普林斯 | 巨星陨落
Prince, superstar and pioneer of American music, dies aged 57
Purple Rain singer whose sprawling career spanned decades and genres dies at his Paisley Park recording studio in his home state of Minnesota.
纵横歌坛数十载、风格广涉的“紫雨”歌手于在明尼苏达老家的佩斯利公园录音棚中去世。
The unique and endlessly creative artist has died at his Paisley Park home, outside Minneapolis, aged 57, leaving behind him a gaping hole in musical genres as diverse as R&B, rock, funk and pop.
独一无二、才华横溢的艺术家普林斯逝于明尼阿波里斯市郊外的佩斯利公园，享年五十七岁，他音乐风格多样——R&B、摇滚、朋克、流行——身后无人堪承其衣钵。
The death was announced by his publicist Yvette Noel-Schure after police had been called to the premises which double as his music studio in the Minnesota city.
他的公关人Yvette Noel-Schure打电话叫警察来到他明尼苏达市的住所兼音乐工作室，此后宣布其死讯。
No details were immediately given for the cause of death, though he was rushed to hospital apparently recovering from a bout of flu that had forced his private jet to make an emergency landing in Illinois.
尽管上周他患流感恢复后被送往医院，且他的私人飞机紧急降落在伊利诺伊州，他的死因并未公布。
The sudden death of the diminutive man who became such a towering musical figure, selling more than 100m records in a career of virtually unparalleled richness and unpredictability, prompted an emotional response across the music world.
这是一位身材矮小的音乐巨匠，其无与伦比的丰富而易变的一生卖出超过1亿张唱片，他的突然去世让音乐界悲恸。
Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman, former members of Prince’s band the Revolution, said they were “completely shocked and devastated by the sudden loss of our brother, artist and friend, Prince”.
普林斯的乐队“革命”前成员Wendy Melvoin和Lisa Coleman表示“我们的兄长、艺术家和朋友普林斯的突然离世令人震惊和伤心欲绝”。
On Twitter, fellow musicians and celebrities vented barely contained grief. Boy George called Thursday “the worst day ever”; Katy Perry said: “And just like that … the world lost a lot of magic.” , played his music on a permanent loop.
推特上，音乐同侪和名人都难掩悲痛。Boy George说周四是“最糟糕的一天”，Katy Perry说：“就好像世界失去了很多魔法。”明尼阿波利斯-圣保罗电台调频89.3的《潮流》节目循环播送他的音乐。
Barack Obama, who was flying from Saudi Arabia to London on Air Force One when the news broke, said he was mourning along with millions of fans.
得知消息时，正乘坐空军一号从沙特阿拉伯飞往伦敦的奥巴马表示，他和成千上万名粉丝一同哀悼。
“Few artists have influenced the sound and trajectory of popular music more distinctly, or touched quite so many people with their talent. As one of the most gifted and prolific musicians of our time, Prince did it all.”
“罕有艺术家对流行音乐和其发展有如此深远的影响力，影响过这么多有才华的人。作为我们这个时代最有才华和最多产的艺术家，普林斯全做到了。”
A statement from Carver County sheriff’s office said that when officers arrived at Paisley Park studios in Chanhassen they found Prince unresponsive in an elevator. “First responders attempted to provide lifesaving CPR, but were unable to revive the victim.”
卡弗县警署办公室的声明说，警官来到佩斯雷工作室时，普林斯躺在电梯上，没有知觉。“试图进行心肺复苏，但已经无力回天了。”
He was pronounced dead at 10.07am. Police say they are continuing to investigate the circumstances of his death.
上午10:07分宣告死亡，警方表示仍在调查死亡原因。
One thing was certain: Prince lived life to the fullest right up to his early demise. If anything, the workaholic who regularly slept three hours a night and would play impromptu concerts until dawn was accelerating the pace of his hectic schedule when he died.
有一点可以肯定：普林斯生年不长，却足够精彩。他是个工作狂，每晚只睡三个小时，经常即兴弹唱到凌晨，这加速了他肺病的发展。
He cut four albums in his last 18 months, and had let it be known he was that would be released next year. Hours after he was released from hospital, he announced on Saturday that he was going to throw a dance party at his music complex which he dubbed “Paisley Park After Dark”.
生命中最后18个月，他出了四张专辑，人们还知道他在写回忆录，准备明年出版。周六出院几小时后，他宣布他准备在自己的音乐房里开一场舞会，他称之为“夜晚的佩斯雷公园”。
Standing just 5ft2in tall, Prince truly had an outsized influence on the world. Born in his beloved Minneapolis on 7 June 1958, his sprawling musical tastes, androgynous style, genre-bending imagination, sexual outrageousness and flirtation with religion left fans forever guessing about where he would go next.
