Justin Timberlake reveals nervous tic, and details behind the Prince Super Bowl tribute

Nick Paschal
·Supervising Producer, Yahoo Entertainment

Justin Timberlake joined his buddy Jimmy Fallon on a special Tonight Show live from Minneapolis. Justin bookended the show with musical performances, and he and Jimmy even had a “songversation.”

It was a big night for Justin, who gave a malfunction-free Super Bowl Halftime performance, but there were a couple of moments that worried Jimmy. Justin can be seen flipping his microphone during the performance, which Jimmy said made him nervous. But it turns out that Justin was the one who was nervous. “That’s my nervous tic on stage. I flip the microphone,” Justin told Jimmy. “I don’t know where I started doing that. I haven’t dropped it yet,” he said before knocking on Jimmy’s desk so as not to jinx himself.

The highlight of the Halftime show was Justin’s Prince tribute, and judging by how excited he was as he explained some details of the performance, it was clearly the highlight of his whole life. “We got the actual vocal stems from ‘I Would Die 4 U,’ the actual recording. And then we got uncut footage from his performance of it in Purple Rain,” Justin said, as if he were a kid talking about his favorite Christmas present. “And somehow, some way, by the grace of, probably, Prince looking down on us, it synced up!”

While the Twitter reactions to his Halftime performance were mixed, Justin was happy to honor his favorite musician. Justin said, “I just felt like I wanted to do something for this city and something for him that would just be the ultimate homage to what I consider the G.O.A.T. [Greatest of All Time] of musicians.”

The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon airs weeknights at 11:35 p.m. on NBC. Watch clips and full episodes of The Tonight Show free on Yahoo View.

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