Prince is a global living treasure, whose visage should be engulfed in shimmering gold at all times. Not an exaggeration.
Easily one of the most enigmatic and interesting performers on the planet (seriously, whenever his archives are eventually cracked open, heads are truly going to explode from the sheer volume and genius of the stuff he’s just kinda done and never released; like, for example, the break-up song so mournful and honest that Prince destroyed it virtually on the spot) one of the things that’s kept Prince’s mystique intact is his perceived scarcity.
That is, his remarkable ability to control exactly how his music is heard and consumed by his millions of fans.
When it comes to live performances, for example, some of his most legendary concerts have occurred in the middle of the night, in secret, in small, nondescript clubs for a handful of fortunate punters.
And when it comes to recorded material, his notoriously tight grip on copyright is legendary.
To that end, footage from Prince’s set at the 2008 Coachella Festival has historically been nuked from YouTube practically as quick as it could be uploaded.
Only problem there, is that part of that set included a cover of Radiohead‘s seminal hit “Creep,” a song that Prince – obviously – does not hold the copyright to.
Radiohead, it should be said, have practically the polar-opposite attitude towards fans uploading and sharing their material, and have gone so far as to actively encourage people to do it.
Today, finally, Prince seems to have caved in and allowed the cover to remain on the web, giving the low-res footage his own apparent blessing by tweeting out a link to the video.
PRINCE https://t.co/pltk41l7EH … LIVE pic.twitter.com/Fva6UAUqGM
— Prince3EG (@Prince3EG) December 8, 2015
The video’s description includes a bit of nose-thumbing towards Prince, by including Radiohead’s ownership over the song, along with Thom Yorke‘s almost curt thoughts on the matter:
“Well, tell him to unblock it… it’s our song.“
Bless U, Prince. Never change.
Photo: Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images.
Source: Consequence of Sound.
