In 2008, Prince headlined the Coachella festival, and the most notable part of his set was an unexpected cover of Radiohead’s classic “Creep”, which Prince extended into an 8-minute version with a falsetto vocal solo and some guitar shredding at the end. For whatever reason, Prince had all videos of his Coachella performance pulled from YouTube.

Radiohead’s own Thom Yorke was appreciative of the cover and wanted the video to be back on YouTube, because he knew the fans were into it. “Really? He’s blocked it?” Yorke said at the time. “Hang on a moment. Well, tell him to unblock it. It’s our … song.”

Fast-forward to October, when a YouTube user uploaded low-resolution footage of the cover with serviceable audio, and apparently Prince is fine with this, because yesterday, he tweeted out a link to the video. We’re happy that the video is back up, because Prince’s take on the song is intriguing.

As we said already, he made it longer and added a classic Prince guitar solo, and beyond that, the instrumentation and song structure is largely the same as the source material. He did repeatedly (intentionally?) flub the lines of the chorus, opting for unintelligible screaming instead, but perhaps that change was to inject more emotion into the already emotional lyrics.

Watch the performance above and let us know in the comments what you think of it. Does Prince’s interpretation of the song add to it, or are you satisfied enough with the original.

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HT: Vulture

Featured image courtesy of Warner Bros. Records