Prince was staging his Per4ming Live 3121 residency at Las Vegas’ Rio All-Suite Hotel And Casino when he began to plan his Super Bowl halftime show. We’re good.’ It was crazy.” The rehearsals: “He put a lot of effort into the halftime show” “I recall them sitting there just, like, in awe,” Prince’s keyboardist Morris Hayes told The Ringer in 2020. After his critiques of past Super Bowl halftime shows pushed the NFL to ask what he would do instead, Prince led his guests to a room where his band was set up, and treated them to a private performance which left them in no doubt that Prince was the artist they needed to book.
Two years later, Prince hosted an intimate dinner for NFL organisers at his rented home in Los Angeles. Prince was in the middle of promoting his 2004 album, Musicology, when he told Entertainment Weekly, “We’ve gone too far now.” And it was shortly after he wrapped up the Musicology Live2004ever tour that the NFL began to float the idea of Prince as the perfect Super Bowl halftime show performer. The invitation: “I recall them sitting there in awe” You can’t push the envelope any further than I pushed it. Alluding to his own risqué past – which included releases such as the Dirty Mind album and the song Darling Nikki, the latter of which led to the formation of the Parents Music Resource Center and the use of “Parental Advisory: Explicit Content” stickers on album covers – he added, “We’ve pushed the envelope off the table and forgotten there was a table. “Look at this situation with the FCC after Janet,” Prince said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. Prince himself weighed in on the controversy, which had seen the US Federal Communications Commission receive over half a million complaints, leading them to attempt to fine broadcasters CBS $550,000 for violating indecency laws (the Third Circuit Courts Of Appeals voided the fine in 2011). Seeking to reduce the risk of further controversies, the NFL played it safe in subsequent years, hiring Paul McCartney (2005) and The Rolling Stones (2006) as Super Bowl headliners – beloved classic-rock acts who could put on a dependable show, and whose establishment-baiting days were far behind them. Once a must-see event for millions of households across North America, the annual Super Bowl halftime show had lost some of its shine following Janet Jackson’s 2004 appearance, during which a “wardrobe malfunction” led Justin Timberlake to briefly expose her right breast on live television.
The backstory: “You can’t push the envelope any further than I pushed it.
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