' a 1980s TV series, helped popularize sushi in the US by stimulating an American interest in Japanese culture.

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

Hear 50 years of iconic hip-hop samples, the genre's foundational looped tracks

In preparation for this weekend's Eurovision finale, which is something like the World Cup of pop music, here's a young Céline Dion performing (for Switzerland?) at the 1988 competition.

The Mona Lisa's celebrity status and repeated restorations have obscured what made the painting so revolutionary for its time

Watch contemporary footage covering the US-backed Shah of Iran fleeing the country in the face of the 1979 Iranian Revolution

Domino's Pizza's 30-minute delivery guarantee was responsible for the chain's 1980s surge, but it was discontinued after the company was found liable for delivery driver accidents.

Search a massive database of over 4 decades of clues from the TV quiz show 'Jeopardy!'

An initial public offering or 'IPO' is the process of a private company becoming public by putting shares of the company on the stock market for purchase.

For centuries, it was common to sleep in two shifts: a few hours at the beginning of the night, and a longer period beginning around midnight

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.

Poison ivy was sent to Europe in the 1600s as an exotic, ornamental oddity, where it was purposefully grown in the English royal gardens at Kew, the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, and a few other locations.

Stars appear to twinkle because turbulence in the motion of molecules in Earth's atmosphere causes light to bend and wiggle rapidly on its way to the surface—a phenomenon called scintillation.

Before humans, the Soviet Union and the United States sent animals—including apes, dogs, and cats—to space during the Space Race.

Abraham Lincoln was almost assassinated weeks before his inauguration as he traveled from Illinois to DC through Baltimore in 1861; it took two independent claims for Lincoln to be convinced the threat was real

The most expensive ad of all time was for Chanel No. 5 perfume and cost roughly $33M to produce in 2004—about $57M in today's dollars.

Children are now three times more likely to say they want to be a YouTuber when they grow up than an astronaut, with some even attending 'YouTube camps' that teach kids how to create content for the platform.

NBA superstar Victor Wembanyama spent the 2025 summer training with monks in central China to enhance his body and mind.