Five musicians Prince hated
Six years on from his passing, Prince remains an enigma that we haven’t quite figured out. The little ‘Purple One’ was particular, to say the least, and a slew of artists met with his acerbic wit. Even his own band, beloved as they were, could often not escape his criticism, so it’s no surprise that he offered up some scathing takes on his fair share of artists.
He liked things the way he liked them. “He always demanded the best,” Patrick Whalen, Prince’s former production manager, once told The Hollywood Reporter. Whalen was one of the fateful few who said ‘no’ to Prince once and learned very quickly never to say it again. He recalled the moment he told the little virtuoso that his lighting request was impossible: “He looked me in the eye and said: ‘So what you’re telling me is that in the one second it took for you to say ‘no,’ you left your body and exhausted every possibility?’”
With those sorts of high standards to hit, it is no surprise that certain artists met with his mirthful disdain. Whether it was fuelled by a feud or otherwise, Prince wasn’t shy of dishing out a cutting opinion every now and again. Below we have curated some of his most cutting musical takes.
Five musicians Prince hated:
Keith Richards
In 2016, Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts recalled the ordeal that the rock band had when they hired the emerging star to open for them at the Los Angeles Coliseum. As Watts recalled: “Mick and I loved Prince’s 1980 album Dirty Mind – Keith hated it – and we got him on our show. Of course, Prince being Prince, he went out in his knickers and our audience booed him off, which didn’t deter me from liking him.”
Keith Richards however, only grew more hostile towards Prince. In 1988, for example, he told the LA Times: “I think he’s very clever at manipulating the music business and the entertainment business. I think he’s more into that than making music. I don’t see much substance in anything he does.” And finally cemented the feud with the following comment that enraged Prince: “An overrated midget. Prince has to find out what it means to be a prince.”
The Flaming Lips
Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne felt the force of Prince’s snub in a cautionary tale for the ages. His band encountered the vicious little ‘Purple One’ at the 2006 BRIT Awards, where Prince was set to perform a four-song set with the Revolution. Naturally, people were eager to get a piece of him.
While hanging around backstage, The Flaming Lips decided to approach Prince’s bodyguard and gave him a stack of their CDs. As Coyne recalled: “We were so thrilled by the possibility of him hearing our music. But at the end of the night, the bodyguard came and found us and handed all the CDs back. He said: ‘Prince doesn’t want these.’” Sometimes you shouldn’t meet your heroes. Surely that’s even worse than finding them dumped in a bin?
Katy Perry and Ed Sheeran
Prince’s posthumous memoir, The Beautiful Ones, was crammed with his enigmatic insights on the world. He somehow mixed solacious sex appeal with religious spiritualism and more. This duality also extended to his music tastes. He loved the hooks and candy appeal of sugary pop, but boy oh boy did he hate the marketed nature of it.
In one comical passage he berated two stars in particular. “We need to tell music execs that they keep ramming Katy Perry and Ed Sheeran down our throats and we don’t like it no matter how many times they play it,” he humorously wrote. Thus, we imagine he was spinning in his grave when Perry wrote: “And just like that…the world lost a lot of magic. Rest in peace Prince! Thanks for giving us so much.”
Adam Levine
Prince famously didn’t like people covering his music. He did, however, make an exception for Foo Fighters, stating: “They are so good they could do a whole album of my rock songs.” Sadly, for Adam Levine, he was not afforded the same liberty. In fact, he loathed Maroon 5’s cover of ‘Kiss’ and publicly slated it.
He went on to clarify why he was so cursing when he declared: “Why do we need to hear another cover of a song someone else did? Art is about building a new foundation, not just laying something on top of what’s already there.” Prince was all about pushing boundaries he found Levine and his band as stale as old bread.
