[Severian]

By the way...

did y'all know that one Chris Cornell (from Audioslave and those awful Chris Cornell solo albums, and the Earth 2 doppelgänger of the man who who actually made some kickass music for a few years with a pre-geriatric Soundgarden) recorded a cover of "Nothing Compares 2 U" as a tribute to our boy here?

Well, he did. It's on iTunes. And — surprise! — It fucking sucks.

Here's a review:

Good intentions can't save this one
Artist: Chris Cornell
Song: "Nothing Compares 2 U" (Prince/The Family cover)

Before I rip this travesty apart, I would like to give props to Chris Cornell for making sure the world remembers that this is a Prince song. It’s a sweet gesture and I’m sure it will be taken as a nice tribute, but it lacks everything that was great about both Prince’s original AND Sinead O'Connor’s celebrated 1990 cover. Cornell’s version of “Nothing Compares 2 U” seems to be made specifically for non-Prince (and non-Sinead) fans. While I’m sure there are some folks out there who will dig this flaccid, artless snoozer, the truth is that this song fails as a tribute, and succeeds only in hucking a flashlight down into the massive, cavernous talent gap between Artist and “artist” (tell me when it hits the bottom).

Lacking the funky pulse of the original — released in 1985 by Prince side project The Family — Cornell’s solo acoustic take on this iconic ballad puts him in the unfortunate position of squaring off with O'Connor’s almost unfathomably beautiful 1990 cover in the mind of the listener. That’s a battle few singers could ever hope to win. Maybe Thom Yorke could pull it off — maybe PJ Harvey or Erykah Badu.
There’s a chance Wayne Coyne and the Flaming Lips could put a nice spin on it if they brought their A-game. But sadly Cornell’s cover sounds like the kind of purposeless rustic crap you’d expect to hear from Nickelback or Daughtry.

By opting for a sparse, singer-songwriter arrangement, Cornell makes the comparison to O'Connor inevitable. It’s sad, because he’s a very talented singer who's fully capable of pulling off authentically soulful vocal performances (see “Say Hello 2 Heaven,” “Hunger Strike.”)

It's hard to imagine "Nothing Compares 2 U" ever sounding boring. I've always considered the song to be such a force of nature that it would imbuing anyone who deins to sign it with temporarily Godlike musical prowess and charisma. Here, though, Cornell just plain phone's it in. His cover succeeds only in making this iconic and timeless song sound very basic indeed, which is actually something of a feat in itself considering the raw power of the source material. Cornell's cover is a failure as a tribute to Prince Rogers Nelson. The man was many things, but “basic” was never one of them. He didn’t have a “basic” bone in his body. In fact, I think a strong argument could be made that the acronym of modern slang’s “basic” is actually “Prince.”

The moral of the story is: If you’re going to cover “Nothing Compares 2 U,” you’d better have one hell of an ace up your sleeve, because in addition to being a brilliant Prince track, it's also, arguably, the most exquisitely covered song of all time. O'Connor brought something new to the track, but Cornell’s decision to essentially cover her cover pretty much hamstrings this instantly forgettable and wholly unnecessary, though surely well intentioned, tribute to The Purple One.