How Prince pushed back against the fragmenting world of music

Here's how a Super Bowl halftime show traditionally works:

A band or a musician plays a 12-minute condensation of a Vegas revue. The set list usually consists of Predictable Hits, sometimes sandwiching a Brand New Song from Current Album They're Hawking. The band performs for free to an audience of 90 million people, in exchange for which they see their iTunes sales skyrocket.

It's a cynical affair, only sometimes brightened by an unexpected malfunction: Janet Jackson's right breast or Katy Perry's left shark.

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When Prince took the stage midway through 2007's Super Bowl XLI dressed in a teal suit and black do-rag, he seemed to be following the usual routine. Out came "Let's Go Crazy," and though it featured incredible, slashing guitar — that Telecaster wasn't just a prop — one could start guessing the rest of the set list. Would we get "Kiss?" "When Doves Cry?" "1999?"

But then out came the Florida A&M marching band, and out came "Baby I'm a Star," a non-single from Purple Rain. Prince segued into "Proud Mary" —more the Ike and Tina "nice and rough" arrangement, thank you — before dancing through a few verses of "All Along the Watchtower."

Then, rather than playing one of the hits or a new track off a new album, he landed on Foo Fighters' "Best of You."

Was it a wink, a right back atcha to Dave Grohl's band covering "Darling Nikki," the song that two decades earlier had inspired Tipper Gore to go after the music industry? Did he just love the song?

Whatever his intent, the statement wasn't, 'I'm here to sell records.'

Rather, it was the case that he had been making throughout his career. As the rain started pouring down, Prince was making an argument for the interconnectedness of all music, and doing it at a time when the music industry continued a trajectory toward fragmentation.

It was, in its way, the ultimate declaration of polyamory from the rocker who most put sexuality — his, hers, ours, everybody's — so front and center.

He loved it all.

Prince's surprising covers didn't begin or end with the Super Bowl.