What Do We Want From The Halftime Show?
The response to Kendrick Lamar’s performance has been mixed. It has certainly been the most-theorized about Halftime performance in recent memory if not of all time. Though it is difficult to theorize about Bruce Springsteen yelling “I’m going to Disneyland!” seems pretty obvious what he meant by that. Some have said that Kendrick’s performance was “dull” others have said that it wasn’t overtly political enough and there are many that think he found the perfect balance of political messaging through subtlety and nuance. Many viewers only watch the Super Bowl for the Halftime show and don’t care about the game itself, I’m sure there were people who wanted a political performance to be displayed right in Trump’s stupid orange face. Most who don’t otherwise watch football probably just want to see a contemporary pop star play the hits. I am a football fan, I have been since I was just a wee lad sitting on my couch watching my dad with a beer in his hand yell at the television accepting that one day that would be my destiny. I know football fans and I know one thing for sure, TRUE football fans, REAL RED BLOODED BEER DRINKING TRUCK DRIVING AMERICAN football fans don’t want politics in their game. They want… what do they want?
Usher? I don’t think so, when he was announced for last year’s Halftime show I was confused. It’s surely ignorance on my part but I didn’t know that Usher was that big of a deal. He hasn’t had a hit since 2010 and I didn’t think the people were clamoring to see “DJ Got Us Fallin’ In Love” and “My Boo” live. They were clamoring for “Yeah!” as everyone should be. All the time. Forever. I’m sure a lot of football fans got a kick out of Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J Blige, 50 Cent, and Kendrick Lamar because it was a great mix of nostalgia and current hip-hop. But they also got pissy that Eminem kneeled onstage (there’s those damn politics again). The string of pop artists in the 2010s like Black Eyed Peas, Katy Perry, and Lady Gaga wasn’t really what they were looking for but the era before that with rock legends of the 60s/70s/80s wasn’t particularly well-received either, aside from Prince. We’ll cut off the discussion there because I don’t have time to get into the whole Janet Jackson debacle.
So that’s the last 20 years of general dissatisfaction with brief pockets of contentedness from football fans. Looking at all of the artists, what have we noticed? and what can we suggest moving forward? There is a sizeable contingent that would a country star, there hasn’t been one since Shania Twain in 2003 but there’s a couple problems with that. Shania Twain was a pop culture phenomenon who has between the 8th or 22nd best selling album of all time depending on who you ask and had the best selling album by a solo female artist until Adele happened. Even so, she had to share the stage with No Doubt and Sting. She had pop crossover appeal unlike any country artist before her, and the current biggest artist in country music is Morgan Wallen who is… unappealing to say the least. Wallen is hopefully the only person who has a section on Wikipedia titled “Use of racial slur and increase in popularity.” Personally my pick for country performer would be Luke Combs because he is the only 3 top artist in the genre right now that doesn’t appear to be a horrible person. Another problem with the performance is, country shows aren’t a spectacle. That’s what the viewing audience has come to expect from all the dancers and stage designs and Katy Perry’s giant robot tiger thing.
If the people want a safe artist with mass appeal and won’t make anyone upset at their mere presence, it’s probably someone like Ed Sheeran. That doesn’t feel great. No disrespect to Mr. Sheeran but he’s not really a larger-than-life personality that will set the world on fire with his performance. It seems like there’s no way to satisfy the wants of your stereotypical football fan while also appealing to the non-fans who just want to see a good show. There’s no way to satisfy the wants of football fand in general. They weren’t even happy with the teams that were playing in the game this year. They want to be able to see more games so the NFL starts having games on Monday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, then the fans complain that the games start too late on a weekday or they can’t keep up with all the games on different days (though the various streaming platforms you have to pay for to see them all is an actual problem). If you try to make everyone happy, you make no one happy. If you try to make football fans happy, you’re wasting your time. This will never happen, but I suggest that football fans shut up and just enjoy the game that you’re there for. The Halftime show isn’t for you, its for the people the advertisers want to sell to. And stop booing Taylor Swift, she’s allowed to exist.
