It’s important to note that half of Prince’s bandmates on his biggest stage ever are women. Of course the two big crowd-pleasing Prince hits make sense, but what role is "Proud Mary" playing here? Though it’s a Credence Clearwater Revival song, the definitive version of “Proud Mary” is Tina Turner’s version - and Prince is clearly belting our Tina's version of the song along with Shelby Johnson. a bunch of covers?įor example, next up we get a medley of "Baby I’m A Star" and "1999" sandwiched around "Proud Mary". This set skips "When Doves Cry", "Kiss" and countless more hits, in favor of. Imagine Michael Jackson doing a halftime set but omitting Billie Jean, or Springsteen leaving off "Born To Run". In fact, this is a motif with this entire performance - Prince’s setlist was completely unexpected, and inspired. Oddly, though, Let's Go Crazy is also the only of Prince's 5 number one singles included in the Super Bowl performance. Different from any other Super Bowl performer before or since, Prince actually does a call-and-response section in the song, emphasizing that this is live, and connecting him explicitly to a timeless Black music tradition. As one of the best album- and concert-opening songs of all time, this was a perfect choice. He launched straight into “Let’s Go Crazy” at the top of the set. Indeed, though his 1992 song "3 Chains O' Gold" was clearly a pastiche of the then-rejuvenated "Bohemian Rhapsody", Prince had rarely, if ever, played any Queen covers at all in his thousands of live shows.īut with that arena-rock staple, Prince was signaling that he was going to win over a football crowd.
Opening with the stomp-stomp-clap of Queen’s “We Will Rock You”, Prince went for crowd participation right from the start, with a nod to one of the biggest stadium anthems of all time - and notably, is one of the songs in the set that he never performed any time before or after. And he did it on his own terms, as always. Prince’s halftime show wasn’t just a fun diversion from a football game it was a deeply personal statement on race, agency & artistry from an artist determined to cement his long-term legacy. It is not just the best-regarded halftime show ever, but was to that point the most-viewed musical performance in American history. On this day in 2007, Prince won Super Bowl XLI with a soaring halftime performance that climaxed with the skies opening up to honor his guitar solo.
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