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ONLY Prince can get 200+lbs football players to sing in falsetto. HAHAHAHA
February 2, 2007
The Game, the Artist, the Halftime Show: It’s Prince
By KAREN CROUSE
MIAMI, Feb. 1 — Prince, the reclusive pop icon, stepped to the microphone at the Miami Convention Center on Thursday afternoon, apologized in advance for the aural overload he was about to cause, and said, “Contrary to rumor, I’d like to take a few questions right now.”
Well, it was a news conference. But at the first shout of a question, Prince turned his back to the audience of a few hundred reporters and burst into a hard-driving guitar riff that resonated like the first rumblings of thunder in an electrical storm.
Prince and his band squeezed more juice out of their 15-minute preview of their Super Bowl XLI halftime show than could be strained from a grove of Florida orange trees.
He wore a suit, a shirt unbuttoned to his navel and boots, all of which were as orange as the “C” on the Chicago Bears’ helmets. In his dress and in his performance, Prince was as vibrant as Billy Joel, the musician who preceded him on the stage, was dreary. Clad in khaki and black, Joel, who will sing the national anthem, answered questions as if he were channeling New England Patriots Coach Bill Belichick.
“I’m just here to do a press conference,” Joel said. “I’m not here to entertain anybody.”
That job fell to Prince, who was more than up to the task. He sang “Johnny B. Goode,” “Anotherloverholenyohead” and “Get on the Boat.” If his three-song set was any indication, the Bears and the Indianapolis Colts will be hard pressed to outperform him Sunday at Dolphin Stadium.
The 48-year-old Prince has an avid following among the Bears. Asked about him on Thursday, cornerback Charles Tillman smiled and cooed the refrain from “Kiss,” which Prince recorded in 1986 when Tillman was 5 years old.
“He’s very unique and I respect him because he doesn’t care what anybody else says,” Tillman said. “He has his own style, his own uniqueness about himself.”
On Wednesday, as the Bears were returning from practice, the radio on the team bus was tuned to a station that was running a Prince marathon. Led by Tillman, cornerback Nathan Vasher and safety Chris Harris, the Bears on the bus sang along to such classics as “1999” and “Purple Rain.”
“It was very, very funny,” Harris said. “A bunch of high-pitched voices on a football bus. If anybody else had been on there, they would have thought we were crazy.”
Harris said his sisters seem more excited about getting to see Prince perform at the Super Bowl than he is. “I wish I could see the performance,” he said. “It will be good.”
The players, of course, will not be able to watch Prince’s show Sunday. They will be in their locker rooms, plotting their second-half strategies.
“We’re not here to see the halftime show, and I understand and I know why,” Tillman said. “But, you know, who wouldn’t like to see Prince?”
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FUCK DONALD TRUMP
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