Alicia Keys admitted that Prince would not let her cover one of his songs before she sang it for him first. Keys told the story on Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast.
While trying to get her first album together, Keys wanted to cover Prince’s How Come You Don’t Call Me. She was able to get Prince on the phone. After some discussion, Prince invited Keys to Paisley Park in Minnesota to perform the song for him. After the “audition,” Prince became a mentor to her. Keys said, “He was definitely observing what I was doing, and he was so veraciously a music lover and really excited about new music, all the time. I never met anybody like that, who just knew the pulse of new music so well. That was him.”
“That was not a normal occurrence." Alicia Keys had to audition in front of Prince so that she could cover “How Come You Don’t Call Me” https://t.co/ridgdo9gC7 pic.twitter.com/h5IrrScx1D
— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) April 7, 2020
