Until a few minutes ago the only thing I knew about Prince what that he was a really famous musician, who once changed his name to a symbol. I vaguely thought he was a Virgo, but maybe I was getting him mixed up with Michael Jackson. Actually he’s a Gemini, born on June 7 1958.
Yesterday he did an interview with the The Daily Mirror. It was the first interview that Prince has done with a British newspaper for ten years, and it marks the release of his new album 20TEN. It’s going to be released on Saturday, in the UK, Ireland and Belgium; it will take the form of a free CD insert in several newspapers, including The Daily Mirror.
Arguably the real story about Prince is the fact that he is refusing to use the internet to help distribute his music – not only does he have nothing to do with iTunes, but he has actually closed his own website down.
He explains himself in The Daily Mirror interview:
The internet’s completely over. I don’t see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won’t pay me an advance for it and then they get angry when they can’t get it…
The internet’s like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good…
They just fill your head with numbers and that can’t be good for you…
Clearly Prince isn’t keen on the commercial implications of the internet. But he’s also being a bit of a Gemini.
Most Geminis regard themselves as being youthful, and certainly much younger than their actual years. They like to be cutting edge, and one of their worst nightmares is to be behind the times.
It’s also the case that Geminis can be inclined to make sweeping statements, as a way of establishing their intellectual and cultural superiority.
So Prince doesn’t just say that the internet is getting rusty, he says it’s ‘completely over’. This remark straight away puts him ahead of the curve, the person of the moment who has recognised that the internet has had its day, that it’s now time to move on to something else.
It’s of course easy to dismiss what Prince has said. The internet is making the life of many recording artists very difficult, so he would say that it was completely over.
However the day that The Daily Mirror interview came out, the planet Uranus came to a standstill, in the first degree of Aries. Uranus is the planet of disruption and change, and also of science and technology. At some level Prince’s message is resonating with this astronomical event, and he might be seeing something that most of us have missed. The internet might not be over, but it’s losing its coolness very quickly.
Copyright © 2010 Archie Dunlop
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