IN THE SPOTLIGHT

had his own movie, but then that movie came out, and that made him huge. When ‘Parade’ came out, I went to the record store the day it came out, the same with ‘Sign o’ the Times.’ The first one I was a bit disappointed in was ‘Lovesexy.’”

Daniel, 46, began playing guitar in high school and made his way through a series of bands before forming Spoon in 1993. He learned early on that to love Prince was not necessarily to want to emulate him. Spoon has been known to cover Prince’s “Under the Cherry Moon” and his early classic “Partyup,” but they otherwise leave his music alone. “It’s not entirely in my wheelhouse,” Daniel admits. Prince songs, like Beatles songs, aren’t flexible, living things; they’re vast, immovable objects that don’t leave much room for anybody else. They can only be admired.

“A lot of me appreciating Prince is me appreciating him purely as a fan,” Daniel says. “He does a lot of things I know I wouldn’t attempt to do. I’m not going to do a dance at the solo of ‘Little Red Corvette’ and do the splits; I’m just not made that way. I’m too gangly at this point.”

Daniel always did love Prince’s falsetto, which he employs sporadically throughout his own catalogue. “I kind of always had it in the back of my mind that if I do a song where it’s all falsettos, then that’ll be a hit.”

Spoon was deep into the recording of “Hot Thoughts” the day Prince died. Daniel heard the news at lunch. “I showed up at the studio and saw everybody, and I just shook my head. I thought, I don’t know how we’re going to get any work done today, and we didn’t.”

The last time Daniel saw Prince live was in 2013, at a Samsung-sponsored club show at the South by Southwest festival in Austin. It was one of Prince’s marathon gigs, and Daniel was pretty tired; he left before it was over. “I don’t feel good about that,” he says. “He was amazing. It was a nice, small room, it was a great way to see him. He was dancing; it was a full-on show.”

ZACKERY MICHAEL