Welcome to another installment of Ask A Music Critic! And thanks to everyone who has sent me questions. Please keep them coming at steve.hyden@uproxx.com.
Hey Steve, I’m excited to see Kendrick Lamar perform at the Super Bowl this year. I think it has a chance to be one of the best halftime shows ever. I’m curious: What do you think are the all-time worst Super Bowl halftime shows? I don’t need to know your favorites, because I feel like everybody already knows the best ones: Prince, U2, Springsteen, Dre and Snoop, Beyoncé. But what are your top five stinkers? — Tiffany from Atlanta
Hey Tiffany, thanks for the question. I agree with you on Kendrick — for the past decade-plus, he’s been one of the most reliably electrifying performers on television. I assume the only reason he didn’t do “Not Like Us” on the Grammys was that there’s some “proximity clause”-type restriction in his NFL contract. Or maybe Kendrick just wants to drag out his masochistic torture of Drake as long as he possibly can. (Did you notice how the entire arena was singing along to the pedophile verse as Kendrick walked on stage to accept his Record Of The Year trophy? To quote one of my favorite Simpsons bits, “Stop! He’s already dead!”)
I also appreciate you giving me to opportunity to clown on terrible Super Bowl halftime shows. Before we begin I want to be clear: I love terrible Super Bowl halftime shows. I was raised on them. Terrible Super Bowl halftime shows are my heritage. They are my home. And I miss my home. These things are just too well done these days.
Let’s start with a brief history lesson: In the sixties, seventies, eighties and very early nineties, the Super Bowl halftime show was not the celebrity-driven extravaganza we all know today. It was a gig most often given to marching bands and the annoyingly chirpy (and long forgotten) song-and-dance nonprofit Up With People. That changed in 1993 when Michael Jackson played Super Bowl XXVII. After that, the Super Bowl halftime show started to level up, though there were some growing pains. By the mid-aughts, the powers that be figured out that treating the halftime show like a mini-concert starring a sturdy classic-rock act or a zeitgeist-y pop superstar was the best way to go. And that is the Super Bowl halftime show we all know today.
For my Top Five (or Bottom Five, as it were) I’m going to disregard all the shows pre-Michael Jackson. They were simply playing a different game back then. (I also don’t feel the need to take shots at the California State University Northridge Marching Band.)
Here are the five worst Super Bowl halftime shows, ranked from bad to atrocious.
5. “Celebration Of Soul, Salsa And Swing” with Stevie Wonder, Gloria Estefan, and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy (Super Bowl XXXIII, 1999)
The best thing about a terrible halftime show is the time capsule factor. That’s what redeems the most love it or hate it halftime show in Super Bowl history, “The Kings Of Rock And Pop” from Super Bowl XXXV, aka the one with Aerosmith, NSYNC, Britney Spears, Mary J. Blige, and Nelly. Wherever you stand on that particular show, there’s no denying that it is a 200 proof injection of pure pre-9/11 2001-ness.“Celebration Of Soul, Salsa And Swing” opens with a similar flavor, as Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and a legion of dancers remind us of the baffling swing-dance revival that was just starting to peter out around this time. After that, Stevie Wonder enters. How bad can a halftime show with Stevie Wonder possibly be? Well, what if we put Stevie in the shotgun seat of an old-timey Rolls Royce moving at approximately 2 mph? And then we make Stevie take a precarious walk up some riser steps while singing “Sir Duke”?
Stevie’s entrance, like Super Bowl halftime shows generally from this period, is just way too complicated. Once Stevie is behind a keyboard and singing “You Are The Sunshine Of My Life,” we are on much more solid footing. Just make the whole halftime show this! Oh, if it were only that simple. Soon, Stevie is displaced by Gloria Estefan, because Gloria Estefan owned this spot in the nineties. She was at the halftime show just seven years prior, for a tribute to the 1992 Winter Olympics with (no joke) Brian Boitano and Dorothy Hamill. May we all find someone in our lives who loves us as much as the Super Bowl loved Gloria Estefan in the nineties.
