Who was the first person to perform at the Super Bowl Halftime Show?
Most artists can only dream of playing the Super Bowl Halftime Show at the start of their careers. Even though it’s far from the most important night of the year when it comes to music, pulling the attention away from a football game is normally what makes every halftime show either a bore to sit through or one of the most spellbinding performances anyone has ever given. Although many artists have made the football game look like an afterthought, it took one particular performer to knock down the door in the first place.
Then again, it’s not like the Super Bowl was knocking it out of the park when it came to great halftime shows every single time. Throughout the first decade that the game was held, some of the greatest halftime shows came from artists putting on variety shows or being sponsored by a particular company. So anyone who wanted to sing along to their favourite songs would have to deal with Broadway performers instead.
Once the size and scope of everything started getting bigger, there were questions as to what would happen if they got one pop star to perform at the game. It would have been a gamble for sure, but if they pulled it off with the exact right person, people were bound to go nuts before they had even played a note of music.
And despite the 1980s coming to a close in grand fashion, New Kids on the Block featuring Disney characters in 1991 wasn’t going to smooth things over. It was time to bring out the big guns, and when Michael Jackson lit up the stage in 1992, he made the Super Bowl Halftime Show a rite of passage for any music legend looking to take their music a step further.
So, how did Michael Jackson’s Super Bowl Halftime Show go?
It’s usually easy to tell when a halftime show is going to be a dud right out of the gate, but Jackson was never known to half-ass anything. Even looking at his final years rehearsing for This Is It, he was still putting everything he had into every performance. But considering that the first few minutes of his performance included him standing and the audience going nuts, what he had in store for the songs did not disappoint.
Then again, hearing ballads like ‘Heal the World’ and ‘We Are the World’ could have easily brought the performance down a little bit by comparison, but that’s not what Jacko did. Considering how much rhythm is behind those songs and the communal message behind everything, Jackson made every track feel like it had the potential to end world hunger if everyone sang along with him.
But the real power behind this performance came with what happened after. Looking at every subsequent halftime show, the highlights have included moments where artists have equalled and even surpassed Jackson, with Prince’s halftime show making the ‘Thriller’ singer look like a sideshow character by comparison when he launched into his rain-swept version of ‘Purple Rain’.
And with modern acts like Kendrick Lamar taking the stage for the Super Bowl today, fans have learned not to expect a standard performance out of every single halftime show. This is a once-in-a-lifetime show for everyone involved, and the whole point is to make every viewer watching at home feel like they are part of the action.
