Let’s talk about football!
Last Sunday 126 million people watched the Eagles clobber the Chiefs. That’s because a lot of people really like football.
We are done talking about football.
Of course, sports fans alone don’t make Super Bowl Sunday the unofficial holiday that it is, especially when watching the football means running the risk of being present for a Kansas City three-peat. You also need to draw the non-fans—the “watch it for the commercials” crowd. There, now that’s enough people for a party on a Sunday night make sense.
Personally, I’ve never been into football, despite my best efforts. I have no team affiliation and only watch games when I’m visiting my dad, a die-hard Giants fan. The one exception is the Super Bowl. Not necessarily for the game, and definitely not for the commercials. If I wanted to watch an untenable arms race of brands competing to go the most viral I’d get back on Twitter.
For 15 minutes a year the center of the sports universe gives way to the center of the pop culture universe: the Super Bowl Halftime Show. This is why I watch. Because over the years, the halftime show has become more than a pop music interlude. It’s the world’s most bizarrely specific performance art venue.
Before I explain, let’s do a quick rundown of the history of the halftime show. I think of the halftime show as having five not-as-cleanly-distinct-as-I’d-like eras:
- The “Marchings Bands and Genre Tributes” Era (1967-1992). Unless you’re really interested in marching bands playing music from film scores, there’s nothing here worth a second look. Even the relatively pop-oriented tribute shows like “Salute to Motown” or “Salute to Mardi Gras” don’t feature a headliner (apologies to Carol Channing), so they’re little more than a stage, dancers and choreography, and a medley of hits stuffed in the timespan of an episode of Spongebob. What are you going to do, stop watching? There are 3 channels and the other 2 don’t bother trying to counterprogram.
- The Transitional Era (1993-2000). 1993 was the Michael Jackson year, which completely redefined what a halftime show could be. It was followed by four country singers you’ve never heard of and an advertisement for a ride at Disneyland. You still had the “tribute” shows, but at least they’re pulling bigger names like Stevie Wonder and Gloria Estefan.
- The MTV Era (2001-2004). 2000’s show, a head-scratching Epcot-themed Y2K opera, was the last not to have a headliner. The next four were bookended by MTV-produced sets, so I’m lumping them all together. We start this brief era with Aerosmith and NSYNC proving to be a better combo then you’d expect and end with Janet Jackson, which led directly to…
- The “WHOOPS, Scratch That, Don’t Upset the Boomers” Era (2005-2010). Let’s play a fun game where the goal is to get as few FCC complaints as possible. A Beatle! Tom Petty! Nobody wants to expose Bruce Springsteen’s nipple! This era to its credit produced 2 of the best halftime shows (Prince and Bruce) and only came to a crashing halt when The Who put on a show so flat and depressing that it would be known as the worst halftime show in recent memory for an entire year.
- The Modern Era (2011-Present). With the memory of the wardrobe malfunction sufficiently scrubbed out of the turf we can finally return to hiring actual present-day pop starts. Yes, MDNA-era Madonna absolutely counts. Black Eyed Peas notwithstanding, this is the golden era of halftime shows.
I want to focus on the modern shows, where the halftime show truly becomes a distinct artform worth watching on its own merits. I’ve taken a couple stabs at doing a ranking of halftime shows, but I’m not sure I can top the tier list video by YouTube channel Set the Edge. It’s worth a watch and he gets the order mostly correct. At the very least he gets the S-tier correct.
Imagine you’re a music superstar and you’ve been invited to do the halftime show. Great! Bad news, you have only 13 minutes. What would you do with such limited time? Actually performing any songs to a satisfying extent would mean a limp setlist of only 2 or 3 songs. (See: The Rolling Stones, 2006.) So you abridge the songs, at which point you’re not performing them for their musical value so much as reminding the audience about why they know you.
More bad news, your name is not currently or formerly Prince and thus you will not be allowed to play an instrument. That’s simply too much equipment to prepare in between two halves of football. Remember football? It’s the game they play before and after this set. You may hold an instrument, but you can’t do more with it than mime.
So what are we working with here? It’s difficult to call this a concert. We have a stage, dancers and choreography, and a medley of hits, all stuffed in the timespan of one episode of Spongebob. Sounds like… a tribute show.
A tribute to who?
A tribute to the headliner. Their famous name is all that’s holding this sham together. And that’s why I love to watch.
The halftime show is not a concert. It’s not even primarily a performance of music. The halftime show is a performance of the artist’s own celebrity.
This holds true going all the way back to Michael Jackson, who spent several minutes standing motionless to ecstatic cheers as if to show off that his very presence could carry the entire show. Twenty years later, Rihanna used her halftime show as the world’s most extravagant pregnancy announcement. Bruno Mars cosplayed James Brown. Lady Gaga jumped off the roof. Beyonce rocked the Superdome with the best dancers she knows: herself, duplicated a dozen times on life-sized screens. Prince somehow manipulated the weather for his set.