4. Maroon 5 with Travis Scott and Big Boi (Super Bowl LIII, 2019)
The outlier. The only modern halftime show on this list. Of course it has to be the lamest modern halftime show headliner. This was the year when many pop stars (including Rihanna and Cardi B) refused to perform in protest of the blackballing of Colin Kaepernick. Fortunately for the NFL, Adam Levine can always be relied upon to have absolutely no shame or scruples. If you want him to sing “Moves Like Jagger” with his shirt off in front of 120 million people, he will be there as soon as the check clears. (Bonus negative points to Adam for showing off his admittedly impressive guitar skills with some unnecessary hot dog soloing — dude, you’re here to be a himbo, not Joe Satriani.) Curiously in retrospect, Travis Scott seems popular enough to have headlined this himself. Then again, considering the network muted half of “Sicko Mode,” perhaps that would have been inappropriate for the occasion.
3. Blues Brothers Bash with The Blues Brothers, James Brown and ZZ Top (Super Bowl XXXI, 1997)
One of the most interesting parts of the new documentary 50 Years Of SNL Music is about how Lorne Michaels initially resisted John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd going on the show as The Blues Brothers because he didn’t think it was a funny idea. If only the concept had stopped there! Instead, 20 years later, we ended up with the third worst Super Bowl halftime show ever.
The first two halftime shows discussed here, at the very least, have the time capsule factor. They represent their respective eras accurately. (It might not be flattering, but it’s real.) There is no time capsule aspect to Blues Brothers Bash. This was 17 years after the original film. John Belushi had been dead for 15 years. Even the sequel nobody likes, Blues Brothers 2000, was still more than a year away from bombing in theaters. The Blues Brothers were the opposite of relevant in 1997. And yet there was Jim Belushi, screaming “You! You! You!” to a captive worldwide audience.
By the second number “Soul Man,” Jim was already looking winded. So, James Brown jumps in and despite being in the final decade of his life, he injects some life into the proceedings. And then ZZ Top comes out in the Eliminator car from 14 years prior and does the least convincing lip-syncing job in the history of lip-syncing. It’s almost enough to make one long for Jim Belushi huffing and puffing his way through “Gimme Some Lovin.’” (Almost.)
2. “Tapestry Of Nations” with Phil Collins, Christina Aguilera, and Toni Braxton (Super Bowl XXXIV, 2000)
The bottom two on this list have some distance from the other three. It’s not a coincidence that both aired on ABC. In this era, the network exploited the halftime show as advertising space for Disney and its theme parks. In 2000, it was used to promote Disney’s two-year “Millennium Celebration,” whatever that was. It sounds like corporate mumbo-jumbo hackery, and that’s exactly what this halftime show feels like. Let’s just say you know you’re in for rough sledding at the Super Bowl halftime show when you hear the words “narrated by Edward James Olmos.” Which is a shame, because there were some solid components here. You have Phil Collins singing in a big stadium with Chester Thompson on drums! It’s obvious that you would ask the man to sing “In The Air Tonight” in this situation. Alas, that didn’t square with the synergistic strategy, so Phil instead belted the love theme from Tarzan. A million boos to you, ABC.
1. Indiana Jones And the Temple Of The Forbidden Eye with Patti LaBelle, Teddy Pendergrass, and Tony Bennett (Super Bowl XXIX, 1995)
This is the Super Bowl with the largest point spread ever — the San Francisco 49ers were favored by 18.5 points over the San Diego Chargers. And the game was so lopsided that the Niners actually covered by nearly a touchdown. So, the game sucked. But there was no entertainment to be found at halftime, which was another plug-fest for Disney. In this case, it was the Indiana Jones stunt spectacular that was already plugged on ABC’s Friday night staple Full House two years earlier. Not one to only advertise their owner’s theme park ride during the weekly “TGIF” lineup, ABC went back to the well for a halftime show with the least relevant to contemporary pop culture musical lineup ever. No offense to Patti LaBelle or “the incomparable” Tony Bennett, but it’s pretty bizarre by modern standards to imagine that huge Super Bowl audience watch a fake Harrison Ford take punches while an old-school crooner belts out a Duke Ellington number. Which might be why I also have odd affection for this halftime show. It’s so anachronistic and wrong-headed and boring that it becomes kind of thrilling.
