I was watching an interview with prince on youtube recently in which he was saying that people should not cover other artist work there should be the original and that's it, but prince himself has done lots of covers over the years hendrix, sly and the family stone, stylistics etc...

^^major late

rdhull said:

^^major late

ok

MrA said:

rdhull said:

^^major late

ok

FragileUndertow said:

MrA said:

ok

flyorra said:

iloveannie said:

[Edited 5/15/12 10:11am]

Prince says one thing and does another? OMG...

iloveannie said:

flyorra said:

Let me add to the laugh fest..Because Prince..will be a contradiction for ther est of his life. He even said in his 'One Song' "I can be contradiction, if that's all I see"

.....lol

Prince usually only covers live (a few exceptions on Emancipation etc), so he is honouring the original - whereas most pop artists want to prosper from the re-recording. therein ends the lesson.

Dandroppedadime said:

Prince usually only covers live (a few exceptions on Emancipation etc), so he is honouring the original - whereas most pop artists want to prosper from the re-recording. therein ends the lesson.

Yes that's right, it's always one rule for short stuff, and another rule for the rest of the planet.

Dandroppedadime said:

Prince usually only covers live (a few exceptions on Emancipation etc), so he is honouring the original - whereas most pop artists want to prosper from the re-recording. therein ends the lesson.

Exactly! I think Prince more has a beef about putting the cover track on an album, like when sinead used 'Nothing Compares 2 U' without permission. (I read somewhere that Prince had planned to repackage it with another protege in the 90's but O'connor beat him to the punch)

Besides, I feel like a cover is only really apropreate when you add something new, or have a different twist on things. Covers that add nothing new are just lame and lazy (like Blink 182's cover of dancing with myself)

I think he has a problem with people covering obscure songs from his back catalogue as nobody is going to realise it is his (since he didn't really say anything about it until after Sinead).

But the majority of his covers are only in a live format and i don't think any are singles, so he's not really "taking the spotlight" away from the original song.

Crimson & Clover...

Prince is a hypocrite, yes.

thedance said:

Crimson & Clover...

Prince is a hypocrite, yes.

I was waiting for someone to mention this song

Prince is hypocritical like most people. But, at least with "Crimson and Clover" he combined it with "Wild Thing" to make it different. That doesn't make him any less hypocritical for wanting to limit other people covering his work while he covers the work of others, but it does make him more creative than most. And, finally, Prince is “batshit crazy,” so enjoy what you can and ignore the rest.

What he said in that interview was:

"I don't mind the fans singing the music. My problem is when the industry covers the music. Covering the music means that your version doesn't exist anymore. A lot of times people think I'm doing a Sinead O' Connor song and a Chaka Khan song, when in fact I wrote those songs. It's okay when my friends ask to do it, but there's this thing called the compulsory license law, which allows artists through the record company to take your music at will without asking permission. That doesn't exist in any other art forms."

So stop making such brash assumptions. This has been discussed here before many times. He has no problem when there is respect between the musicians and people ask for a permission, but he doesn't like it that you can just take a song and do a version of it and blatantly profit on it.

At the times he was pissed off the TV Show doing a version of "Kiss" and he felt they were cheapening it.

novabrkr said:

What he said in that interview was:

"I don't mind the fans singing the music. My problem is when the industry covers the music. Covering the music means that your version doesn't exist anymore. A lot of times people think I'm doing a Sinead O' Connor song and a Chaka Khan song, when in fact I wrote those songs. It's okay when my friends ask to do it, but there's this thing called the compulsory license law, which allows artists through the record company to take your music at will without asking permission. That doesn't exist in any other art forms."

So stop making such brash assumptions. This has been discussed here before many times. He has no problem when there is respect between the musicians and people ask for a permission, but he doesn't like it that you can just take a song and do a version of it and blatantly profit on it.

At the times he was pissed off the TV Show doing a version of "Kiss" and he felt they were cheapening it.

So you think he's friends with the writers of EVERY song he's ever covered? You think he's asked all of them for their permission?

Come on now. We know good and well what he meant. He's still a hypocrite. Ain't the first time.

No, sorry. I can't agree with that. I'm not getting any cheap thrills out of this just to be able to write on an Internet forum that Prince is a hypocrite or an asshole.

He doesn't always express himself in a way that would be perfectly clear. You could also get the impression from that comment that he didn't want Chaka Khan to cover him, but that's unlikely the case. Yet, he isn't logically contradicting himself with any of those comments even if you take them word for word.

I don't have a problem believing that he's asked the permission for every cover song that he's recorded and released himself. It's highly unlikely that he used the word "friend" in that specific comment in the sense that doing a cover version of someone's song is okay only if you are a personal friend of that person.

The bottom line is that he doesn't say he hates cover versions or that doesn't want others to cover his music. He expressed his disdain for what he calls the "industry" using his music for profit and he has always had his beef with Sinead O'Connor's version of "Nothing Compares 2 U", which is what several of those comments are referring to.

novabrkr said:

No, sorry. I can't agree with that. I'm not getting any cheap thrills out of this just to be able to write on an Internet forum that Prince is a hypocrite or an asshole.

He doesn't always express himself in a way that would be perfectly clear. You could also get the impression from that comment that he didn't want Chaka Khan to cover him, but that's unlikely the case. Yet, he isn't logically contradicting himself with any of those comments even if you take them word for word.

I don't have a problem believing that he's asked the permission for every cover song that he's recorded and released himself. It's highly unlikely that he used the word "friend" in that specific comment in the sense that doing a cover version of someone's song is okay only if you are a personal friend of that person.

The bottom line is that he doesn't say he hates cover versions or that doesn't want others to cover his music. He expressed his disdain for what he calls the "industry" using his music for profit and he has always had his beef with Sinead O'Connor's version of "Nothing Compares 2 U", which is what several of those comments are referring to.

This is nothing personal, because I don't know you from a hole in the wall. But in my opinion you're re-interpreting a pretty clear statement to make it mean what you want it to mean. Unless Prince has sat down and had a long, personal conversation with you about this, I don't know how you could see it any way other than Prince doing exactly what he's saying he doesn't like people to do with his songs.

I don't disagree with some of your points. Just the fact that Prince isn't/hasn't doing/done exactly the same thing he was complainng about during that interview. Because he has. And the "doesn't explain himself clearly" defense stopped being valid in, like, 1987.

I'm not "re-interpreting" anything. I'm taking his comment word for word, which is not what you are doing. The comments you made about "knowing Prince personally" are completely unnecessary and, frankly speaking, naive.

The statement he made on TV does make it clear that he is not against cover versions, but he has a problem with the laws that allow people to cover songs without asking for a permission.

He also doesn't like it that people are not always aware of the original writers of the songs, but that's not a part of the comment that addresses the existence of the law that he mentions. He is speaking about two different aspects of cover versions that he doesn't like. One often seems to lead to the other in his mind, but he's not necessarily incorrect about that either.

Him not having a problem with the "fans" singing his songs is a bit more unclear, but I suppose that refers to the youtube videos and other clips on the internet with people performing his songs in a more casual manner. It could alternatively refer to artists like D'Angelo that are known to be fans of his music and do cover versions of his songs.

[Edited 5/15/12 22:58pm]

Who cares, hypocrite or not - he's still farking awesome!!!