The Super Bowl performers were totally overshadowed by an amazing game, but they still brought it. Leslie Odom JR. kicked things off by singing “America the Beautiful.”
Next up was Pink with the national anthem. Earlier in the day, she had mentioned on Instagram that she was battling the flu because her kids, “literally cough into my mouth and rub their snot on my cheek.”
But she still rocked it…and nobody knelt, by the way. You may have noticed that Pink had to take something out of her mouth before she started. It was a cough drop.
Justin Timberlake’s halftime show was pretty basic. He did a medley of his hits, like “SexyBack”, “Can’t Stop the Feeling”, and “Cry Me a River,” plus his new song, “Filthy”.
t was all very sanitized and non-controversial, as Super Bowl Halftime shows are nowadays. The biggest set piece was a giant, projected image of Prince, with whom Justin sang a duet of “I Would Die 4 You.”
Justin was obviously playing to the home crowd, since the Super Bowl was in Prince’s hometown of Minneapolis.
At one point, they showed an aerial view of the area around U.S. Bank Stadium bathed in purple light, which formed the classic Prince symbol.
A lot of people thought the inclusion of Prince was disrespectful, including celebrities like Sinbad and Anthony Bourdain.
One woman even posted an excerpt from a 1998 interview where Prince called duets with dead artists, “the most demonic thing imaginable” . . . and claimed it would NEVER happen to him.
On a more positive note, a new star was born last night: Selfie Kid.