Prince on the ‘Purple Rain’ Tour in Michigan in 1984Stevie Nicks’ upcoming album has a surprising origin story: her awkward interaction with Prince after the Purple Rain premiere.
The “Edge of Seventeen” singer detailed her latest project in her speech at the 2025 Pollstar Awards after she was inducted into the Pollstar Live! Hall of Fame on Wednesday.”I’ve written a song about Prince because we were friends,” Nicks said.The singer then recounted arriving at the Purple Rain premiere in Hollywood in 1984. “I watch it, it gets to the middle, he slaps Apollonia, I freak out,” Nicks said seeing Prince’s character, The Kid, assaulting his girlfriend, Apollonia (Apollonia Kotero), in the film. “And I go to the fancy bathroom and sit there for the rest of the whole movie.”Nicks later went to the party after the premiere to talk to Prince, who was waiting to hear what she thought of the film. “He goes, ‘Well, did you love it?'” she remembered. “And I’m like, ‘I only saw the first half!’ And he’s like, ‘Why?’ ‘Because you slapped that girl!'”Nicks then did an impression of Prince silently pouting. “And I said, ‘But I brought you a gift. It’s a really beautiful 24-carat necklace with little gold hearts on it, and here,'” she continued. “And he goes, ‘I don’t want your necklace.'”She said Prince then uttered a dramatic quote that served as the jumping-off point for a track on Nicks’ upcoming album. “And then he said — and this is in the song, this is where this record began — ‘You always bring me a gift. You never bring me you.'”Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty Prince at the ‘Purple Rain’ premiere in Hollywood on July 26, 1984Earlier in her speech, Nicks had discussed the genesis of the album. “I call it The Ghost Record because it doesn’t really — it’s just kinda happened in the last couple weeks,” she said, noting that she’d been bored “sitting in a hotel for 92 days” as a result of the Los Angeles wildfires in January.Sign up for Entertainment Weekly’s free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.”I thought, ‘You need to go back to work,'” Nicks said. “And I did, and I have seven songs, and they are autobiographical real stories where I’m not pulling any punches for probably the first time in my life.
They are not airy, fairy songs that you are wondering who they’re about but you don’t really get it — they’re real stories of memories of mine of fantastic men.”Nicks wrote her 1983 single “Stand Back” after she heard Prince’s “Little Red Corvette,” and eventually got the “Let’s Go Crazy” legend to help her finish the track in the studio. She has also said Prince’s “When Doves Cry” was inspired by her own “Edge of Seventeen.”
