Madonna

It's hard to imagine Prince not approving of this outfit. And I actually quite like it on her -- I mean, if she'd worn that to the Met Ball, I'd have been a thousand percent happier. You can still be groovy, Madge, without invoking your buttocks.

Madonna

And of course it began on a purple velvet throne. There is no other way.

She sang "Nothing Compares 2U," which is a very spare song as you know, and Madonna's stock-in-trade has rarely been her ACTUAL voice (although she trained it hard for "Evita"). So, yeah, she's sounded better in the past. But she really actually tried. Gotta respect her for taking a song that's not necessarily in her wheelhouse anymore, and throwing herself into it because it felt like the right emotional choice to perform it.

Stevie Wonder and Madonna

I love that Stevie came, in his purple scarf. They did "Purple Rain" together, with a lot of ambient help because everyone knows that song and they were encouraging people to sing it with them. It was nice. Obviously a string of about eight more Prince songs would have been totally great also, as long as they weren't turned into gimmicks. As it was, though, this worked. And leaves plenty of room for the Grammys to take a huge swing next February and miss.

Also, I recently fell into a rabbit hole about the whole Steve Wonder Isn't Really Blind conspiracy theory, and whoo boy, if you want to lose a few hours, Google THAT one. People are... fascinating.

Madonna

I love that they used images of Prince on the screen.

Prince

Also, this man was flexible.

Reasonably Played: Madonna at the Billboard Music Awards

Madonna being chosen to pay tribute to Prince stirred some controversy, with a lot of stuff about whether Prince would approve, but I tend to agree with Questlove that just to sing his work is brave enough -- and that it's not necessarily helpful wandering down the road of imagining what Prince would or wouldn't get. Besides which, is it really so off-base? Madonna was Prince's contemporary. When Prince died, in the wake of also losing David Bowie, people Tweeted stuff like, "SOMEBODY CHECK ON MADONNA." And they weren't entirely kidding. Prince was a groundbreaking musician, and so was/is Madonna -- I mean, she paved the way for the female artists of today, and the ways they can express themselves and their sexuality. I highly doubt Prince would have resented those parallels. Seeing Madonna up there singing it adequately but not lights-out was also sort of poignant, in that it reminds you how fragile all our old musical heroes inevitably become. And in the end, this worked for me better than Lady Gaga's Bowie tribute. That one was less like, "Look how great David Bowie was," than it was, "Look how great I am, doing all these Bowie songs." By contrast, this was a purple-hued, heavy-on-imagery, light-on-spectacle performance of two iconic Prince songs, with Prince himself providing the intro via the "Dearly Beloved" piece of "Let's Go Crazy." It kept him the star, which is as it should be. [Photos: Getty]