Sunday, February 9 marked the annual recurrence of the most watched television broadcast in America: the Super Bowl. While the football faceoff between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs may have been the “main event,” several musical artists put on exceptional performances before the game and during halftime, giving us non-sports-fans a reason to watch.
The Super Bowl halftime show is the United States’ most-watched musical performance of the year. The first Super Bowl game was played in 1967, and in the early years of the annual event, the halftime show was usually performed by collegiate marching bands. It wasn’t until the 1990s that the event began to feature major celebrity musical artists, a move that further increased viewership of the big game and quickly became a tradition. Today, headlining the Super Bowl is arguably the most coveted musical gig of the year, representing the ultimate marriage of sports and pop culture.
But before we get to this year’s halftime show, several artists graced the stage before kickoff to perform traditional patriotic songs. The lineup featured artists with New Orleans ties, beginning with Trombone Shorty, who played trombone alongside singer Lauren Daigle in a NOLA second-line-style rendition of “America the Beautiful.” The pair was joined by an unnamed sousaphone player, contributing to traditional second-line instrumentation, and an acoustic guitarist, who gave the performance a slight country twang. They even included a short bone solo in the arrangement, honoring the importance of improvisation in New Orleans music.
Next, another New Orleans native, Ledisi, performed the Black national anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” in traditional gospel fashion. To celebrate the 125th anniversary of the song, Ledsi was backed by a choir of 125 New Orleans high school students in yellow robes. She stood out against the yellow background in a striking all-white outfit.
Finally, 7-time Grammy award winning artist Jon Batiste performed a bluesy rendition of the national anthem, singing and accompanying himself on a colorfully painted grand piano with some additional drums backing him up. Another great pick to honor the game’s location, Batiste represents a long legacy of New Orleans jazz musicians.
Batiste’s anthem performance reminded me that we have come a long way from Jose Feliciano’s historic 1968 anthem performance at game 5 of the World Series. If you’re unfamiliar with the story, Feliciano is a blind Puerto Rican musician and the first artist to take significant creative liberties with an anthem performance at a major event. He sang and accompanied himself on acoustic guitar, re-harmonizing the melody in a folk style. Unfortunately, he faced incredible backlash, being called un-American and blasphemous and being blacklisted afterwards, but his performance paved the way for future stylized renditions of the anthem. Indeed, Batiste’s soulful take seemed to be well-received by the cheering audience.
After the Eagles dominated the first half of the game, headlining artist Kendrick Lamar took the stage to perform the much-anticipated halftime show. This was not the first time Lamar graced the Super Bowl halftime stage. He performed at the 2022 halftime show in Los Angeles, but this was his first performance as a headliner and the first time a solo hip-hop artist ever headlined the big game. Before Lamar began rapping, the camera centered on actor Samuel L. Jackson, who donned a patriotic suit and top hat and narrated the performance as a satirical “Uncle Sam” character. The music had not even begun and Lamar already promised a unique and original halftime show, a promise he absolutely delivered on.
The Super Bowl halftime show has become quite the spectacle. Each year, artists attempt to one-up each other with bigger and bigger productions, more costume changes, more elaborate set design, more backup artists, more guest artists, more instrumental performers, etcetera. Lamar’s show this year marked a refreshing departure from that trend while still delivering a dynamic and well-executed performance.
With the lights down low, cameras panned from Jackson to Lamar crouching on a black car as he began rapping an unreleased song in a relatively chill, understated opening to the show, rather than taking the big bang opening approach of most Super Bowl halftime artists. It was an effective move, not only helping him stand out from previous artists, but also relying on the under-appreciated truth that a soft dynamic can be the best way to grab an audience’s attention, forcing them to lean in and listen more closely.
Before long, Lamar was joined by several dancers each dressed in monochromatic red, white, or blue, who supported Lamar with dynamic visual stimulus for the rest of the performance. At one point, they positioned themselves in the shape of the American flag, in case the American theme was not yet clear, emphasizing Lamar’s willingness to make political statements with his music. Notably, all of the performers who appeared in the show were black, including all of the dancers and guests, underscoring Lamar’s celebration of Black American culture. Though Lamar himself did not participate in the complex choreography of the dancers as some other artists attempt to do, he maintained a confident, charismatic, and engaging stage presence throughout the show, and I did not miss the additional dancing.
Sticking to the Americana color scheme, Lamar wore a blue, black, white, and red leather jacket featuring “GLORIA” in red lettering across the front of the jacket, a reference to the closing track on his 2024 album GNX. He kept the jacket open, revealing large silver chains on a black tee. On one of the chains hung a large lowercase “a,” which fans speculated may have been a reference to the famous line in his Drake diss track “Not Like Us” which follows “Trying to strike a chord and it’s probably A Minor.” The chain could have also referenced the logo of Lamar’s company pgLang. To complete the look, he wore bell-bottom blue jeans, a backwards black baseball cap, black leather gloves with a large ring, and a pair of black and white Nike Air DT Max ’96 sneakers. Lamar kept the same outfit for the whole show, not bothering to attempt the many costume changes of some previous halftime show artists.
Keeping with the understated theme, Lamar and the dancers stood out against a fairly minimalist stage design. The main middle section of the stage was a flat, all-grey set that resembled a cement parking lot. During the performance, Lamar traveled between four adjacent stages, each in the shape of a PlayStation controller button (x, o, triangle, and square), which evidently was Lamar’s idea and an additional dig at Drake. The only pop of color in the whole set was the red of the x stage, but the limited use of color allowed the performers to really stand out visually. It is not easy to craft a performance that will pop not only on television, but also on the field of a massive sports stadium where most viewers are quite far away. I think Lamar’s approach was very effective for both. The monochromatic outfits of the backup dancers also helped the visual elements pop even from a distance.
Hip hop does not always translate well to a stadium setting, but Lamar did it remarkably well. As the first rapper to win a Pulitzer Prize, Lamar has been widely recognized not only for his masterful lyricism, but also his precise delivery and impeccable flow. These elements helped his rapping come across flawlessly despite the tricky live setting. He also elected to rap exclusively over backing tracks for the show and did not include any live instrumentalists. A move that may have disappointed some, I felt that it helped Lamar carefully control and curate the sound, creating a final product that sounded impressively accurate to the recorded versions. The performance had to be clean despite the use of profanity in much of Lamar’s music, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that this did not really detract from the performance as it sometimes does for other rap acts. It was seamlessly executed.
As expected, Lamar performed many of his biggest hits, though he mostly avoided his earlier catalog. After the unreleased opening, an unprecedented halftime show move, Lamar performed “Squabble Up,” the second track on his latest album GNX. Next came “Humble” and “DNA” from his Pulitzer-Prize-winning album Damn. followed by “Euphoria” from his diss track exchange with Drake. Then, “Man at the Garden,” “Peekaboo,” and “Luther” all from GNX. On “Luther,” Lamar introduced SZA as the first guest artist of the night for a beautiful duet. In a monochromatic red leather outfit, SZA also performed “All the Stars” from the Black Panther soundtrack before making her exit.
Finally, just before closing the set with “TV Off” from GNX with an appearance from producer DJ Mustard, Lamar performed the most anticipated song of the night, “Not Like Us,” during which tennis star Serena Williams (who was also involved in the Drake beef) made an appearance crip walking and dancing along. As the centerpiece of his feud with Drake, performing “Not Like Us” on this stage after it won five Grammy awards earlier this year marks an undeniable and crushing win against Drake. Lamar certainly recognized the significance, even teasing the song earlier in his performance. Complete and utter domination seemed to be a theme for the night as the Eagles went on to destroy the Chiefs.