Prince's cover of Radiohead's "Creep" at Coachella in 2008 became semi-notorious when cell-phone footage of the performances were removed from YouTube after complaints, either from Prince himself or from Radiohead's publishing company (but probably from Prince).

Anyway, people have been talking about it for years, and yesterday, apparently with the permission of both Prince and Radiohead (a conference call I shall be dreaming of all through the Christmas season), a video of the performance was re-posted online, and social/media, to paraphrase the man himself, went "crazy."

Slate called it "a small, eight-minute miracle: It captures all the stage presence and vocal wizardry that make Prince such a complete performer, and adds, for good measure, three or four guitar solos that are better than most artists’ entire sets."

Esquire called it "the best thing you'll hear today."

"Stunning," "insane," "epic"! Sounds good, right? Right! It also sounds like a different performance from the one that's actually online.

What I hear in this legendary lost clip is A) a great artist playing a great song that he has clearly heard maybe twice and B) a perfectly sane explanation of why someone had it removed from YouTube in the first place. (You can imagine him calling the number in an effort to give the indie clones in the Coachella audience a dose of their own medicine, then being onstage like "oh, shit, how does this go again?")

The band begin with a minute-and-a-half-long vamp on the intro (the original song runs 3:57), allowing the crowd to wonder, then recognize the song, then cheer, then compose themselves, then wonder some more. (Perhaps an assistant was Googling the lyrics?) Then he proceeds to own the rhythm and chord progression—of course he does—by changing them, either accidentally or on purpose, to be ever so slightly less square. This presents problems with the vocal melody and phrasing, so he changes those, too.

Because he is Prince, he can't bring himself to sing the words "I'm a creep," so he leaves them out completely. He gets the rest of the words so wrong that eventually he abandons them altogether, switching to his trademark, end of "Purple Rain" impossibly-high "ooh"s for a singalong. The song goes on forever and shows no signs of ending, when he saves the day by abandoning all pretense and lashing out with a guitar solo that is both killer and filler.

Prince does this kind of high-wire act all the time, with other people's songs and with his own. Sometimes, as with his renditions of Joni Mitchell's "A Case of You" and Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love," the results are great. Sometimes, as with "Creep," it's a car crash that feels like a thrilling adventure only because Prince is behind the wheel.

I bet it was incredible for the people who were there—especially considering the headliners on the previous night (Jack Johnson) and the subsequent one (Roger Waters). But still. There's a strong case to be made that Prince is the most purely talented musician/recording artist/performer who ever drew breath. But even the greatest of the great have to pull one out of their ass sometimes. The only thing stunning, epic, or amazing about it is the fawning reaction online. Social media makes it easy to love things you never take the time to see, read, or hear.

Here's the clip that Prince reportedly tweeted out a link to yesterday, followed by an edit of the performance that trims away all the clams and leaves the good bits intact.