Prince: the 50 best songs in Paste's ranking

Ten years without the Prince of Minneapolis. On April 21, 2016, Prince Roger Nelson was found dead in the elevator at Paisley Park, his studio-residence in Chanhassen, Minnesota. He was 57. Ten years on, what remains isn't just his immense musical catalog, but a crucial mark left on the history of popular music, stamped by an atypical, elusive figure who defied every category. As a tribute to the peerless artist behind "Purple Rain", we want to share Paste magazine's ranking of Prince's 50 greatest songs.

"For nearly four decades, Prince was a constant presence in the pop culture universe, able to keep inspiring artists and captivating audiences even when his output no longer reached the heights of the Eighties – Robert Ham recalls in the introduction – The idea that such a light has gone out forever remains hard to grasp. But, as with every great artist, what remains is a discography to celebrate. And it's enormous: dozens of albums and singles, songs written for other performers, and a wealth of material never officially released, circulated on bootlegs. Listening back through this vast catalog to compile this list – inevitably subjective – it becomes clear that, like the greatest musicians and songwriters of the modern pop era, Prince was a chameleon, capable of shifting style and identity from one song to the next, even within the same album."

So here is the ranking of Prince's 50 greatest songs, according to Paste magazine (full feature here)

50. Dance With The Devil

49. Love

48. Empty Room

47. Loose!

46. Future Soul Song

45. Endorphinmachine

44. Take Me With U

43. Head

42. Electric Intercourse

41. Just As Long As We’re Together

40. The Sun, The Moon And Stars

39. When She Comes

38. Sugar Walls

37. Thieves In The Temple

36. Ice Cream Castles

35. StopThisTrain

34. D.M.S.R.

33. Call My Name

32. Love…Thy Will Be Done

31. Extraordinary

30. Wasted Kisses

29. 1999

28. When 2 R In Love

27. I Wanna Be Your Lover

26. Letigo

25. When U Were Mine

24. Soft And Wet

23. Nasty Girl

22. Pop Life

21. I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man

20. Diamonds And Pearls

19. Little Red Corvette

18. I Feel For You

17. Sometimes It Snows In April

16. A Love Bizarre

15. Controversy

14. Open Book

13. Let’s Go Crazy

12. Most Beautiful Girl In The World

11. 7

10. The Beautiful Ones

9. Ballad Of Dorothy Parker

8. Raspberry Beret

7. How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore?

6. The Cross

5. Erotic City

4. Nothing Compares 2 U

3. When Doves Cry

2. Kiss

1. Purple Rain

Ride the wave of great music

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