My Little Prince Tweet Storm
I was 6. My radio alarm clock woke me up with big news: “The King of Rock’n’Roll is dead.” The King of Rock’n’Roll is dead? Some kid somewhere will feel similar, today: Prince is dead? I ran into my parents room and woke them up: “The King is dead!” My father asked:
—“What King? We have no King.”
— “The King of Rock’n’Roll!”
— “Oh, Elvis died? Really? No!”
— “Yes, they said it on the radio. And now we have no King of Rock’n’Roll anymore!”
I needed to know how bad the news really was:
— “Who’s going to be King of Rock’n’Roll now?”
— “No one.”
— “But we need a new King of Rock’n’Roll! We can’t just be without King!”
— “We’ll be alright.”
Even though I hardly had a notion who Elvis was, the idea that there would be no new King of Rock’n’Roll felt harrowing — who would rule if there was no new King! It’d be Chaos! Learning that we had a King of Rock’n’Roll after he had died without follower seemed like something I would regret for all my life. I didn’t want to let this go. “Who will be the next King of Rock’n’Roll? We need to know!” I kept repeating, until my father, who clearly just wanted to go back to sleep, gave up and said “Neil Diamond.”
I felt that this was an excuse to go back to sleep. I went back to my radio and waited if they had an answer on who the next King of Rock’n’Roll was. The radio made clear that there would be no one like Elvis ever again. What pictures death clearer than a King without a follower?
I became a passionate Elvis fan — it pained me as a first grader that I couldn’t grow sidebums and my mother wouldn’t let me wear dragon suits.
The birth of a Prince in jumpsuits filled me with hope — but his message “I may be gay, but Sheila E. thinks I’m sexy.” was unnerving. I thought that Sheila E. was sexy—but she didn’t even know me. That was not fair! Prince was unfair — like Italy winning ’82 World Cup. To me, Prince was the Paolo Rossi of Pop.
Then came the Lovesexy album. And I realised: This naked Prince is funny, and he knows it. And he opened my first doors to the hypnotic land of typography. And the music was great and naked and funny, too.
Prince slowly lost me later with his multiple name changes — he still wrote great songs, but his electric no fucks given humor had turned bitter-strategic. Consumers are brutal.
When I first heard that Prince had died, I truly thought that this must be a hoax. I still expected him to come back. There were signs.
But here we are, the King is dead, Queen is History, and Prince will not come back. I should call my father to find out if he thinks that there could be a next Prince. We need one, don’t we?
