…maybe you’ve felt a few drops.
Ten years ago this week, the planet lost a gigantic talent. Whether you loved him or not, Prince revolutionised an industry persistently drunk on homogeny.
Over the years I’ve stared slack-jawed at his mastery of on-stage flirtation, urgent guitar licks and intimate banter with adoring crowds creaming for more. Unguarded in a sound check, somewhere in Japan, a sprawling, empty stadium at his feet, Prince teases those ivories into a time-stopping rendition of Gershwin’s, Summertime – casually snapping gum like a sexy, cocky Mozart with messy hair.
In the days after he died, I fell down a purple rabbit hole of countless videos, articles and genre-defying albums. It wasn’t long before I time-travelled to… me as a teen up late watching Under the Cherry Moon, fantasising that Prince would deflower me in a candle-lit cave not Kristin Scott Thomas. Fast forward to early 2016 and I’m leaping three feet into the air, tickets to his final Sydney concert, Piano and a Microphone mine, all mine!
He died so young. So brilliant. So what? Why do we grieve for famous strangers?
When my beautiful father passed away in 2011, the grief was acute and it continues, unabated 14 years on. Shedding oceans of tears for Dad, is acceptable.
But sobbing for an elusive superstar?
Maybe when our beloveds die we mourn the parts of us that could only breathe when they did. And then we realise anew that the ‘…electric word, life’ never means forever. Ever.
© Phyllis Foundis 2026