It’s our lucky day – previously when we’ve watched fights between midgets and wonky-eyed wimps we’ve needed a credit card and a Bangkok hotel room with cable TV.
But not any more because Prince and Radiohead are at loggerheads – the kind of loggerheads that will either end in legal action or a hot hot dwarf-on-perpetual-student erotic gangbang.
It’s all over YouTube footage of Prince performing Radiohead’s Creep at a festival, you see. Prince being Prince, he’s had all videos removed from the internet; but Radiohead being Radiohead, they want the videos unblocked because they wrote the song. Who’ll win? It’s unclear, but it had better not end up with the gangbang scenario, because that’s going to result in one ugly unwanted baby.
The internet has really thrown some cats among the pigeons of the music industry, and it’s opened up a fairly deep schism. On one side are those who think that the internet is the perfect way to forge grass-roots support free of the machinations of record labels and multi-album distribution deals, and on the other side are those who think that the internet devalues music and that artists should always be compensated for their work.
Previously those two ideas had stayed far apart, but they came crashing together in April when Prince played a version of Radiohead’s Creep at the Coachella festival, a gathering that was otherwise exceptional only because a pig blew off.
What was the Prince version of Creep like? Well, if it was anything like his version of the Foo Fighters song he played in London last year, it was pretty sodding abominable. But the truth is we don’t know what it was like, because Prince has yanked all recordings of it from YouTube and other video sharing websites.
Prince has a hardline stance on the internet. Even though he was possibly the first major artist to use the internet for distribution of his music over a decade ago, he’s since taken against anyone who wants to use his music or image on the internet, even if it’s a video of a baby dancing to a barely audible version of Let’s Go Crazy, and had all unauthorised work removed for breach of copyright.
But now Radiohead claim that Creep‘s copyright belongs to Radiohead, and that the videos should go back online. CNN reports:
In a recent interview, Thom Yorke said he heard about Prince’s performance from a text message and thought it was “hilarious.” Yorke laughed when his bandmate, guitarist Ed O’Brien, said the blocking had prevented him from seeing Prince’s version of their song. “Really? He’s blocked it?” asked Yorke, who figured it was their song to block or not. “Surely we should block it. Hang on a moment.” Yorke added: “Well, tell him to unblock it. It’s our … song.”
Of course Radiohead would say that. Radiohead love the internet, to the extent that they’re happy to give their music away for almost free on the internet. Radiohead love the internet and want to kiss it and have lots of sad-faced cyborgy children with it.
But we’re not even going to pretend that we know who’s got the legal upper hand here. However, it’s definitely good that there’s an argument, because it’s bound to cause two very brilliant things indeed:
1 – As a payback, Radiohead will record a special YouTube concert of nothing but Prince covers and refuse to remove the videos no matter what. This is good because as well as being a clever fan-pleasing reversal, it’ll also be funny to watch Thom Yorke – a man who tends to aim for ‘sexy’ and hit ‘six-year-old boy being ordered to kiss his grandmother goodbye’ – singing a song about a woman wanking herself off with a magazine, and
2 – Prince will stop playing interminable cover versions in the middle of his concerts and just do bloody Alphabet Street like everyone wants.
Or Prince and Radiohead will just keep squabbling until everyone thinks they’re all dicks. And that’s more likely, admittedly.
David Bryden says
>> “He’s blocked it?” asked Yorke… “Surely we
>> should block it… It’s our … song.”
Dammit!
All these years, I’ve been paying expensive lawyers to give me legal opinions, but all I really had to do was say the first thing that came into my head.
Rob Delaney says
I like scenario A. I think that would be cool.
Ads says
I think both versions he did were brilliant. Creep and Best of You. He put some life into their songs instead of their dreary dead singing.