他身高只有五英尺二英寸，对世界的影响力却很大。1958年6月7日出生在他喜爱的明尼阿波利斯，他音乐旨趣广博、风格雌雄莫辩、玩转音乐的想象力、性生活放荡并取笑宗教，粉丝们永远都在猜测他下一步要干什么。
His wry, almost satirical relationship with fame, combined with his masterful skills at self-projection, led him to play with his own name.
他对名望抱有不恭甚至讥讽的态度，有高超的自我延伸能力，与自己的名字做戏。
Which is perhaps unsurprising, as he never really had his own self-identity: he was christened Prince Rogers Nelson after his father’s stage persona, Prince Rogers.
并不令人吃惊，他从来没有自己的自我身份：他被称为普林斯·罗杰斯·奈尔森，这来自父亲的舞台形象罗杰斯王子。
In 1993, Prince famously changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol, causing momentary panic across newspapers and publishing houses who scrambled to find ways to replicate it.
1993年，普林斯将自己的名字改为一个难以发音的符号，一时让新闻和发行机构恐慌，他们想尽办法复制这一符号。
Their distress was eased when a way out was found with the description “The Artist Formerly Known as Prince”. That moniker remained until 2000. But far more important was his equal willingness to shatter norms and conventions in music.
后来想出一个办法，“以前被称为普林斯的艺术家”缓解了这一困境。这一绰号一直用到2000年。他同样致力于打碎音乐领域的标准和惯例，这才重要得多。
His love of songwriting stretched right back to childhood – he penned his first song aged seven – and while he was still a teenager he recorded his first demo tape at Moon’s Studio in Minneapolis, earning himself a contract with Warner Bros.
他对作曲的热爱可以追溯到孩提时代，7岁是就开始写歌，少年时代就在明尼阿波利斯的月亮录音棚灌制了自己的样带，并借此签约华纳兄弟合同。
Over the next 40 years he made 40 albums and won seven Grammy awards in a flood of musical output that even left the artist himself bamboozled. Last year he that he’d decided to dispense with a huge back library of previous songs because he found it so hard to marshal.
此后四十年，他出了40张专辑，赢得七项格莱美奖，生产大量音乐，甚至多得连艺术家本人都有点犯晕。去年，他告诉卫报，他决定丢掉旧歌库，因为太难整理了。
bamboozle: conceal one's true motives from especially by elaborately feigning good intentions so as to gain an end.
例句：Subtly changing his wrist position with devastating effect, Mustafizur bamboozled the batsmen throughout, claiming wickets in consecutive deliveries in the final over.（BBC）
“Tempo, keys, all those things can dictate what song I’m going to play next, you know, as opposed to, ‘Oh, I’ve got to do my hit single now, I’ve got to play this album all the way through,’ or whatever. There’s so much material, it’s hard to choose. It’s hard.”
“节奏、键盘，这些东西才能决定你下面要唱什么，而不是‘我已经有金曲了，我一直唱我的专辑’什么的。素材太多了，很难取舍，太难了。”
His breakthrough came with the 1979 album Prince, which hit the top of the R&B charts and contained the smash singles Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad? and I Wanna Be Your Lover.
1979年专辑《普林斯》取得了突破，登顶公告牌R&B榜，专辑中的单曲Why Your Wanna Treat Me So Bad?和I Wanna Be Your Lover红极一时。
Dirty Mind (1980) and Controversy (1981) both managed to attract musical admiration but also, as the latter title suggested, provoke a firestorm of criticism for their edgy interplay between religion and sexuality. With every cleverly concocted row, Prince’s star shone brighter.
1980年的《Dirty Mind》和1981年的《Controversy》都饱受赞誉，正如后者名字表达的那样，也引起尖锐地涉及宗教与性的互动而糟到大批判。两相争吵中，普林斯星运更灿。
But it was in 1984 with Purple Rain that he really captured global adulation. Purple Rain was not so much an album and film, it was a cultural phenomenon.
不过1984年的《紫雨》让他真正获得国际性的声誉。《紫雨》与其说是一张专辑和电影，不如说是一种文化现象。
https://v.qq.com/txp/iframe/player.html?vid=h00204xwcgg&width=500&height=375&auto=0
The song of the same name, with its first verse dedicated to his father and recorded over a daring 13 minutes in the First Avenue club in Minneapolis, went on to provide the skeleton structure for both album and movie.
