Viva la revolucion

I'll admit I had my doubts about Prince performing in the Halftime Show at the Super Bowl this year––my original introduction to him was through "Chappelle's Show," and the whole deal seemed a bit too revolutionary for me, as it were. But while I expected to watch some overly flamboyant guitar player who was carelessly left over from the 80s removing various clothing items in front of an audience of millions of Americans, I was stunned to find that his show was actually really good.
Prince's guitar work was, of course, one of the first perks of the show. Even before the introduction of his "symbol" guitar, the fact that a pop star was playing his own instrument (and in addition to that, playing it well) was a treat that most followers of today's mainstream probably can't relate to. His vocals were fairly good, as expected, but the sheer volume of Super Bowl fans unfortunately drowned him out a bit as well.
That said, Prince's stage presence was also enjoyable in its own way. Really, his behavior was representative of all good musicians: he was smooth and just plain awesome throughout the entire show, such as when his guitar-playing silhouette was projected on a giant cloth that was blown up into the air, and when he seemed to throw his guitar into the already electric audience. But to add an extra, more expected dimension, he mixed it up with a few ridiculous, over-the-top bits, although he didn't go so far as to crawl or strip onstage.
One thing I definitely did not enjoy (and I don't seem to be alone in this) was the cover of The Foo Fighters' "Best of You" that Prince interrupted an infinitely better cover of Bob Dylan's "All Along The Watchtower" for. But even though this truly was the worst part of the show, he went out with a great "Purple Rain," and that in and of itself practically made up for the other errors in his playlist automatically.
And even if Prince's overall stage presence and raw talent hadn't cancelled my disdain for "Best of You," his cover of it was still not bad by any stretch of the imagination––it was actually a major step up from the original. The entire performance was one of the best I've seen during a Super Bowl. Despite its flaws, the crowd was still going wild, my friends and I all had a great time watching it, and it could've been much worse––Paul McCartney could've played again.