The world grew a little darker Thursday.
Prince, one of pop music’s most influential and innovative artists, was found dead at age 57 in an elevator at Paisley Park.
Almost immediately, people around the country began pouring out love for the artist through any means possible – on buildings, stages and social media and through singing, dancing and crying. It seemed the entire country, from President Barack Obama to the cast of the Broadway hit musical “Hamilton,” paid tribute to the pop star.
Here’s how the U.S. honored Prince as Thursday became Friday, on the first night after he passed away.
Prince’s hometown of Minneapolis, in particular, honored him in almost every way imaginable, beginning with his old stomping grounds. First Avenue, a nightclub in Minneapolis, was one of the first places Prince played regularly. So regularly, in fact, part of his 1984 movie “Purple Rain” was filmed there.
“Before ‘Purple Rain,’ all the kids who came to First Avenue knew us, and it was just like a big, fun fashion show,” he told Rolling Stone in 1985. “The kids would dress for themselves and just try and look really cool. Once you got your thing right, you’d stop looking at someone else. You’d be yourself, and you’d feel comfortable.”
On its Facebook page, the club wrote, “He grew up on this stage, and then commanded it, and he united our city. It is difficult to put into words the impact his death will have on the entire music community, and the world,” before announcing that it would honor Prince in his own spirit: With an all-night dance party featuring, of course, nothing but his songs.
This turned into a dance party unlike any other. Bodies poured out of the club, crowded the streets in a swell of both grief and joy, singing and dancing on the concrete. At one point, thousands crowded around the building in celebration of their hometown hero and belted out “Purple Rain” at the top of their lungs.
Across the country, in a form of solidarity, director Spike Lee donned a purple hoodie and threw a Prince-themed dance party in New York City.
The cast of the “Hamilton” joined in from their stage on Broadway, launching into a joyfully theatrical version of “Let’s Go Crazy,” the opening track to Prince’s 1984 “Purple Rain.”
In Minneapolis, The Star Tribune reported that the City Hall bell tower will begin playing Prince tunes on Sunday at 1 p.m. The unpronounceable symbol (many called it “The Love Symbol”) to which Prince famously changed his name in 1993, will be projected onto the water tower on the Wyman Partridge Building, where Prince’s original Glam Slam nightclub once resided. The city also lit several of its bridges a deep purple.
Other cities followed suit. In New Orleans, for example, the Superdome – the city’s indoor NFL stadium – was lit purple. Los Angeles’ city hall burned purple in the sky, and the Chicago skyline glowed that familiar hue.
But many took to the Internet in a more personal manner, telling the world how much Prince meant to them and recalling stories of their time together.
Frank Ocean, whose 2012 R&B pop epic was called the year’s sole masterpiece by The Washington Post, made headlines that same year for publicly coming out as bisexual. It was unusual in the hip-hop community. As The Post noted, “As a culture, hip-hop has been notoriously unwelcoming to homosexuality. Masculinity and bravado have played a prominent – if complicated – role, leading to misogyny and attacks on anything (or anyone) deemed feminine.”
Another seminal musician, Sir Paul McCartney, took to Twitter to express his sadness, asking God to bless the “creative giant.”
