Prince

Prince covers The Cars

Prince blew us all away earlier in the year with his take on Foo Fighters’ “The Best of You” at the Super Bowl. He’s always capable of delighting us with the seemingly random cover. So who would have guessed that on July 7th, at the Target Center in Minneapolis, Prince decided to channel… Ric Ocasek? That’s right, Prince reached back to the Cars’ 1979 album Candy-O, and unleashed the hit single “Let’s Go” on his hometown crowd.The Chipmunks, who covered “Let’s Go” in 1980, could not be reached for comment. But it looks like the purple man knocked the ‘Munks down to # 2 in the Best Cars Cover category.

Now, if someone could convince Prince to cover all of Candy-O from start to finish, then we’d be in business.

Buy Planet Earth | Candy-O

22 Comments

  • Bongo Masta

    Sweet Jebus, what a pile of cack. And to think that once upon a time Prince was a huge musical force… A painfully inept band (although having a bunch of people together on stage doesn’t mean that you have a band), and WTF has happened to Prince’s voice?

  • jazzmaster

    Granted, this recording doesn’t do justice to the artist, but who the hell are you talking about, Bongo Boy? Maybe you missed the Super Bowl this year… Perhaps you haven’t been privy to recordings of some of the 3121 shows… I guess you missed his album that debuted in the US last week… This man is still on FIRE!!! Listen to the bass thump on ‘Chelsea Rodgers’ and then tell us all how Prince is no longer a musical force.

    🙂

    BTW… Thanks for snagging this, Pete. I was really interested to hear P’s version of ‘Let’s Go’.

  • thief of songs tell everyone

    he is a just a good thief, he watches what is coming out, tv or movie, or someones elses work, advertised and he forms his evil craft around other peoples hype thats all. when will you people see this? he is like the fame leach of all time.

  • thief of songs tell everyone

    by the way, every great song that made him money, was lyrics that he stole from someone else. you can obviously see the difference because he couldn’t write his way out of a paper bag. did he pay the people he stole his greatest songs from??? no he didn’t. he did complain about record companies stealing from him though. thief, and hypocrite, inside his heart is a black hole.

  • thief of songs tell everyone

    his lyrics, obviously crap. proof is just to listen to his stuff, you can tell. he has now started to believe, his own fake hype.

  • jazzmaster

    Really?! He stole ‘Purple Rain’?! ‘Sign o’ the Times’?! ‘Little Red Covette’?! ‘Darling Nikki’?! ‘Forever in My Life’?! ‘1999’?!

    From whom?!

    Please enlighten us, o wise one…

    😛

  • Michael

    Goodness, think of all the good that could be done in the time that was expended bashing Prince. Those who do not at very least respect the legacy of this man, are often just very un-knowledgeable about him. And the accusation of him ‘stealing’ music generally only comes from Rick James fans. So what are your credentials Thief?

  • Thierry

    I was just commenting on Prince being such an underrated guitarist today (after I put him in my Top 10 guitarists of all time). The man can do ANYTHING with a guitar, from hard funk to hard rock to soulful leads, melodic leads…unbelievable!

  • Bongo Masta

    “Maybe you missed the Super Bowl this year… ”

    Nope. Far from the highlight so many fams claim it was. And that Foo Fighters cover would have been more cool if a) Prince didn’t bitch about people covering his songs every five minutes (including the Foo Fighters) and b) he hadn’t first given a recording to Howard Stern.

    “Perhaps you haven’t been privy to recordings of some of the 3121 shows… ”

    Heard them, and they’re exactly the same crap he’s been peddling for a decade.

    “I guess you missed his album that debuted in the US last week… ”

    Nope. Yet more bland nonsense.

    “This man is still on FIRE!!! ”

    Prince has been sounding bored to death for over a decade.

    “Listen to the bass thump on ‘Chelsea Rodgers’ and then tell us all how Prince is no longer a musical force.”

    Prince is no longer a musical force. AND THAT IS A FACT. Come on, GET REAL. Nobody cares about his current music. If people cover a song, it’s one from 20 years ago. If a song gets remixed, it’s one from 20 years ago. Hell, PRINCE HIMSELF doesn’t play his current music.

    When people talk about Prince, they talk about his LEGACY. All the good reviews for his latest album are just nonsense.

