Prince's last concert: the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, April 14, 2016

About the artist

Prince Rogers Nelson was born in Minneapolis on June 7, 1958^[1]. On his 1978 debut album, For You, the 19-year-old produced, arranged, composed and performed everything himself, playing 27 instruments^[2]. His first hit came in 1979 with "I Wanna Be Your Lover"^[3]. Purple Rain, released in 1984 alongside the film of the same name^[4], spent 24 consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and won the Academy Award for Best Original Song Score^[5]. He won seven Grammy Awards^[3], and in 2004, his first year of eligibility, he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame by OutKast and Alicia Keys^[1][6].

Why this was the last show

In 2016 Prince was touring without a band. The Piano & a Microphone tour was just Prince, a piano and his voice^[7][8]. After a warm-up at Paisley Park in January, it officially opened in Melbourne, Australia, on February 16, and in the end ran to only 20 dates^[9].

Atlanta was announced on March 29 as the tour's newest stop: two shows at the Fox Theatre on Thursday, April 7, at 7 and 10 p.m. Fans could buy two tickets each, to be picked up at the theater on the day^[10][11], a measure against scalping, according to an Associated Press report carried by MPR News^[12]. Both shows were postponed on the day itself and moved to April 14^[13][1].

Nothing about the new date was billed as a farewell. A custom purple grand piano had arrived in early April^[14], and it was meant to go on the road with him^[15]. On April 16, two days after Atlanta, Prince took the stage at a party at Paisley Park for less than five minutes, in front of about 200 people. He unveiled the new piano and played "Chopsticks" and a short classical passage, but he did not sing^[16][17]. According to Yamaha's Chris Gero, he never played in public again^[17].

Prince died on April 21, 2016, exactly one week after the Atlanta shows. He was 57^[1][8]. That day the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) noted that the two shows a week earlier had been his final public concerts^[13], and Variety and Billboard went on to write about that night as his final concert^[7][18].

What is known about the day

The Fox Theatre opened at Christmas 1929. It closed in 1974 and faced demolition until a group called Atlanta Landmarks raised $3 million, mostly from donations, and reopened it in 1975^[19]. Both of Prince's shows in the 4,600-seat house sold out quickly, even though the cheapest tickets cost more than $100 with fees^[12].

The stage held a purple baby grand and a few clusters of candles, with kaleidoscope-like images projected on a huge screen behind it^[20][21]. Photos and video were banned, and ushers in black suits patrolled the aisles to enforce the rule^[21].

The 7 p.m. show lasted about an hour and 20 minutes, kept short because the theater had to be turned around for the 10 o'clock audience^[21][20]. Prince opened with "Little Red Corvette," which slid into Vince Guaraldi's Peanuts theme, "Linus and Lucy"^[21][12]. He apologized for the postponement and told the story of asking his father, a jazz pianist, to teach him to play^[12]. He paid tribute to David Bowie with "Heroes"^[21] and also sang Joni Mitchell's "A Case of You"^[8]. Billboard's set list counts 24 songs across the main set and two encores, with "The Beautiful Ones" played twice and "Kiss" at the end^[18][20].

The late show had a different set^[12]. It opened with the Staple Singers' "When Will We B Paid?" Ernie Suggs, an AJC reporter in the audience, wrote that no one could remember Prince ever performing it live^[22]. The "Little Red Corvette" medley that had opened the early show moved to the middle of the set, and "How Come U Don't Call Me Anymore?" became a sing-along^[18][9]. There were three encores. The last began with "Sometimes It Snows in April," followed by "Purple Rain" in a medley with "The Beautiful Ones" and "Diamonds and Pearls"^[22][23]. With the audience singing along, "Purple Rain" was the last song he performed^[8][7][4].

Suggs watched Prince leave with his jeweled cane in hand and his left fist raised. Afterward, he wrote, fans drifted toward the empty stage, where only the candles and the purple piano remained^[22].

What the show left behind

As of 2021, Prince's estate had never officially released a recording of either show^[24]. Prince himself had wanted one out: at Paisley Park on April 16 he told the crowd he would like to release one of the Atlanta shows as a live album, and half an hour of an Atlanta recording was played over the sound system^[16]. By the day after his death, an audience recording of the late show was circulating online, and outlets such as Stereogum and Slate used it to report the set list^[25][23]. That list broadly matches the one Billboard printed, though the two differ on a few songs (see the notes in the setlist)^[18].

The piano he unveiled that Saturday is a customized Yamaha C7X, its purple chosen to match a sofa at Paisley Park^[14]. In January 2024 Yamaha announced that it would show the piano at the NAMM trade show^[17][14]. It is now on display at Paisley Park^[9].

The tour's name came back in September 2018 with Piano & A Microphone 1983, a private rehearsal Prince had recorded at his home in Chanhassen in 1983. It includes "Purple Rain" and "A Case of You," two songs he would sing in Atlanta 33 years later^[26]. The album version of "Purple Rain" had also come from a concert stage: the title track, "I Would Die 4 U" and "Baby I'm a Star" on the 1984 album were reworked from a live recording of a Minneapolis show on August 3, 1983^[4]. All three were in the late Atlanta set^[18].

In April 2026, ten years after Prince's death, Suggs wrote that the final concert still lingers^[27].

The night has never had an official release, but the set lists and the accounts of people who were there let us follow it all the way to the last "Purple Rain."