Hey, you wanna hear a joke? Knock knock!
Who’s there?
Prince’s favorite color.
Prince’s favorite color who?
Prince’s favorite color was orange.
Okay, that’s not much of a knock-knock joke. But Prince’s sister Tyka Nelson recently revealed that purple—the color so associated with the legacy of the late Prince Rogers Nelson that Pantone released a shade called “Love Symbol #2”in his honor—was not Prince’s favorite color. Here’s what she told British newspaper the Evening Standard:
The standout piece for me [of an upcoming memorabilia auction] is his orange Cloud guitar. It is strange because people always associate the color purple with Prince, but his favorite color was actually orange.
And indeed, as Stereogum points out, Prince frequently wore orange suits to his public appearances during the last decade of his life, like the orange suit he performed in at the 2007 Super Bowl (see above) and the spangled orange jumpsuit he wore when presenting the Album of the Year award at the 2015 Grammys. Now, purple and orange aren’t exact opposites on the color wheel, but they’re on different-but-compatible wavelengths, you dig? Kind of like sexuality, color exists on a spectrum. And when you blend things on a spectrum, be it yellow and red, or rock and jazz, or masculine and feminine, you get something uniquely funky.
Also, “Orange Rain” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.