Purple Rain brings out all the Colors like Purple Irises and Purple Heather!

Hello, Monday peeps! Hard to fathom we’re halfway through February already! Well, since it’s a short month, more than halfway! 😱

Since it is Monday, you know that Monday means music! This week’s theme is “February‘s birthstone is the Amethyst and flower is the Violet. Both are purple in color. Find song picks inspired by these things.” Let’s get this “purple” party started!

Let’s start with a song that could be widely shared today, since it was the first one that popped into my head when I saw the theme. 😆 After this artist released his album in 1982, he toured in many of the same cities Bob Seger did.

He was amazed at how crowds connected with Seger’s songs – slow songs that told stories people could relate to. The artist decided to write a song in that style, and this song was the result.

Here’s Prince with “Purple Rain”:

Next up is a song that fits in with this theme, as the lyrics include: “You were red and you liked me ’cause I was blue, but you touched me and suddenly I was a lilac sky, then you decided purple just wasn’t for you”. Blue is a very important color to this artist. For instance, the setup for the singer’s concerts features fluorescent blues drowning her during her performances. She sings here:

His pills, his hands, his jeans / And now I’m covered in the colors / Pull apart at the seams / And it’s blue / And it’s blue

She explained:

“It’s just my creative color. It’s like so many things at once. It’s electric, and it’s bright, but it’s also calm. It’s also ethereal. Blue is just anotherworldly color to me. Blue is the sky. Blue is the sea. Blue for me represents the unexplored territory.”

The smokily lit video was shot at a gothic-style house in Country Club Park, Los Angeles, which was previously used as the haunted mansion in the first season of American Horror Story. The artist portrays a photography-loving, blonde-haired prep school student in a relationship with one of the football players, played by Teen Wolf star Tyler Posey.

Give a listen to Halsey with “Colors”:

Next up, Purple irises traditionally represent faith, wisdom, and admiration, inspired by the Ancient Egyptian goddess Iris, a messenger between heaven and earth. But for this duo, these blooms transcend tradition; they become a living testament to the unyielding spirit of love. The inspiration for the song stemmed from a patch of purple irises the two singers transplanted while quarantined on one of the artist’s Oklahoma ranch. She said:

“Basically in 2020 Blake and I were in quarantine in Oklahoma on the ranch and we were exploring with the kids and with everybody and we found this patch of purple irises and we figured must have been like from this like Old Homestead that maybe a hundred years old someone must have planted them years ago.

So, we started pulling them all out and we transplanted them nearer to where we were living at the time and then years later, it became like this garden and it was like ‘Wow, we were part of doing this, whoever originally planted these now they’re in our garden.’

It was just one of those like wow years are going by and now these are going to be here forever and we got to be part of that and so that kind of represents just our love growing in a way and how you can plant seeds and how you can watch love grow I would say this song to sum it up.”

This song is a love song that’s like a Polaroid of a feeling of a moment:

“Within that snapshot kind of talking yourself out of what you were thinking and saying like snap out of it the truth is this like you’re picking purple irises with your best friend.”

Give a listen to Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton with “Purple Irises”:

Last but certainly not least is the theme’s final representation: a Scottish/Irish folk song. The lyrics and melody are a variant of the song “The Braes of Balquhither” by Scottish poet Robert Tannahill (1774–1810) and Scottish composer Robert Archibald Smith (1780–1829), but were adapted by Belfast musician Francis McPeake (1885–1971) into “Wild Mountain Thyme” and first recorded by his family in the 1950s.

The song is essentially a love song, with the line, “Wild Mountain Thyme grows among the Scottish heather,” perhaps being an indirect reference to the old custom of young women wearing a sprig of thyme, mint, or lavender to attract a suitor. In British folklore, the thyme plant was the fairies’ playground, and often the herb would be left undisturbed for their use.

There have been multiple recordings of this song, dating back to 1914 and continuing to 2025. Pretty wild! I, of course, chose one of my favorite artists’ recordings of this song.

Get ready to be charmed, here’s the inimitable Ed Sheeran with “Purple Heather (Wild Mountain Thyme)”:

That’s a wrap for this week – have a great Monday! See you on the dance floor!

Now, onto the particulars of Monday’s Music Moves Me:

I have the supreme honor and privilege of being a co-host with the inimitable Xmas Dolly and our musical cohort, the awesome Cathy from Curious as a CAThy, and Alana of Ramblin’ with AM!

Want to join in the fun? It’s easy – just find a tune that rocks your boat, post it and link up – don’t forget to grab Xmas Dolly…er, um, I mean her button…over at her place here. Check out Xmas Dolly’s sidebar for the random themes we sport each week – and you can always ask for a specific theme of music you like, too. Check out the other music lovahs and let’s jam!