(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still / Kyle Cassidy)
Thu 18 September 2025 20:30, UK
If there’s one area that artists can often excel in, it’s dishing out the demands. To a certain extent, having a pre-show ritual or an oddly specific rider are things that can be overlooked, but sending out an order that other people are forbidden to even look at you? For Weird Al Yankovic, that was a step too far.
The unfortunate reality of the business is that there could have been a tendency of people looking down on someone like Yankovic, who has made his name veering towards the comedy sphere rather than as a bona fide rock god. Of course, only the more cultured among the music elite will understand that the true power of the man is the way in which he disseminates even the mightiest of stars, but this didn’t mean that he always won them over.
This was more than evidently the case for Prince, who is easily lauded as one of rock music’s greatest ever geniuses, but didn’t often seem like he could take a joke, particularly if it was at his own expense. Naturally, his prolific songbook was always the North Star in the sights of Yankovic for a parody take, but while this might have been viewed as a compliment and a laugh to some people, it was decidedly insulting to Prince.
Yankovic tried valiantly in vain over the years to try to sway the rock master by pitching joke versions of the likes of ‘When Doves Cry’, ‘Let’s Go Crazy’, ‘1999’, and a litany of others. But it was always returned with an emphatic rejection. “He’d never give a reason, it was never like, ‘No, because …’ It was always just ‘no’ or a non-answer,” Yankovic later explained in an interview to SiriusXM.
As a result, Yankovic might have hoped that an opportunity to come face-to-face with Prince would have been the chance to change his mind. But almost as a way of getting his own back, the ‘Purple Rain’ overlord shut that down too. There happened to be a year in which the two fateful feuders were sat on the same row as each other at the American Music Awards, but any hope Yankovic held of being able to make some inroads was firmly left in flames when he received a note to say: “Do not establish eye contact.”
Thankfully, having made a career out of seeing the brighter side of life, Yankovic actually found this quite funny. “I got a telegram from his office,” the comedian added through laughter, “It wasn’t a personal thing, I don’t think, because I was talking to some of the guys from Night Ranger and they were like, ‘Yeah, we got the same telegram’.” It’s difficult to tell who comes off with the better look from that story; Yankovic, of course, never got his sought-after seal of approval, but equally, Prince is Prince, and there’s no messing with a god.
The legacy of Prince is cemented in many ways: iconic music videos, striking looks, and a visionary approach to music that simply could not be cultivated through any other mind. In fairness, you could also attribute the same qualities to Yankovic himself in his own specific way. Would the snobby, so-called bona fide artists be happy with that comparison? Probably not. But that’s all part of the comedy called life.
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