Two Halftime Shows That Didn’t Make Our Top 5 are Great Shows Too. Prince, and the Rolling Stones

Now that you know how the halftime show got as big as it is, let’s see who your favorite halftime performances were.

There were 2 very noticeable acts absent from our top 5. So I’ll post them as honorable mentions because they definitely deserve to be at the top of any halftime list for sure. They are the Rolling Stones and Prince.

And if you look at the list of every performance by year at the link above, you’ll notice that these 2 fell right in between what may have been the best years of the halftime show ever. Check out this run from 2005 to 2010:

2005: Paul McCartney (Jacksonville was host city this year)

2006: The Rolling Stones

2007: Prince, with the Florida A&M University Marching 100 Band (Miami hosted)

2008: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

2009: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band (Tampa was the host city)

2010: The Who (Miami hosted)

We’ll start with the Stones who kicked off their set with “Start Me Up” of course. Then they went into “Rough Justice”. Next Mick made a great joke about “this one we could have done at Super Bowl 1″...and they kicked into an over 5 minute version of “Satisfaction” to end their set. It was the Stones and it was good.

But the greatest total performance I’ve ever seen at the halftime show was one of my favorites of all time, Prince!

Not only did Prince play in a torrential Florida downpour, but he took the halftime show to a new level with is performance, that culminated in him performing “Purple Rain” in the rain. It was epic.

It started with “We Will Rock You” into “Let’s Go Crazy”, then “Baby I’m A Star” and “Proud Mary” before it dripped into Dylan’s “All Along The Watchtower”, then into the Foo Fighters “Best Of You”. And then came the finale which you have to just see to truly know how amazing it was. This first video shows more of the producers talking about how wild the show was, and the one right after it shows the full version of “Purple Rain”. Sadly there aren’t any full versions of his set, possibly due to the NFL’s copyright restrictions, but watching Prince live will change your life.