Since the first Super Bowl game on Jan. 15, 1967 and for every one 25 years later, the halftime became synonymous with an urban legend that the New York City sewer system would experience problems. Before there was TiVo and the generic DVS, people had to watch the Super Bowl live. They couldn’t even tape it on VCRs in case they missed anything.
So, the halftime was the time for people to unwind and see a man about a horse. Or to be more vulgar, it gave them time to drop some friends off at the pool. And organizers of the Super Bowl knew not a lot of people cared about the half-time show, so why blow a lot of money and time to organize something amazing if people are going to be in the one room of the house no one had a TV hooked up, unless they were very rich.
This led to some of the most ridiculous and often forgettable shows that had gone to the realm of YouTube. Up With People, a non-profit consisting of musicians, dancers and people who think Billy Joel is death metal, performed at five Super Bowls. I mean, even Ned Flanders and Mike Pence would considered their shows to be lame. And that’s why The Simpsons would make fun of them with its own version called Hooray For Everything and even having a Super Bowl Halftime of singers dressed as green Martians performing “Rock Around the Clock.”
Here’s the link to Up With People’s Super Bowl XVI performance in 1982 at Pontiac, Mich. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4mTTigqTSA
All that changed on Jan. 26, 1992, when In Living Color, the sketch show that was on Fox in the early 1990s and introduced America to Keenan Ivory Wayans and his family, Damon, Marlon, Shawn and Kim, as well as Jim Carrey, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Lopez and so many more, performed a live half-time show. And people switched over from the Buffalo Bills/Washington Redskins game to watch. The show pulled in about 28.9 million viewers which was impressive for Fox as it had only started a few years earlier.
Why watch a silly marching band halftime show when you can see Color Me Badd, the R&B group from Oklahoma City, perform. (Hey, it was the time and they were very popular.) The live broadcast had a big group of celebrities also in the studio, including a blink-and-miss shot of a young Leonardo DiCaprio as well as Sam Kinison who would be killed in an automobile accident a few months later on April 10. There’s also Jodie Sweetin, who was barely 10 at the time, looking like she was having the best night of her life up until that time.
Cast member Tommy Davidson doing his Sugar Ray Leonard interviews celebrities including Blair Underwood, Pauly Shore and Corin Nemec, who was in the popular Parker Lewis Can’t Lose, also on Fox.
The sketches on the show included Keenan and Damon doing their Homeboy Shopping Network live from the locker room. Then Carrey performed his famous Fire Marshall Bill routine from a sports bar. But the best sketch is Damon and David Alan Grier as the effeminate homosexual critics Blaine Edwards and Antoine Mayweather in their “Men on…Football.”
The sketch really tests the limits of what is appropriate in Standard and Practices at the time as Damon and Grier exchange sexual innuendos and double entendre phrases. You can tell the two are trying their hardest to get through the live performance without breaking character from laughing. The sketch would be controversial as Damon made a comment about the Richard Gere gerbil urban legend. (Just FYI, there was a myth that Gere when he was starting out in the 1970s was admitted to a hospital emergency room with a gerbil up his ass.) Then, they made comments that Carl Lewis, the American track and field star who performed at the Olympics, is also gay. These two moments were later cut on reruns and the DVD release. However, you can find the uncensored version online.
Another sketch has Davidson as a sports reporter interviewing Foxx as the Redskins coach as Carrey plays a fan who keeps walking back and forth behind them doing outrageous stuff to get on camera as the reporter and coach are oblivious to him.
The ratings bonanza convinced TV networks and organizers that they need to change things up. The next year for Super Bowl XXVII in 1993, Michael Jackson, still riding high following the release of his studio album Dangerous, performed and changed the half-time shows from then on. Yet, they weren’t all that good. In 1994 when the Super Bowl was held in Atlanta, someone decided to ignore the R&B/hip-hop and alternative rock scene that was popular in Georgia. Instead a country-western spectacular was performed.
It bombed with some reviewers calling it one of the worst ever. The show featured Clint Back, Tanya Tucker, Travis Tritt and Wynona Judd with a special appearance by her mother, Naomi. If the Super Bowl had been in Nashville, this line-up would’ve been great. But it was obvious, organizers still had a lot to learn. Trying to set up a concert-style live performance in under half an hour during the middle of one of the biggest sporting events of the year is difficult. And there have been years in which you can tell how things don’t always come together.,
In 1997, ZZ Top was shown to have lip-synced their performance as well as some thought The Black Eyed Peas also lip-synced in 2011 at the half-time show. Then, there was the infamous Left Shark where dancer Bryan Gaw dress in a blue and white shark costume didn’t seem to have the same choreography as the other shark as they danced to Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream.” The set included other dancers in beach and tropical costumes (palm trees and beach balls) and looked like whoever designed it was tripping balls while watch Sid and Marty Kroft productions.
The half-time shows weren’t without controversy. People say that Shakira in 2020 was too risque and people accused Prince in 2007 of vulgarity with a silhouette or him and his guitar looked like a huge penis. Then, there was the whole controversy over Janet Jackson and the “wardrobe malfunction” even though know people are more upset at Justin Timberlake, as they should be. Basically, anytime a black person has performed, especially if they’re a woman, has been met with a lot of controversy from social media, online critics and the same people who think drag shows cause hurricanes.
Regardless, since 1993, the half-time show has been a bigger draw than the game itself, especially since some people may not care for either team. The half-time show has been a Who’s Who of groups, performers and musicians including Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, Aerosmith, U2, N’Sync, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Boyz II Men, Diana Ross, Patti Labelle, Phil Collins, The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, Bruno Mars, The Who, Dr. Dre, Eminem, Madonna, No Dobut, Shania Twain, Lady Gaga and the list goes on and on.
Along with the creative commercials, it’s become a huge broadcast that has become more about just football.
Who do you think did the best half-time show? Please comment.
Zane Says 