Peter: Prince, why no love (symbol) for MJ?

Everyone knows I’m a big Prince fan. In truth, Prince is an artist I have grown to appreciate as I have gotten older, having never been a fan growing up. I respect that he writes, records, publishes and plays all of the instruments on all his songs. (I also just discovered he wrote Manic Monday for The Bangles). Ok, he is a bit wierd but he is a musical genius and is allowed to be.

And he still makes great music. Planet Earth, which he released in 2007, would have to rate as one of my all time favourite albums.

Another Eighties icon, Michael Jackson, has a new collection of songs being posthumously released titled Michael. The album artwork is a pretty cool mashup of moments from Michael’s career and was commissioned by Jackson. I’ve never been a huge Jackson fan but always loved the attention Michael spent on this sort of detail.

Cool cover artwork you could spend hours staring at: Yes. 

Wierd 20 minute scenes at the end of Black and White with Michael screaming and grabbing his crotch: um...no thanks.

Die hard Jackson fans (I always thought they were an urban myth) have already decoded many of the references and one of the more surprising inclusions is Prince’s love symbol floating in a bubble.

Now I interpreted this as a nod of respect to a longtime rival Michael obviously admired. So what was Prince’s response to this gesture?

Prince’s camp responded with a statement that “No permission was granted. Sony Entertainment has removed the symbol.” 

Prince has always been really touchy with intellectual property and its debatable how much this has hurt versus helped him, but it left me thinking that Prince should have felt honored to have been included on the cover. Michael was, if ever, a worthy rival to Prince.

It has also left me wondering about the Monarc butterfly on the cover which no one has yet explained. Is this similar nod to Mariah Carey – Mariah’s record label is called MonarC and she covered Michael’s song I’ll Be There.

P.