In the early days of the Super Bowl, the halftime shows featured marching bands from schools like Grambling and Southern universities, jazz performers and Carol Channing. This made sense because college and high school football halftime shows often featured and still feature marching bands. The Ponte Vedra High School marching band is called the “Ocean of Sound,” and they play every home game.
My personal favorite early show was at Super Bowl IV in New Orleans. The show featured Carol Channing, Al Hirt, Doc Severinsen, Lionel Hampton and the Southern University Marching Band. The halftime show also included a reenactment of the Battle of New Orleans. Reenactors took the field and fired off cannons as the public address announcer described the events from that historic battle. It turned out to be a really bad idea. The smoke from the cannons lingered and wafted around the field well into the second half. The players found it hard to see.
Up until 1992, marching bands ruled, often accompanied by other “wholesome” acts. Up With People appeared regularly. The 1992 show in Minneapolis featured Brian Boitano and Dorothy Hamill ice dancing to the music of Gloria Estefan in a tribute to the Winter Olympics in Albertville.
At that same time, Keenan Ivory Wayans had a show on the Fox Network called “In Living Color.” That show has been described as a “photo negative version of Saturday Night Live” and was popular for a number of years. The cast included Jamie Foxx, Jim Carrey, Tommy Davidson, Marlon and Damon Wayans (and most of the rest of the Wayans family) and the Fly Girl Dancers led by Jennifer Lopez.
Wayans decided to offer an alternative halftime show, including a countdown clock telling people when to return to the Super Bowl for the second half. When 22 million viewers switched from NBC to Fox at halftime, the NFL got the message. The next year the halftime show featured Michael Jackson. Jackson has fallen since, but at the time the show was considered groundbreaking and ushered in a new era. Performers like U2, the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Madona, Prince and The Who each had a turn. Super Bowl XXXIX here in Jacksonville featured Paul McCartney. Many locals remember that show fondly.
Adding contemporary stars also brought controversy. There was some backlash against rappers Run DMC, which was, in the end, mollified by the surprise addition of Aerosmith. But, perhaps the biggest controversy occurred at Super Bowl XXXVIII, the year before Jacksonville in Houston. Janet Jackson was performing a duet with Justin Timberlake when a “wardrobe malfunction” scandalously exposed her breast, causing outrage. A second outrageous event that year was back-up act Kid Rock slashing a hole in an American Flag and wearing it as a Poncho. The VFW and other conservative groups were not happy with the act of flag desecration.
The most recent show, featuring Bad Bunny, was not the first and will probably not be the last to be controversial. Controversy sells. Interestingly, it was not Bad Bunny’s first appearance. He performed in Super Bowl LIV with Shakira and Jennifer Lopez in Miami. A final interesting fact, Kid Rock and Jennifer Lopez are, to the best of my knowledge, the only performers to appear in both a regular and an alternative Super Bowl Half Time Show.
