So Very Special
Let's get something straight here: Prince is not covering Radiohead here. He is, rather, making "Creep" a Prince song, which is to say he is bringing it within the Prince scheme of rhetoric. This is not merely an instrumental thing, nor even a stage gesture thing, though the gesturing offstage is pretty great. The particular moment it happens is at the end of the second verse.
Recall: here, Thom Yorke usually says "You're so fucking special." That "fucking" is key, because it's supposed to sound snide. It's an insult. Prince, on the other hand, does not say "fucking." And not just because he doesn't swear anymore; he could have said what Thom goes with in the radio edit, which is "very." Instead, he changes the entire line, and in doing, he changes the entire meaning of the line. Prince says: "I think that you're special."
This is probably the best distillation of Prince's verbal seduction technique anyone's ever conjured. That Prince is awesome and desirable goes without saying. Prince's argument for why you should sleep with him takes that for granted. Of course you want to sleep with Prince; everybody wants to sleep with Prince. But it's also true that Prince probably wants to sleep with everyone, too. Prince desiring you is not news. Prince walks around desiring things. That's what he does.
Prince's argument for why you should sleep with him, then, is that you guys could do something really special together. Prince wants to sleep with you because he thinks you're amazing. You are his equal, and being the equal of Prince is pretty special. It's all over his stuff, but maybe best expressed in "Gett Off": "twenty-two positions in a one-night stand / I'll only call you after if I say you can," and, of course, "tonight you're a star / and I'm the big dipper." Prince does not think that you're hot, or that he's good in bed; Prince thinks that you are the awesomest thing ever. That you are, in other words, special.
So the fact that he changes that line then changes the line after it. When he yells "I'm a creep," it really seems like he meant to say "freak." He turns this chorus of self-loathing that even Thom Yorke was embarrassed about for a while into, well, a Prince song, a statement of sexual licentiousness. I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo, I get freaky baby, and you can get freaky with me. The weirdness that was a source of embarrassment for Yorke is, here, a source of pride. And when he changes "I don't belong here" into "we don't belong here," it turns self-consciousness into "this party is lame, let's go find something as fabulous as we are." Prince brings you in, includes you in this fantastic Prince world that he has constructed.
What he's done here, then, is turn a song that regards an object of desire with debasement and disgust into a song that regards an object of desire as something to be connected with, included, freaked. It is, I think, an absolutely astounding bit of pop magic, a slight of hand so deft as to reveal itself only with a wink.
Labels: covers, pop, prince, radiohead
posted by Mike B. @ 11:12 AM
16 Comments:
i heard "I'm a creep" in the same way as i heard R. Kelly sing "I'm a flirt." More as "I'm going to creep" than "I am a creep." Point stands, though.
Although I'm not sure about the definition of "cover" you're offering here. Isn't a good cover one that takes the original materical into the "rhetorical scheme" of the coverer? Or the ideological/stylistic scheme?
Hair successfully split.
You know, I have a hard time remebering all the classic rhetorical figures because they are all so hard to pronounce. Perhaps we can rename all of them with the titles of Prince songs, and use lyrics from them to illustrate them.
To take a really obvious example from yr post (and not, lest anyone get the wrong idea, a device I forget about), perhaps "hyperbole" can be re-classified as "Gett Off".
Here's a list of terms and examples if anyone wants to play with this.
http://www.uky.edu/AS/Classics/rhetoric.html
(i know this is not precisely the sense you are using the term, but, geez, my mind works in odd ways)
Eric: I was going to get into the "cover" issue more, but then I got kicked out of the computer lab. I think "making it your own" is one option, but I don't think you necessarily need to bring it within your own narrative unless you're a pop star like Prince and have an existing narrative to bring it into. I think a good cover is one that does something different with the song, but I think that something doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the coverer. To hairsplit more.
Also, I like Todd's idea.
One of my favorite examples (I do love a single entendre) is from Violet the Organ Grider:
"I was on my way to another room
when an image of u sweetly
appeared in the mirror
perhaps u recall
u and I were neatly
in the middle of a Crystal Ball
that now serves as a reminder
on the wall of u and I the organ grinder
in the greatest concert of them all"
Fantastic, incisive post.
Also: better guitar solos!
you are lame, so fucking lame
I like the insight of this post, but I hesitate with agreeing with your first sentence.
Can someone perform a song at Cochella with the same title and nearly the same words by a band with a huge international audience and it NOT be a cover?
You describe the person to whom this song is being directed as someone in many of his other songs. At Cochella, as Radiohead is huge nowadays, as throwback covers are a delight to the music media...it seems like Prince wasn't covering or reinterpreting the song, but branding it.
Just like you can "fall into the Gap" or eat in "McWorld (I love this place)," you can hang out and listen to your favorite everytunes in "this fantastic Prince world that he has constructed."
Hey, not to be snide or anything, but yes he absolutely was covering Radiohead. If he did indeed change it enough to make it his own, then he actually broke the law by making a derivative work off of a copyrighted work. So take your pick: was he merely overprotecting a cover, or was he in fact breaking the law?
You people are fucking idiots.
Came your way via Stereogum. Really lovely reading of Prince's reiteration of "Creep" and I use "reiteration" in a Derridean way.
However, I must problematize your definition of "cover" in precisely the manner marathonpacks laid out. A "cover," especially a successful one, ought to turn a song by another artist into one's own. Perhaps your definition of "cover" reflects the paucity of decent cover renditions with which you grew up, but - if you thought Prince really owned "Creep" - I point you to Aretha Franklin's "Respect," a "cover" of Otis Redding's 1965 song that became her signature (in the Derridean sense, absolutely). Prince's song is still very much recognizable as an iteration of Radiohead's (so much so that you had to point out all the subtle nuances likely missed by Coachella goers who probably weren't attuned to all those moments of différance) whereas most people of Coachella generation would be utterly surprised to learn Franklin's signature was a cover.
Now, that I've made reference to Derrida shouldn't invite you to respond by pointing out that Derrida problematized the very notions of the original and the copy. The reason why I say that is because Derrida, after his death, has made certain that we remember it was he who postulated "différance" and authored the volumes of material in his archive, an archive that is now being used to assert his authorial legacy. The irony should not be lost on you.
Forgot to put links to the Redding and Franklin versions of "Respect."
Redding - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97j4SgFBCVw
Franklin -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6C83lwwxJ8
And there are scores of other great songs and covers. "Sweet Jane" (The Velvet Underground/The Cowboy Junkies) comes to mind.
Regardless of "making it your own," it's still a Radiohead song. They wrote it, and Prince interpreted it. Interpreting doesn't equal writing.
AWESOME! So all I have to do is change one word in a lyric and I can claim copyright to my "new" song? SWEET! So long, day job!
anon 2:29, you need to be Prince before you can get away with doing anything like that. keep the day job.
convinced!
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