Golden touch: Bruno Mars gets his kit on at the 2013 Super Bowl half-time show. Photograph: Theo Wargo/FilmMagic
It isn’t all about nipple pasty slip-ups and flipping the bird. Though Janet Jackson’s 2004 “wardrobe malfunction” and MIA’s $16.6m stray middle finger in 2012 have come to define some of the more controversial recent Super Bowl half-time performances, we shouldn’t forget this sponsored spectacle’s humble roots. Long before Shania Twain bounced around in her rhinestone-studded push-up bra in 2003, marching bands provided the mid-game entertainment. Just marching bands. Without anyone famous lip-synching to a backing track. Those really were simpler times. Then New Kids on the Block ushered in a new pop- and rock-oriented era with their 1991 performance.
I’ve never felt more keenly aware of the half-time show’s tame, family-friendly past than when I read about the hopes for next year’s gig. The NFL has reportedly invited Bruno Mars, with his mind-boggling collection of trilby hats and shirts that don’t seem to button up to the top, to not only perform but also “curate” the show. With his track record as a songwriter, producer, Grammy winner and all-round music industry nice guy, it doesn’t get much more safe than that. Of course, there was also the huge chart success of Uptown Funk – shout out to all the wedding DJs who had to play it this summer – which no doubt cemented the NFL’s choice.
But wait. The idea of Mars dancing his little legs around the stadium may seem familiar because he last played the half-time show in February 2014. That’s strange enough, without considering what his “curation” would entail. Are we talking about a Brian Eno-style approach to building the lineups for festivals inthe UK, Australia and Norway? Or something more the lines of David Byrne’s Meltdown festival or Jay Z’s Made In America extravaganza, where Mars would help pick his friends and past collaborators as performers? Although this news all arises from an anonymous source speaking to Billboard, it’s interesting to think about how Mars would make his mark on a viewing audience that usually tips over the 100 million mark. And by interesting, I mean deeply depressing.
Bruno Mars’s 2013 Super Bowl half-time performance with the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Mars no doubt has a deep knowledge of music, from pop and Motown to soul, R&B and classic rock’n’roll. His restless genre-shifting on 2012’s Unorthodox Jukebox shows that off to full effect. On the surface, a Mars-curated half-time show could pull in anyone from Jerry Lee Lewis and Damian Marley to Pharrell or the current incarnation of the Isley Brothers. But it could just as easily usher in appearances from the likes of Meghan Trainor and Charlie Puth in a sickly sweet doo-wop tribute, or Mumford & Sons – complete with their new amped-up sound. Now that Mars has ascended to another level of fame, he may opt for the populist choice and draft in the happy-clappy acts most likely to please casual music fans and their buffalo wing-eating families.
Mars’s first half-time show felt both celebratory – making him the only performer under 30 to headline the show in Super Bowl history – and weirdly incongruous, starting with a drum solo and ending with a cornball run-through of Just the Way You Are. Somewhere in the middle, the Red Hot Chili Peppers blasted through Give It Away with Mars, too. Like I said, weirdly incongruous.
That night Mars helped pull in 115 million viewers, the second-highest audience after Katy Perry’s 121 million last year. So maybe he’s being asked back because he nailed the numbers. Mars appeals to a broad demographic, from the aunties who dance to Grenade at family parties to the guys who sext Gorilla lyrics with the eggplant emoji. And cynically speaking, the Super Bowl half-time show mostly feels like an opportunity for advertisers and major labels to convince people to buy stuff, in between shots of bulked-up men throwing a ball around. As a commercial success, Mars makes sense.
Performers go all out on a spectacular, 13-minute set, but the half-time show is not designed as a place for avant-garde artistes and their muses. While I’m sure acts like the Flaming Lips, math rockers Battles or rapper Lil B (a Californian who is native to the area of Levi’s Stadium, which is hosting the Super Bowl) could pull in some fun left-field names if they were given the chance, the Super Bowl is still way out of their leagues. Mars, as polished and incessantly chirpy as he may be, could get people to tune in. And on a night like this, that’s what counts to theNFL.
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