No sooner had a rumor surfaced in the British press that Kanye West was planning a David Bowie tribute album than an online petition emerged demanding that he cease and desist, reports Mashable. As of Wednesday morning, nearly 9,000 people had signed on just in case. "David Bowie was one of the single most important musicians of the 20th and 21st century, it would be a sacrilege to let it be ruined by Kanye West," it harumphs. The petitioners apparently were wasting their time. While West is a big Bowie fan—see this tweet—no such album is in the works, reports TMZ. At least one critic, meanwhile, thinks West should do one:
"The fact is, though, that West is the closest we have to Bowie in the modern mainstream," writes Joe Muggs in the Guardian. "There is nobody else who can sell as many records as West does (30m-odd album sales and counting) while remaining so resolutely experimental and capable of stirring things up culturally and politically." (This wasn't the only odd Bowie petition to make headlines.)