Why Did Prince Hate Katy Perry And Ed Sheeran?

When Prince passed away in April 2016 at the age of 57, he left behind more than just a lasting impact on the music industry. According to The Guardian, at the time of his death the iconic singer was working on an autobiography with 33-year-old writer and megafan, Dan Piepenbring. The artist himself had plucked Piepenbring out of obscurity to help pen his memoir. The two spent three months together prior to the singer's untimely death. During that time, the writer was welcomed into Prince's super-private world.

After the singer's death, Piepenbring remained in the inner circle. He was given access to some of Prince's private memento collection, which contained everything from unreleased lyrics to cartoons. "The sheer quantity of paper was surprising. There was no real method to the madness. In one room you'd find something from 1979, and within arm's reach there'd be something from 2002. There'd be these moments of intense intentionality — he'd gathered up all his handwritten lyrics from across his career, clipped them together, and kept them in one place," Piepenbring told The Guardian, adding, "It seemed very ad hoc and very personal." Among the personal artifacts, the writer found some choice words the "Purple Rain" singer had written about Katy Perry and Ed Sheeran. So what exactly did the pop stars do to incur the wrath of Prince? 

Prince's ultimately unfinished memoir, The Beautiful Ones, was released on Oct. 29, 2019. With the release, fans got a glimpse of what Dan Piepenbring uncovered about the legend. And one of those uncovered secrets was that Prince simply wasn't a fan of all of his musical peers: "We need to tell them that they keep trying to ram Katy Perry and Ed Sheeran down our throats and we don't like it, no matter how many times they play it." Ouch! 

And it's not like Prince just had it out for all modern artists. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, the singer named Tori Kelly and Kendrick Lamar among some of his favorite artists. He commented that he believed Kelly would make it in the music industry "because she does the work." The singer applauded Lamar for being a breath of fresh air saying, "Kendrick is the truth. That's new, that's now. What he's doing, no one else is even trying."

The memoir doesn't go into any more detail about why exactly Prince hated Perry and Sheeran's music. But when you compare his distaste to what he wrote about his faves, we can maybe assume that he believed those artists lacked the dedication and innovation of Kelly and Lamar and, therefore, lacked the ability to make meaningful music. However, with so many pop stars on the radio in recent years, you have to wonder just what it was about Sheeran and Perry in particular that made them stick out from the rest. But hey, any publicity is good publicity, right? 

In addition to his distaste for certain pop stars, we learned quite a bit about the about the late, great artist after his death.