The Beautiful Ones

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The Beautiful Ones is Prince’s first-person account of his journey from childhood towards becoming one of pop music’s most distinctive artists. Combining his own writing with photographs, lyrics, personal art and archival material, the book offers a closer understanding of his background, creative process and the making of the persona that became Prince.

Topics: Music; creativity; artistic identity; the making of Purple Rain
Perspective: Prince’s own writing, framed by collaborator Dan Piepenbring

About the book
The book unfolds in four parts, beginning with the memoir Prince was writing before his death. His lyrical recollections return to his childhood and family before a scrapbook of writing and photographs traces his early years as a musician.

Candid images then follow his evolution towards the period that would produce Purple Rain, culminating in Prince’s original handwritten treatment for the film. Together, these fragments capture the process through which Prince Rogers Nelson constructed an artistic vision, image and world of his own.

Dan Piepenbring frames the material with an account of their collaboration during Prince’s final months, when the two were beginning to shape the autobiography Prince had planned. His introduction and annotations provide context for the handwritten pages, photographs, lyric sheets and drafts assembled after Prince’s death.

Comparable books
If you’re looking for books similar to The Beautiful Ones, these books also explore the lives and creative identities of major musicians through unconventional autobiographical forms, from lyrics and personal archives to fashion and possessions.

The Lyrics by Paul McCartney: Like The Beautiful Ones, it combines a major musician’s own recollections with lyrics, photographs, handwritten material and items from a personal archive to tell the story of a life and creative career. McCartney organises that story around his songs and lyrics, rather than Prince’s unfinished memoir and collection of personal fragments.
Behind the Seams by Dolly Parton: Both books use personal stories and archival material to explore how an iconic artist created a distinctive public identity. Parton approaches that self-creation specifically through fashion and visual style, rather than Prince’s broader combination of music, memoir and artistic development.
Special Deluxe by Neil Young: Like Prince, Young tells his life indirectly through an unconventional autobiographical structure rather than a straightforward chronological memoir. Where The Beautiful Ones builds its portrait from writing, photographs, lyrics and other archival fragments, Young uses the cars he has owned as the organising device for his life and career.

A triumph…The Beautiful Ones rivals the Beastie Boys Book – or even your favourite Prince song – as a masterclass in the bottling of its subject’s seductive essence… his presence in this book is so strong that it’s hard to believe he has really left the building. *****
Mojo

The Beautiful Ones is a splendidly produced book… and if we are only to have fragments, then these are the very best ones to have: childhood, his complex relationship with his handsome father… and his beautiful complicated mother Mattie… this book is a fun glance, a tiny bolt from what now feels like a very distant past, and will leave you feeling nothing but huge affection for little, brilliant Skipper.
The Spectator

Admittedly, The Beautiful Ones is a book in pieces, fragments of the ground-braking autobiography Prince had planned. Pieced together after his death in 2016, it collects his handwritten childhood memoirs, superb personal photographs and his chosen co-writer Dan Piepenbring’s vivid account of their brief collaboration. Yet remarkably despite the central absence, it still catches something of Prince between the gaps- a trace of perfume, a glance to camera, a first kiss.
The Sunday Times

The Beautiful Ones is for everyone. It doesn't matter whether you're a Prince fanatic or if your interest is simply piqued by all things music or pop culture: The book is worth picking up.The Beautiful Ones is not a read, but an experience, an immersion inside the mind of a musical genius. You are steeped in Prince's images, his words, his essence… The book can be a starting point for a Prince fascination, or a continuation of long-standing admiration. Either way, it will deepen the connection of any reader with the musical icon.
USA Today

It’s both a pleasure and a surprise to say that although The Beautiful Ones may not satisfy fans’ wildest dreams, it delivers much, much more than we had any reason to expect. As is clear from editor Dan Piepenbring’s very long intro, Prince took the project very seriously, and it shows in the work he delivered. Although the actual autobiography segment of this book ends at the end of Prince’s teens, it shines an intimate and revealing light on the least-known period of his life — his childhood — which is embellished with family photos, notes and other ephemera.
Variety

The Beautiful Ones is an affirmation of Prince’s Blackness and humanity…. Prince writes about his childhood with clarity and poetic flair, effortlessly combining humorous anecdotes with deep self-reflection and musical analysis….It’s another truth about him that is rarely explored in the media…. The Beautiful Ones shows that Prince is one of us — he just worked to manifest dreams that took him from the North Side of Minneapolis to the Super Bowl. It encourages us to tap into our power to design the lives we envision for ourselves and set a precedent for future generations to do the same.
Huffpost

About Prince

Prince Rogers Nelson is one of the most popular and influential musical acts of all time. Known for his style and range, Prince’s prolific music career included an ever-evolving sound that blended pop, R&B, hip-hop, jazz and soul. Prince sold over 100 million albums worldwide, making him one of the best-selling artists of all time. He won seven GRAMMY® Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and an Academy Award® for the film “Purple Rain.” He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004, the first year of his eligibility. Prince tragically passed away at his Paisley Park home on April 21, 2016. His legacy lives on through the timeless messages of love in his music and the countless ways his work has touched lives.

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