这是一首电影同名歌曲，歌词第一段献给父亲，在明尼阿波利斯第一大道俱乐部录制，长达13分钟，为专辑和电影提供了骨架结构。
Prince was rewarded with 13m sales of the album. The film, featuring a central character called “The Kid” who leans heavily on Prince’s own life story, won him an Oscar for songwriting.
普林斯这张专辑销售1300万张。以“The Kid”为主角的电影以普林斯自己的故事为原型，赢得奥斯卡作曲奖项。
While other artists who cut their teeth in the 70s have settled for repetitive revivals of their past glories, none of that would satisfy Prince. With the passing of the millennium, his creative production and desire to explore new pastures only grew more intense.
在七十年代崭露头角的艺术家满足于再现前辈的光辉，可这些不能令普林斯满意。新千年后，他的创作和探索新领域的欲望反倒更加强烈。
In 2007 he performed a 12-minute set at the Super Bowl that has widely been credited as ever at the footballing event. Then, from February 2014 to June 2015 he went on a series of Hit N Run tour dates, wreaking havoc across 15 cities for 39 gigs in a little over a year.
2007年，他在超级碗演出12分钟，被誉为橄榄球赛事中最伟大的中场演出。2014年2月到2015年6月，他进行了一系列游击巡演，一年多时间再15个城市39场现场演出，堪称浩劫。
Flanked by his band 3rdeyegirl, the Purple One’s guerrilla gigs would be confirmed sometimes no sooner than a few hours before via Twitter. Stopping in at locations from London to Louisville, Paris to Montreal, his epic sets would take place in a litany of shapes and sizes, at jazz clubs and arenas.
和“第三只眼女孩”乐队一道，“紫色一号”的游击巡演有时几小时前才在推特上宣告。从伦敦到路易斯维尔，从巴黎到蒙特利尔，他史诗级的演出造型千变万化，规模大小不一，有时在俱乐部，又是在体育场。
Those who witnessed his most intimate performances would have been rewarded, after hours stood in snaking queues, with a greatest hits funk extravaganza, the likes of Let’s Go Crazy, 1999, Little Red Corvette performed so close you could stare into the whites of his eyes.
排几个小时蛇形长队，听他最私人的演出的听众有福气了，他们会看到一场伟大的疯克演出，例如1999年的Let's Go Crazy——如此近距离的演唱“小红巡洋舰”，你可以看到他的眼白。
As a result, thousands of fans were given the opportunity to watch the great musician perform a career-spanning set for one last time.
结果，成千上万的歌迷有机会观看这位伟大的音乐家表演，演出横贯其艺术生涯，这是最后一次。
Barney Hoskyns, author of Prince biography Imp of the Perverse, said Prince was an artist who defied labels and genres. “This was a guy who effortlessly wrote great riffs, grooves and who packaged them in a really distinctive way. He came out of the white midwest, not the black ghetto, so he synthesized a lot of influences.
普林斯传记《叛逆的精灵》作者Barney Hoskyns说普林斯是反对标签化和风格化的艺术家。“他轻松地写出伟大的即兴重复音节和神曲，并以迥然不同的方式呈现出来。他是一个中西部的白人，并非来自黑人贫民窟，因此综合了多种影响。”
His final shows were last week , where a strict for two consecutive sets. Billed as the Piano and a Microphone tour, Prince played solo at a purple grand piano.
他生命中最后的演出在亚特兰大福克斯剧院，两场演出都不许拍照录像。在被称作钢琴和麦克风的巡演中，普林斯在一架紫色大钢琴前独奏。
Before concluding with Kiss, his third encore performance in the earlier show, Prince sang Heroes in tribute to David Bowie, .
唱完Kiss后——上一场演出中这是第三首返场歌曲——普林斯唱了Heros，像1月去世的David Bowie致敬。
Back on stage within the hour for his final late night show, he ended with three encores and a medley of Purple Rain, The Beautiful Ones and Diamonds and Pearls.
他回到舞台，最后一小时的午夜演出中，以三首返场曲结束，分别是Purple Rain，The Beautiful Ones和Diamonds and Pearls。
last year, he described spending the previous night just playing to himself for three hours without pause.
去年《卫报》在佩斯雷公园拜访他时，他说上一次演出自顾不停地唱了三个小时。
“I just couldn’t stop. That’s what you want. Transcendence. When that happens … Oh, boy.”
“我就是停不下来，你们也愿意听。超乎其外。到那个时候，天啊，孩子。”