Compared with Prince's, Justin Timberlake's halftime show was a joke 
 
 CLOSE Sheila E. says Justin Timberlake reached out to her after she tweeted that Prince didn't want to be hologrammed and says she wants "people to know there was no hologram." (Feb. 4) AP 
 
 Considering Sunday's Super Bowl was hosted in Minneapolis, not paying tribute to Prince during the halftime show would’ve been sacrilege. 
 
 Prince, who died in April 2016, wasn’t just Minneapolis’ own king of pop, he also gave the Super Bowl its best-ever halftime show performance in 2007. 
 
 
 
 Yet, it’s unlikely that Prince and his deservedly-large ego would've been satisfied with the treatment he received: a tribute from Justin Timberlake, an artist with whom Prince had a historically fraught relationship, during a show that fell woefully short of The Purple One's legendary 2007 set. 
 
 There’s a reason why, when rumors spread last week that a hologram version of Prince would join Timberlake on-stage, that the late singer’s fans rioted. Timberlake had a history of mocking Prince in public, from taking a dig at the 5’2’’ singer’s height at the 2007 Golden Globes to dedicating an entire verse to dissing Prince on his song Give It To Me later that year. 
 
 There was no Prince hologram on Sunday, though a projection of the late artist performing I Would Die 4 U, projected on a stories-high white sheet reminiscent of the one Prince himself posed behind during his halftime show with his legendary phallic guitar left fans unsettled. 
 
 Yet, Prince devotees can take solace in the fact that their idol’s 2007 halftime show eclipses Timberlake’s in every way. 
 
 Review: Justin Timberlake's 'Man of the Woods' can't pull off its Americana-pop fusion 
 
 More: Why Prince fans are bashing Timberlake's Super Bowl halftime performance 
 
 Prince sang his songs during his halftime show, while Timberlake let his backing tracks and background singers do the heavy lifting, following a disastrously garbled opening in which the sound was so muffled fans could barely make out Timberlake’s lyrics. 
 
 Between Timberlake willfully ignoring his Suit and Tie vocals in favor of kicking around his mic stand, and the singer desperately reaching for his high notes at the end of Mirrors, he was doomed whether he opened his mouth or not. 
 
 Prince also knew how to balance his classic songs with some innovative risks, ripping through faithful versions of his hits (save a few added guitar solos) before debuting a blistering mashup of All Along the Watchtower and the Foo Fighters’ Best Of You. Meanwhile, Timberlake’s attempts to remix his own pop classics resulted in the lurching rock arrangements of songs like My Love and Cry Me a River, the instrumentals further jumbled by a horns section behind him. As heard in the confused Americana-R&B of Man of the Woods, Timberlake’s genre experimentations didn’t just doom his new album, but also Sunday's show. 
 
 And Prince knew how to stick his landing, ending his halftime set with one of the greatest moments in halftime show history, his breathtaking performance of Purple Rain. What would Prince have thought that Can't Stop The Feeling, a song from the Trolls movie soundtrack, capped Timberlake's set instead of his duet with Prince? 
 
 In a moment that went instantly viral, Timberlake ventured into the stadium stands in the song’s final moments and took a selfie with a teenager who, nonplussed, immediately looked back down at his phone, the singer still performing next to him. 
 
 Somehow, we think Prince would've been more proud of that kid than anything else in Timberlake's set. 
 
 When your friend go dancing with strangers at the club and u just don’t know what to do #selfiekidpic.twitter.com/MzH4237Z1y — Triyoncé (@tribranchvo) February 5, 2018 
 
 Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2s9A78j ||||| Justin Timberlake's Super Bowl halftime show: 5 moments that stood out 
 
 CLOSE Pink performs 'The Star Spangled Banner' with the flu and Justin Timberlake's Super Bowl half-time show includes a Prince tribute. (Feb. 4) AP 
 
 What happens when the Man of the Woods becomes the headlining singer on the Super Bowl field? 
 
 Justin Timberlake took the halftime stage while the Philadelphia Eagles were 10 points ahead of the New England Patriots at Super Bowl LII. Like Tom Brady, his bromantic partner, Timberlake had a lot to overcome 
 
 Earlier in the day, the hashtag #JanetJacksonAppreciationDay was trending on Twitter in protest of the role JT played in Jackson's Super Bowl XXXVIII wardrobe malfunction. And a few days prior to the performance, critics including USA TODAY's Maeve McDermott slammed Timberlake's new album. 
 
 He may not have won over all of his critics Sunday night, but he created plenty of buzzy moments during his show. 
 