    And Chelsea Rodgers? Pur-lease. That kind of crap would have remained a rehearsal jam 20 years ago. These days it’s the best track on an album. It’s just as crap as his Winding Road cover, or Sleep Around etc.

    GET OUT MORE. There’s tons of great music released today, and Prince’s latest isn’t part of that.

  • Marco

    Bongo Masta & Thief Of Songs Tell Everyone; I have no intention to reply to your rude comments & behaviour. Just imagine that this place is visited and appreciated by people who followed Prince and his work over the years. Most visitors here know well what they are talking about. Both of you don’t … and there is no need for your childish comments. Let’s Go …

    … and thanks to Pete for the nice tune …

  • Zack

    Ha – props for the Chipmunk Punk reference!

    Judging by recent posts, I’m guessing you have the Target show? If not, let me know. Hopefully the aftershow surfaces soon too.

  • Bongo Masta

    Oh how hilarious: I don’t like current Prince, so I must like utter crap like Avril. Wrong again, buddy, I know music. And I know Prince.

    And Marco’s post is just as bad. “Most visitors here know well what they are talking about. Both of you don’t.” Bzzt, wrong. If I’m wrong, prove me wrong. Prove that Prince is promoting his new record by actually playing the majority of it in concert. List all those covers of his recent music. Prove to me that Prince isn’t a hypocrite by covering songs while bitching about others covering his songs, including people he covers himself.

    The truth is that you won’t reply because you know I’m 100% right.

    Question: would anybody talk about Prince these days if he wasn’t doing stunts like “21 nights” and “giving the album away for free” etcetera? NOPE. Oh look, he’s dragged out the “last time ever I play the hits” trick — yeah, we haven’t heard that one before.

    And I just love the “only post positive stuff” baloney. Would you have been upset with my “rude” words if they were directed at say Warner Bros Records? I bet you couldn’t have waited to pile on the insults. But now I’m debunking your favorite pop star and then you get upset.

    Anyone with a little bit of honesty would admit that Controversy is a far better record than Planet Earth — and yet Controversy is a major disappointment in Prince’s early career: a thinly disguised reworking of themes and songs from Dirty Mind, with several clunkers amongst the tracks. People who hand PE 4 stars or proclaim tracks from it as “classics” need to get their Prince license revoked, because they clearly don’t knwo what they’re talkign about.

    But hey, this is nothing new to me. Back in 1999 I also was the lone voice of sanity amongst a sea of hyped up fans who proclaimed Rave the long awaited return to form. Yet six months later it turned out that a) virtually all of my predictions were right (and often nowhere near as bad as reality) and b) most fans were saying the exact same things I was denounced for months earlier.

    Fool yourselves all you like, but rest assured that ina couple of months time you’ll realise that PE is gathering dust at the same pile of recent Prince records. PE is just as irrelevant as 3121, N.E.W.S., Rave, Musicology, Emancipation, Newpower Soul etcetera. and just like all those records it will reside in bargain bins until it will become obsolete and out of print, and nobody (except a young collector) will give a damn about it being unavailable.

    If Prince’s fans were truly honest, they’d admit that they don’t care for all this new baloney, and that they’d rather have remastered and expanded versions of Prince’s classic albums. That they’d rather have access to pristine copies of legendary concerts (on CD and/or DVD) instead of spending money on lousy drm-protected downloads. That’s they’d rather have a coordinated reissue effort combined with Prince doing a world-wide tour to promote those reissues.

    Nostalgia? Yeah, I’m nostalgic for the times when Prince made great music and actually mattered.

  • Pete

    bongo – I understand where you’re coming from. I agree that his output these days doesn’t come close to what he’s capable of, and to be honest, as a fan in my late 30’s who has followed him for 23 years, it’s hard not be nostalgic for those classic days.

    But I wouldn’t discredit him completely. He’s still an amazing performer, even with all of the covers, and the painfully similar set lists. And interspersed among his late albums are some standout tracks. It’s purely subjective, as your opinion shows. There are a lot of people like myself who think that he still has a lot to offer, and that he actually still does “matter.” And there are undoubtedly a lot of people like yourself who write off anything he does these days as worthless… that’s fine. The world still turns…

    We won’t change your mind, and you’re not gonna change ours… 😉
    Peace.

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