Going Viral For Singing "Purple Rain" Ruined Karaoke for Nicolas Cage

Nicolas Cage says he's given up on karaoke after footage of him performing "Purple Rain" went viral in 2019.

Nicolas Cage has given his karaoke days a swan song. During a roundtable chat with actors Andrew Garfield, Jonathan Majors, Simon Rex and Peter Dinklage for The Hollywood Reporter, Cage voiced his frustration with once being recorded while performing karaoke in April 2019. Prior to the leaked footage, the actor said karaoke was a form of "therapy".

"Well, yeah, for me, karaoke was like therapy until someone videotaped my punk-rock version of Prince's 'Purple Rain' and it went everywhere and I said, 'I'm not going to karaoke anymore,'" said Cage. "Well, singing is therapy, I think. Karaoke's supposed to be private. It's like a prayer."

After Garfield encouraged Cage to "keep giving" his vocal prowess, he later joked "Nic is just using this platform to get out his gripes, I guess, the person who's leaked the karaoke video…."

In the 2019 video, Cage went all the way punk in L.A.'s Koreatown in his rendition of "Purple Rain", which TMZ reported that the actor "hit up the same karaoke bar twice in three nights for two emotional renditions" of the song.

Cage called karaoke "primal-scream therapy" during an interview with The New York Times in 2019, where the actor also revealed that he had gone through a breakup with then-wife Erika Koike. "I don’t really want to talk about it. I was pretty upset about that and the way things happened," he said. In a 2018 interview with Collider, the actor also shared that Prince was one of his biggest heroes, although the late singer once dismissed his request for a picture.

“I never ask anyone for a picture but I remember asking for one with Prince because of the monumental way that he motivated and inspired me," Cage said. "I asked him for a picture and he said ‘no, I just can’t’ and I was in shock but I understood and I still love him."