Prince Super Bowl Halftime Show 2007

The embedded video below is obviously not from the Super Bowl halftime performance by Prince in 2007 (which you find if you click through HERE). Instead it is a performance he did in Manchester, UK in February, 2014. I couldn’t post the halftime performance here because the NFL claims rights to the video and doesn’t allow it to be embedded on other sites. It’s readily available on YouTube. I suggest watching the full 12 minute version.

I include this video of the Manchester performance because it is one of my absolute favorites, though I never really watched it until after he passed in April of 2016. The song he performs below is “Something in the Water (Does Not Compute),” from his 1982 album 1999. It’s a song that he performed live many times in his last years, in many different forms. I almost didn’t recognize the song when the music first starts and the crowd calls back because it’s so different from the ice-cold techno beat of the original.

It’s ironic that the NFL would claim copyright over the halftime performance, since ownership and copyright (and sampling and covers) were such an important issue for Prince. The performance below is one that he released on a website himself. There is an official Prince YouTube channel (which was never really the case when he was alive, though he did host various online spaces). It’s mainly a place for the estate to post promotional videos for the posthumous releases. Prince died intestate so what is meant by his “estate” is an ongoing legal question, one made more complicated just the other day with the announcement that the principal stakeholders, made up mainly of family members, have formally split into two separate camps. This move no doubt comes on the heels of the recent (to my mind) undervaluing of his back catalog.

It’s not clear what this will mean for all the remaining unreleased material.