Rock royalty is abolished. I hereby declare a people’s music revolution

Prince is dead. David Bowie is dead. RIP Prince, RIP David Bowie. It’s a shame, but there you are. People die. Popular musicians die. Even “god-like geniuses” die. But what’s this? Prince’s death is the lead item on the BBC radio news at 8pm on the night of his announced death? The lead item? The demise of the singer of Purple Rain and other tiresome songs from the 1980s is the most significant piece of news in the entire world that evening? Priorities, eh? When Bowie’s death was announced on that long-ago Monday morning I was listening to the Today programme when the presenter cut short an interview with an aid worker from Turkey who’d been talking about Syrians fleeing from Russian airstrikes because … “there’s extraordinary news coming out of New York concerning the singer David Bowie”. Never mind dead Syrians, we’ve got a dead international pop star on our hands … NO!, I hear you shriek in your best Prince falsetto. That’s not it at all Niluccio, you idiot. They’re BOTH important, though important in different ways. These iconic musicians changed lives. Millions of lives. Stop being so superior. Hmm, now I’m chastened. I should just shut up. Bowie was fabulous. Everyone loved him. Prince was amazing. (Nearly) everyone loved him. What a singer. What a guitarist. What a dancer. What a talent. Except …well, I don’t share the reverence for either of these (or for other 2016 casualties like Lemmy or Maurice White for that matter). Whisper it here, but I think both Bowie and Prince were hugely overrated. While they did interesting things in terms of image cultivation, I don’t think they compare with less-idolised twentieth-century musicians (Miles Davis, Lee Perry, James Brown, Fats Waller, John Lee Hooker, Captain Beefheart, Reed and Cale, etc etc). There, I’ve said it. No doubt this is all death-defying heresy and idiocy on my part. A crime against music. I should probably shut up before the Ziggy lynch-mobs come for me or the Prince hells angels on their big Honda motorbikes roll up outside my flat.

Nothing compares 2 over-the-top media coverage of dead pop stars

Funnily enough though, apart from the estimable Kiss and Nothing Compares 2 U (my own Prince faves), I’ve a reason to be grateful to Prince after all. His death came during a day of utterly soul-destroying media coverage of the Queen’s 90^th birthday. While I think the media then went overboard with Prince coverage instead, there was at least a pleasant irony in the displacement of the Queen by a certain uppity Prince. Roll on the abolition of royalty altogether though. And that means rock royalty as well …