Super Bowl Halftime Show: Time For Baby Boomers to Release Their Cultural Death Grip

As I am a foreigner, the first I ever heard about the Super Bowl’s tradition of mid-show entertainment was the now notorious Janet Jackson nipple incident whereby Justin Timberlake ‘accidentally’ unleashed Ms. Jackson’s breast upon millions of unsuspecting Americans. I was living in Moscow at the time and even the Russians were quite obsessed by the role of Ms. Jackson’s mammary glands in a sport none of them played or cared about.

Six years later and it is clear that the Super Bowl’s organizers are still terrified of Janet Jackson’s nipple, that it comes to them at night and haunts them in their sleep, threatening to embroil them in scandal and to lose them millions in sponsorship deals. For what else can explain the entertainment decisions made by the Masters of the Bowl ever since that fateful Sunday afternoon in February 2004?

Let’s take a look at who has played in the years since:

2005 Paul McCartney (Age: 67)

The less talented half of the Beatles songwriting team, more famous these days for his disastrous marriage to one-legged model Heather Mills. After spending years trying to promote his lackluster solo work he now dedicates most of his live shows to his 1960s catalogue, and has thus become a tribute act to his younger self. Not that he’s bitter or anything.

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2006 The Rolling Stones (Collective age: 260+)

This once great ‘dangerous’ band, notorious for their decadent lifestyles and provocative antics, have long since been reduced to a semi-parodic tribute act to their younger selves. Their drummer is a skeleton with a few wisps of hair attached to his skull. Mick Jagger made a mockery of himself by accepting a knighthood after launching a sustained whining campaign in the aftermath of “Sir” Paul McCartney’s own ennobling. Then Keith Richards fell out of a tree.

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2007 Prince (Age 51)

A spring chicken by super bowl standards (he was only 49 the year he performed), it’s been a long time since Prince thrilled, or indeed, entertained anybody. Furthermore, his performance at the Super Bowl came after he had joined the Jehovah’s Witnesses and stopped playing his more scandalous songs.

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2008 Tom Petty (Age: 59)

Past it, middle of the road rocker whose interest in music began when he met Elvis aged 10: not exactly cutting edge, then. Is he a self-tribute act? I don’t know because like millions of others, I just don’t care. But I do note that he reformed his original band Mudcrutch in 2008 to pay homage to his younger self.

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2009 Bruce Springsteen (Age: 60)

Past it, tedious, ultra-earnest screecher who recently won a prize for a song about a tired old wrestler. Even Springsteen admitted re: the Superbowl: “…if we don’t do it now, what are we waiting for? I want to do it while I’m alive.” I suppose Springsteen at least still tries to stay vital, and many music critics have responded to his more recent efforts by kindly pretending to like them almost as much as the albums he recorded 20-30 years ago.

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2010 The Who (Pete Townshend 64/Roger Daltrey 65/Keith Moon- dead/John Entwistle-dead)

This year, clearly fearing that they were running out of heritage rock acts to hire, the Super Bowl organizers invited The Who to perform. Now I don’t mind a bit of The Who, they were definitely good about 40 years ago, possibly even still good 35 years ago around the time I was born, but ever since… well Who Cares? As they have only released one new record in several centuries they are perhaps the ultimate self-tribute band, not even interested in trying new things. Yawn.

So it seems that the rules if you want to perform at the Superbowl post- Janet Jackson are:

1. No breasts, and thus no women
2. If you are a man, then you must have a prescription for Cialis.

Now before anybody accuses me of ageism let me say this: I have nothing against venerable singers and guitarists, etc. A month or so back on this very site I sang the praises of King Crimson, who are very old indeed, if not exactly Super Bowl material. Johnny Cash did some of his best work in his 60s and 70s, although again I can’t imagine all that Rick Rubin produced death gospel going down all that well with the sponsors. Some people claim Dylan is still good, and although I’m not a huge Dylan fan, I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. (I have grave reservations about Neil Young, however.) But there’s a difference between being old and vital and being The Who, or the Stones, or Paul McCartney. And while these acts can be entertaining enough even though they lost their mojo decades ago, too much heritage rock is a fairly awful, depressing, suffocating experience.

I’m also a bit suspicious that these geriatric Super Bowl acts are those bands much beloved of the dismal late 60s Baby Boomer generation that has had a death grip on Western culture since the 80s at least, forcing its own nostalgia for a long passed youth down everybody else’s gullet. These coots just won’t let go: ‘Teenage Wasteland’ indeed. It’s enough to make you nostalgic for Janet Jackson’s nipple.