The limitations provide significant potential in the right hands. And as a long time fan of Kendrick Lamar, I was beyond excited to see what he could do with it from the day he was announced as the headliner. But will he have that freedom? This is an artist whose politically charged television performances set off Fox News on rants so absurd he samples them. Would the famously conservative NFL let Kendrick be Kendrick?
The revolution about to be televised. You picked the right time but the wrong guy.
The show opened with Samuel L. Jackson in costume as Uncle Sam welcoming the viewer to “the Great American Game.” Yes, they let Kendrick be Kendrick.
This is a device Kendrick clearly likes a lot. Dave Chappelle filled a similar Brechtian role at the 2018 Grammys. I find the rash of explainer videos on YouTube puzzling because Kendrick’s message has never been subtle. “Too ghetto,” emcee Uncle Sam chides several minutes in before Kendrick stands in a divided American flag made of Black dancers. I don’t need to break that one down.
Stylistically the show recalled The Weeknd’s set in 2021, one I’m much more positive on than most for the way that it embraced restrictions brought on by covid. Specifically, uncertainty about if there would even be a live audience allowed the producers to break convention. The Weeknd performed mostly on a stadium concourse, descending to the field just for the finale, and played almost exclusively to the camera. During “Can’t Feel My Face” he even entered an indoor area the live audience had no way of following. Because even at full capacity, the live audience is only a minuscule fraction of viewership. The camera is the real audience.
Kendrick took a page from the same playbook. It wasn’t quite so extreme—he at least stayed in view the entire show. From their seats the live audience could see the stage setup: four shapes, a cross, triangle, square, and circle, most likely a reinforcement of the “American game” theme by way of PlayStation. Only the camera at ground level, however, could follow him around the large space and find the visual compositions intended, particularly in the cross segment.
The show was also content to stay darker, literally. The Weeknd light up his stage as a facsimile of Las Vegas. Kendrick at one point stood under a sole ambient streetlight. We also see relatively simpler choreography compared to the pop stars. For “Humble,” the dancers bobbed their head as in the famous music video. The choreography for “All the Stars” was little more than a march. Kendrick prefers to let his imagery and lyrics do the talking.
Light on glitz, heavy on meaning, poetic and direct. That’s what it means for Kendrick to perform his celebrity.
There’s another shade to it though. If we’re talking about Kendrick Lamar’s celebrity in the year 2025, then we have to talk about The Beef.
Even summarizing The Beef is outside the scope of this blog post. (Thinking about it now, I’d like to do a whole post on it, but I feel like the moment has passed.) Here’s all you need to know in less than 10 words: Drake and KDot traded some disses and Kendrick won. That’s undeniable at this point and anyone claiming otherwise is deluding themself. The Drake subreddit r/drizzy is a window to an alternate universe. One big question heading into Super Bowl Sunday was “Will he do the diss track?” He did two of them.
To mix several metaphors, “Not Like Us” was the knockout punch, “The Heart Part 6” was Drake’s white flag, the “Not Like Us” music video was a victory lap, and the Grammys were a coronation. That makes the halftime show an epilogue to the saga. Appropriately at a moment in his career where Kenny seems to be moving on from his pre-Damn. work, last Sunday marked a transition point where he took one last jab at Aubrey Graham before putting down his weapons. Now he looks forward to his GNX era and beyond. I’m glad for it. Better to leave 2024 stories in 2024. I tell myself that every day that the Mets still haven’t re-signed Jose Iglesias.
Just for kicks, let’s close with some artists I’m hoping pull the big gig in the future:
- BTS – Truly, top of my list. I say this as a non-fan who can name one BTS song and I’m only like 80% sure I’m right. I just know these boys can put on a show. Hey producers, don’t you want to pull an audience that would never watch the Super Bowl otherwise?
- Dua Lipa – She seems to be in the goldilocks zone of pop star eligible for consideration, right? I can see this being a loud, highly produced, heavily choreographed spectacle like Lady Gaga’s.
- Harry Styles – Also at that necessary level of stardom, he’s got enough solo hits now to make it work and won’t offend the moms. My mom loves Harry. I learned that recently.
- Foo Fighters – It’s been a while since we had some rock at halftime. Maybe Dave Grohl can get an exception to the no-instruments rule. Even if not, they seem amenable and charismatic enough to make it work.
- Jack White – If a band is too much, couldn’t we make a Prince exception for Jack? Based on his relationship with SNL he’s a reliable quantity who would know exactly what to do.
- Beyoncé again – Her last appearance was pre-Lemonade! She’s gone through like 3 personas since and deserves another full set unburdened by Coldplay.
But trying to predict it so far ahead of time is so limiting, because the zeitgeist can be somewhere else entirely in 8 months. After all, Kendrick was offered the show because of “Not Like Us,” the same way The Weeknd got it because of “Blinding Lights.” We’re not even two months into 2025. Let’s see what surprises it has to bring first.