I just thought of it as a slogan, like "live 4 love"

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

When he used to write MAY U LIVE 2 C THE DAWN I always thought it would be a special day, a new era, not a website/album project/song

.

i get the feeling The Dawn was more of a spiritual thing. so when he named a website the dawn, no... i had no thought whatsoever that it was "the dawn" he hoped we would live to see, so therefore no disappointment.

I did often wonder whether it was a long game thing; that we would one day see some form of project that was "the Dawn". And then he released the song and it turned out it was a long game, at all...just another his passing phrases.

OperatingThetan said:

I was a little bit disappointed because I felt it de-mystified or cheapened the concept of "The Dawn", whatever that meant to the individual fan. I think it should´ve stayed a spiritual slogan rather than a website or album. No album or song or website could ever live up to the idea of The Dawn.

Then again, he used that slogan so often that it HAD to turn into something more than a slogan one day.

I understand the feeling of it being demystified. This is what Prince was prone to doing though, cannibalising a previous concept on a whim for a new one, especially during the years.

I always felt that it was a spiritual thing, like one would finally wake up one day and everything would make sense in 'this thing called Life'. As for the song 'The Dawn', to me it was another stepping stone towards the journey of enlightenment, not the entire answer. It didn't de-mystify the concept for me at all. It brought a smile to my face when I first heard it and it still does.

"May you live to see the dawn" was only written on the Purple Rain album (or during the Purple Rain era), iirc. He should have called the followup album the dawn, but when he didn't, it became a thing. And since Prince loved extra expectations for releases, he wanted to use the latent desire for "the dawn" later on... not disappointed he did, just logical, from a business point of view. And since he never actually released a "dawn" project, it was something he kept coming back to. (which was disappointing)

mediumdry said:

"May you live to see the dawn" was only written on the Purple Rain album (or during the Purple Rain era), iirc. He should have called the followup album the dawn, but when he didn't, it became a thing. And since Prince loved extra expectations for releases, he wanted to use the latent desire for "the dawn" later on... not disappointed he did, just logical, from a business point of view. And since he never actually released a "dawn" project, it was something he kept coming back to. (which was disappointing)

The phrase also appears at the end of the credits in the Sign O The Times movie.

I didn't realise until reading it in Karlen's book that the 3 Chains "O" Gold video project was tentatively called The Dawn at one point. I'm very glad that changed. It's a fun watch, but if that had been the actual near-mythical self-hyped Dawn that I'd lived 2 see I'd have been sorely disappointed.

"May U live 2 C the dawn" is what we in copywriting and/or marketing call a tagline. Why would anyone be disappointed about that?