Soon, it was Beyonce’s turn to shine: She emerged on the field clad in a barely-there leotard and leather jacket, performing the song she dropped just yesterday to surprised fans.
Advertisement
And it did. That again showed what the crowd at Gaga’s performance at Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center saw in 2010 and 2014: She can really sing very well. You seriously couldn’t ask for much else in a Super Bowl halftime performance, and all three artists came with the heat.
That was the year of Janet Jackson’s costume malfunction, an embarrassment so stinging to the NFL’s carefully cultivated apple-pie wholesomeness that the league took over producing the halftime show itself.
Bruno Mars and producer/DJ Mark Ronson arrived at the ideal time to liven things up, mixing their massive hit “Uptown Funk” with a throwback rendition of MC Hammer’s “Too Legit to Quit”.
As for the headliners, well, to call Coldplay “divisive” is an understatement akin to calling the Super Bowl “somewhat oversized”. Mars and a dance ensemble, all dressed in shiny black, performed a verse and a chorus of the hit, with plenty of dancing thrown in, before handing off the show to Beyonce.
Snippets of “Purple Rain”, “Independent Woman“, and more were threaded in as Mars and Beyoncé – who, seconds after the performance, announced her Formation World Tour, returned to the stage to sing Coldplay’s “Up and Up”.
Chris Martin jumped around the rainbow, Holi-inspired stage as he belted out their hits and told the crowd: “Love you all wherever you are, we’re in this together”.
Bruno Mars, “Uptown Funk” – Love Bruno Mars, but it was like the Super Bowl just completely forgot that Coldplay was on the show.
The tour will kick off on 27 April in Miami, Florida with a further 21 stadium dates lined up throughout the country.
Sunday’s halftime show will go down as one of the more mediocre performances in the annals of Super Bowl history.
And we definitely did get all of that live from Levi’s Stadium in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Advertisement
Shimmering in a red-glitter suit and matching eye makeup, the 29-year-old singer belted out the USA national anthem while actress Marlee Matlin performed in American Sign Language.
