WARNING: The following post includes spoilers for the Stranger Things series finale.
In the Netflix retro fantasy show’s penultimate episode, which premiered on Christmas, Mike (Finn Wolfhard) constructed a bomb to blow up the dark realm known as the Upside Down that would be triggered by a vinyl record. Mike’s choice of album for the device, Butthole Surfers’ Locust Abortion Technician, earned some pushback from Robin (Maya Hawke), who suggested they should use the Replacements instead. But neither of those iconic ’80s underground rock bands would be the soundtrack for the Upside Down’s destruction.
When the finale went live on New Year’s Eve, the actual tune Hopper (David Harbour) and Murray (Brett Gelman) deployed to detonate the bomb was something far more mainstream: Prince’s 1984 mega-hit “When Doves Cry.” Later, when the show left some uncertainty about whether Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) made it out of the Upside Down before it was destroyed, the song shifted to another song from the same album: title track “Purple Rain.”
“Once we came up with the idea that the record was going to be the trigger for the bomb, we knew we needed an epic needle drop, and so many ideas were thrown around,” co-creator Ross Duffer told Netflix’s editorial arm Tudum. “I think there’s nothing really more epic than Prince.”
Duffer said the show’s braintrust “never talked about a song choice as much as we did for that moment” and found that “Prince lined up perfectly for us.” Part of the appeal of using these tracks is that they had not been used in other shows and movies. However, that’s because Prince’s estate has been so strict about licensing his music.
It’s not like there have been zero instances of Prince songs appearing in popular media. There have been covers of Prince songs in singing competition shows and the series Glee (which Prince was not a fan of; he was more of a New Girl fan), and Purple Rain opener “Let’s Go Crazy,” for instance, was covered in Sing 2. But “When Doves Cry” and “Purple Rain” had never been licensed for a TV show or movie before.
“We were told that it was a real long shot, so we just crossed our fingers,” Duffer’s brother and Stranger Things co-creator Matt Duffer said. “Thank God they agreed.” As Matt Duffer explained, Prince’s estate was swayed by the viral success of Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God),” which hit the US top 10 and shot all the way to #1 in the UK after being prominently featured in the fourth season: “Thanks to Kate Bush, we were able to acquire the rights.”
In conjunction with the Stranger Things needle drop, Prince’s official channels debuted a new visualizer for “Purple Rain” on YouTube late Wednesday night. Check that out below.
Coincidentally, Phish debuted a cover of “Cream” from Prince’s Diamonds And Pearls at Madison Square Garden, also on New Year’s Eve.