 1. That fringed outfit. 
 
 (Photo: The Associated Press) 
 
 Not exactly what you'd expect the Filthy singer to emerge with: fringed sleeves. He opened with the new single from Man of the Woods and a Coachella-ready outfit. Viewers, including comedians Aisha Tyler and Billy Eichner, took note. Timberlake later ditched the jacket and showed off a camouflage-print ensemble. 
 
 Justin’s shirt is amazing — Kal Penn (@kalpenn) February 5, 2018 
 
 Justin Timberlake is wearing an outfit he found in Johnny Depp’s Goodwill donation bag. #superbowlhalftimeshow — Aisha Tyler (@aishatyler) February 5, 2018 
 
 Oh wow he's wearing fringe — billy eichner (@billyeichner) February 5, 2018 
 
 2. His second song was famously played at halftime before, with Janet Jackson. 
 
 Timberlake segued into Rock Your Body, and many viewers remembered that it was a tune they'd heard on the Super Bowl stage before. Back in 2004. When Timberlake exposed Jackson's breast. 
 
 Rock Your Body first song on the stage? I feel like this is a little troll-y? Am I alone here? #SuperBowl — KelleyLCarter (@KelleyLCarter) February 5, 2018 
 
 Wow he’s literally singing “Rock Your Body” like this isn’t the song he exposed Janet on. #SuperBowlpic.twitter.com/XUCbfTKvJr — Katrice (@katricelamorrai) February 5, 2018 
 
 Including “Rock Your Body” in this mix of songs is maybe a tiiiiiiny bit tone-deaf. — Parker Molloy (@ParkerMolloy) February 5, 2018 
 
 3. Prince was projected on a giant screen. 
 
 It’s not quite a hologram. Part of Justin Timberlake’s Prince Tribute: pic.twitter.com/j4EZfpj7ae — Malika Andrews (@malika_andrews) February 5, 2018 
 
 Prince was a Minneapolis native. So it made sense that JT would want to include the icon in his show — and make the lights purple for his song Until the End of Time and Prince's I Would Die 4 U. However, a posthumous duet with JT on piano earned mixed reviews on Twitter. Critics including Sinbadsaid it's not what Prince would have wanted. 
 
 And then ANGER!!! To bring out Prince to improve this mediocrity is a damn embarrassment. I’m fumin #HalftimeShow — Cynthia Erivo (@CynthiaEriVo) February 5, 2018 
 
 Meanwhile Prince is in heaven like pic.twitter.com/lcsjAufAUF — Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) February 5, 2018 
 
 Aside from the Prince projection, there were no special guests with Timberlake, as promised. That meant no 'N Sync, no Chris Stapleton and no Jackson. 
 
 4. JT took a Super Bowl selfie with a kid in the crowd. 
 
 Not since Ellen DeGeneres took a celebrity-filled selfie at the Oscars in 2014 has someone taken so public a social media picture. JT went into the audience and hammed it up for a young fan in the stands. In a meme-worthy moment, the boy appeared more distracted by his phone than he was by the singer in front of him. 
 
 “I thought you said Justin Bieber” pic.twitter.com/HLJYfr7e9y — Dave Itzkoff (@ditzkoff) February 5, 2018 
 
 5. There were dance breaks and a marching band. 
 
 JT's song with Jay-Z, Suit and Tie, got a new twist with the University of Minnesota's marching band. FutureSex/LoveSounds tune SexyBack and Justified classic Senorita had dance-filled numbers and a boomerang mike stand. 20/20 Experience's Mirrors had an elaborately staged showing with, yes, mirrors. And then Can't Stop the Feeling! had everyone — well, at least the hundreds of dancers gyrating on the field — grooving with rainbow colors. 
 
 Famous fans including Victoria Justice, Diana Ross, Shawn Mendes and Jenna Dewan Tatum sang JT's praises on Twitter. 
 
 I really really enjoyed Justin Timberlake on super Bowl halftime wow — Ms. Ross (@DianaRoss) February 5, 2018 
 
 Yassss @jtimberlake !!! So killer 🤘🏼 
 
 Those mic tricks & that mic stand were sooooo on point 🙌🏼 what was your favorite part? — Victoria Justice (@VictoriaJustice) February 5, 2018 
 
 THAT WAS A BLAST YESSSSSSS @jtimberlake !!! Congrats!! And special shout out to his choreographer Marty Kudelka so proud of you! #SB51#superbowl — Jenna Dewan Tatum (@jennadewan) February 5, 2018 
 
 Wow. JT absolutely killed that. — Shawn Mendes (@ShawnMendes) February 5, 2018 
 
 Earlier: On Twitter, Super Bowl Sunday is #JanetJacksonAppreciationDay 
 
 Review: Justin Timberlake's 'Man of the Woods' can't pull off its Americana-pop fusion 
 
 More: Pink overcomes flu, delivers emotional national anthem that almost hits highest note 
 
 Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2s24JIE ||||| It wasn’t a Super Bowl halftime show to die 4. But Justin Timberlake’s only minimally Prince-augmented performance proved to be the fumble-free affair he needed this weekend. Yes, he wore a weird shirt emblazoned with lovingly photographed elk, proving that, no, he hasn’t been reading the comments about his much-snickered-about “Man of the Woods” album rollout. But he made everyone forget about hooves with 12 minutes of the superior hoofing that first made him America’s song-and-dance sweetheart. 
 
