News

Prince kills tribute album

3:50 p.m. · June 25, 2008 · by Jim Allen

Look, you can't keep up a reputation for being monomaniacal by letting things slide. Prince's uncompromising control-freak attitude towards any and all representations of his music has found him removing fan-filmed YouTube videos and quashing cover versions, and the latest edict from the Paisley Palace concerns a Norwegian tribute album.

Christer Falck, a Norwegian TV personality and label head, enlisted 50 artists from his home country to participate in a five-disc Prince tribute box to celebrate their hero's 50th birthday. The project was a labor of love in which none of the artists got paid.  Their only mistake was actually sending a copy to Prince himself, who, outraged at their effrontery, immediately put the legal kibosh on the whole operation, demanding that all copies be destroyed. Excessive and tyrannical? Sure, but just think back over the years and imagine how much awful music could have been avoided if such hard-line tactics had been taken by, oh let's say Radiohead, R.E.M., Metallica, the Ramones, Black Sabbath, Leonard Cohen, the Grateful Dead, the Cure...