Every year, social media is filled with people responding to the Super Bowl halftime show by claiming it’s the best ever. Then, they get upset at people claiming it’s not. Angry exchanges follow, and then we’re all left to witness our respective timelines somehow become a serious debate over an extremely subjective claim.
So, here’s a different take. Maybe deciding the best of all the Super Bowl Halftime shows is not possible. Maybe something like musical performances are too difficult to compare to each other because art is not naturally a competitive platform. I can assure you that if you disagree with me now then by the end of this article you will start to doubt yourself. Ready?
First off, recency bias is real. Hence why every year’s halftime show is “the greatest halftime show ever.” Most people seem to go back to Michael Jackson in 1993 making the halftime show what it is today, and then the next show mentioned is Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson, though for reasons that has less to do with the performance.
For starters, the many who claim that Michael Jackson was the first pop star to be featured at halftime of the annual football title game are mistaken. Two years before the King of Pop starred on the football field, New Kids On the Block performed. They were topping the charts while stealing teenage hearts, and it became a very obvious pivot away from what halftimes were before that. The following year, Gloria Estefan stole the show.
Since then, the number of musical stars who have performed a Super Bowl halftime show is so large that it seems people forget most of them.
Just since 2010, some of the halftime headliners include Madonna, The Black Eyed Peas, The Who, Coldplay, Katy Perry, Maroon 5, Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga, The Weeknd, Shakira, Jennifer Lopez, Mary J. Blige, Dr. Dre, Eminem, Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent, Rihanna, Usher and more. Though some of them performed at the same halftime, deciding who had the best performance just among those names is challenging.
If we go even further back to the artists who took the Super Bowl stage since Michael Jackson, it includes Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Phil Collins, Christina Aguilera, Aerosmith, U2, Shania Twain, No Doubt, Coldplay, Nelly, Beyoncé and Destiny’s Child.
It doesn’t end there. Patti LaBelle, Teddy Pendergrass, Tony Bennett, Boyz II Men, Smokey Robinson, The Temptations, Stevie Wonder, ZZ Top, James Brown, Queen Latifah, and Diana Ross all gifted us with performances.
Still confident that Usher, or whatever your choice is, is the best halftime show of all-time? Perhaps you’re one of those that believes Prince had the best halftime show — but was he really better than every single name I’ve mentioned so far? Isn’t it more accurate to say that maybe there isn’t just one show that is clearly the best? Your favorite is your favorite, it doesn’t mean it’s the best. The best is objective, something that no one can really determine based on so many different types of performances. That’s the beauty of music.
There were actually some big names performing before the 90’s also. Have you seen all of them? If not, how can you claim which one is the best? Chubby Checker, Lionel Hampton, Carol Channing, and Ella Fitzgerald all performed. Mercer Ellington led a tribute to his late father, the great Duke Ellington. He was supported by his band, which featured famous jazz trumpeter Cootie Williams and singer Anita Moore.
Even Mickey Rooney was a part of a halftime show in 1987 that was introduced by George Burns.
Yet, I still haven’t named them all. A group of performers called Up With People was showcased at three different halftime shows, but no one can talk about Super Bowl halftime without mentioning the Grambling State University Band. They appeared a record six times, but their legacy is not as appreciated by NFL fans today.
I’ll leave the last mention to the first Super Bowl in 1967, which featured the flying men; two men with rocket packs took off above the field. Afterwards, 10,000 balloons were let go, and thus a man-made rainbow appeared in the sky. That’s not even the strangest part. In a stroke of madness, 4,000 pigeons were released. One wonders whether the field became a pigeon droppings nightmare for the players, but I can guarantee that we will never see that at a Super Bowl halftime again. That’s when the show was for the birds.
So, before you answer which Super Bowl halftime is the greatest ever then can you answer “yes” to the question: Have you seen them all? If not, then maybe celebrating all of the names and great performances in Super Bowl halftime history is better than claiming that one of them somehow stands out above them all.
