Billboard Music Awards tribute to Prince gets lambasted…
On Sunday night at the Billboard Music Awards, Madonna and Stevie Wonder paid tribute to the legendary pop icon, Prince. The tribute was introduced by Questlove who initiated a moment of silence to remember the late singer, before comparing his death to an ‘earthquake’.
Madonna kicked off the tribute by singing an intro of ‘Let’s Go Crazy’ followed by ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’. She was then joined on the stage by Stevie Wonder and they both sang ‘Purple Rain’, which prompted the crowd to sing along.
Watch the moving performance here…
Touching moments, though after the performance a massive backlash on social media platforms ensued. Madonna drew the greatest complaints, with people arguing that her portion of the performance was not worthy of the Prince Tribute at the Billboard Music Awards, and that Stevie Wonder had ‘saved’ the rendition from being a complete disaster.
Below are just a few posts on Twitter from angered Prince fans…
(Image by Christopher Michel, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC by 2.0))
According to the partial clip here of not the entire performance the only artistic and technical problem is the keyboard player who seems to be messing up with bad sound. Why the hatred towards Madonna out of curiosity? She sounds great. At least in terms of what is presented here.
I think the issue is that Prince was an enormous star BUT could actually play the fuck out of many instruments. Madonna is an enormous start BUT infinitely less musically talented. People wanted someone at Prince’s level to pay tribute. Stevie is a good choice, then again, he must be contractually obligated to perform at every awards show ever.
It’s a thankless task, keeping the asses at Billboard/DickClark/ABC/The Grammies happy. They had to “do something [Prince | Bowie]” to look like something besides the pointless industry wankfests their shows are, and they have to “get someone big”, because, well, Amurrica.
And refined American tweeters have their panties in a twist because their educational/artistic experience of watching an industry patting itself on the back was just *ruined*.
This is your world, music biz. Welcome to it. Tip Nero on the way out.
The worst tribute ever for someone that refute immortality and the use of amulets and crosses for long already..
It is just like someone that decide to abandon totally Muslims but when he die all of his “so called friends” make a Muslim ritual tribute..that was not respect for Prince believes