 It ended better than it started. Timberlake spent the first couple of valuable minutes under the stage, in a recreation of a sleazy nightclub where you can’t see the artist and everyone is holding cell phones over their heads — a vision of hell, for some of us. But he brought himself out of that “Filthy” milieu and out into the stadium open, where he was joined by what seemed like hundreds of dancers on what seemed like thousands of stages. Haters will continue to say it’s fake — as he correctly prophesied — but at least he made a fast-moving target for ‘em, moving from platform to platform on the vast field faster than Corey Clement making a 55-yard run. 
 
 He sang “Rock Your Body” — not afraid to revive the song that served as soundtrack for history’s most famous nip slip in 2004 — and then said, “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s my pleasure to introduce to you…” If this had led to a cameo by Janet Jackson, the roar would have been heard back in the team’s respective hometowns, but of course we’d already been advised this was not to be, nor any other guest appearance, and so we were primed for the letdown of… “the Tennessee Kids!” Bringing out a 10-plus-piece band would have had more impact if every kid and grandma in the audience weren’t aware at this point in history that all the instrumentation at the Super Bowl is canned. 
 
 Also absent, for obvious reasons: a Prince hologram, which TMZ reported and turned out to be semi-fake news, as the site subsequently updated its story with a correction that it would be video of Prince projected onto a wind-swept screen. Somehow, in the delineation of the fine line between what we consider grave-robbing and what we consider tribute, most of us determined that a flat projection was fine, whereas a 3D Prince would have been grounds for canceling Timberlake’s career. Whatever. It was sweet, even if there might have been a better pick than “I Would Die 4 U,” and even if Wendy and Lisa were the guest stars he should have called in if he wasn’t going to call Janet. The unisex Prince symbol that lit up the snowy blocks surround the stadium tied a glyph-y ribbon on this perfectly acceptable homage. 
 
 Timberlake crooned of “disasters in the world” and “so much darkness in the world,” but this was not going to be the place for social commentary, obviously. This would be the place for feelings that can’t be stopped — specifically, boogie-down feelings — and the performance finally came into its own when JT stepped away from that white piano and joined the cast of thousands on the field. “Can’t Stop the Feeling” was the can’t-fail capper to his medley, an inevitable show-closer so irresistible that maybe even Bill Belichick felt less tense for a minute. Well, scratch that. But the ghosts of Up With People had to have been proud. 
 
 The amusing anticlimax to this came when Timberlake ran into the stands and… took time out to try to teach a kid how to take a selfie. Maybe the performance would have been better bookended without cell phones. But if nothing about the optics of this performance adds up to this going on a “Five Most Memorable Halftimes” list, Timberlake turned in a more enjoyably physical performance than just about anybody else who’s done the Bowl show… and if it was more a feat of athleticism than aestheticism, you can’t say that’s entirely inappropriate for the occasion. In a week where he’s had some obvious PR problems with that album launch, it might even have helped bring him out of the woods.
– Reviews of Justin Timberlake's halftime show Sunday have generally not been kind, and Mikael Wood of the Los Angeles Times delivers a particularly devastating line: "This guy has nothing to say and just won't stop saying it." The sentiment applies not just to the halftime show but to Timberlake's new release, Man of the Woods. About the best that can said of Timberlake's Super Bowl performance is that "the tightly choreographed production was impressive from a logistics standpoint," writes Wood. Beyond that, there was almost nothing to enjoy. "The performance lacked soul, meaning, humor; it had no message, nor was it taking any stand—soft, hard or otherwise." At least Timberlake didn't go ahead with rumored plans to perform with a hologram of Prince. Instead, he settled for a lesser version of the late superstar projected on a screen. But even that is inviting unfavorable comparisons to Prince's 2007 show, "which eclipses Timberlake's in every way," writes Maeve McDermott at USA Today. Prince actually sang, "while Timberlake let his backing tracks and background singers do the heavy lifting." Both reviews cite the kid with whom Timberlake took a selfie, though not in a positive light for the singer, because the teen seemed kind of uninterested in Timberlake himself. Meanwhile, Chris Willman at Variety finds better things to say of the show. "If it was more a feat of athleticism than aestheticism, you can’t say that’s entirely inappropriate for the occasion."