Droga5 launched a tribute to Prince for Google Pixel which aired during the Grammy Awards last night.
The spot features a series of musicians of all sorts performing “Nothing Compares 2 U,” the Prince-penned track originally performed by The Family and later covered in a much more famous rendition by Sinead O’Connor. In some ways a strange choice (it’s far from the most well-known or best song Prince wrote, and doesn’t appear on a Prince album), it makes sense if viewed as a direct address to the departed artist.
After the series of performances concludes, the spot ends with the line, “Tributes by You. Phone by Google.” It also utilizes a visual trick of going from long and narrow (like a search bar) to morphing into the phone itself that resembles the approach Droga5 utilized for its October launch spot for the brand. Other than that, however, there’s very little to connect the various performances of “Nothing Compares 2 U” to the Google Pixel.