The 55th edition of the Super Bowl will be beamed onto our screens late evening on Sunday with The Kansas City Chiefs taking on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers about 1130pm our time.
And as the NFL opens the Raymond James Stadium to roughly 25,000 fans, including 7,500 vaccinated healthcare workers, The Weeknd has the coveted gig as Halftime entertainment.
For the roughly 12-minute show The Weeknd says he will not limit himself to a field stage and confirmed he’s invested his own funding – $7 million (according to his interview with Billboard) to ensure the production quality he desires!
Fourteen years ago on February 4, 2007, Prince delivered one of the most iconic Super Bowl halftime shows at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, Florida. Amidst a torrential downpour in true Floridian fashion, Prince brought down the house.
Setlist included: “We Will Rock You”, “Let’s Go Crazy”, “Baby I’m a Star”, “Proud Mary”, “All Along the Watchtower”, “Best of You”, and “Purple Rain”
The Weeknd, too, has seen plenty of Super Bowl halftime shows. Prince, Michael Jackson and Beyonce stand out, though he said his favorite was Diana Ross’ 1996 performance.
“The show just makes me smile, and she has a great exit with the helicopter, which she lands in the middle of the field, grabs onto it and flies out into the clouds,” he said. “It’s like – I wish I could’ve done that, I wish I thought of that, to be honest.”
It was 11 years ago this Super Bowl Sunday (February 7th, 2010), that the Who performed a medley of five of their classic songs at the halftime show during the Super Bowl at Miami’s Sun Life Stadium. The band performed a nearly 12-minute set featuring abbreviated versions of “Pinball Wizard,” “Baba O’Riley,” “Who Are You?,” “See Me, Feel Me,” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again.”
Joining the band on stage was their longtime backline featuring Ringo Starr‘s son Zak Starkey on drums, John “Rabbit” Bundrick on keyboards, Pino Palladino on bass, and Pete Townshend‘s younger brother Simon Townshend on rhythm guitar.
Unlike the Who’s usual live shows, Townshend — decked out in black shades and trilby hat — kicked off “Pinball Wizard” with his modified acoustic Gibson J-200, before switching to his usual red Fender Eric Clapton Stratocaster for the duration of the set. Zak Starkey was playing a clear D.W. drum kit with Zildjian cymbals painted with the Who’s iconic red, white, and blue “mod”-era bullseye.
https://youtu.be/ScA2FqJn9ic
On Super Bowl Sunday, February 1st, 2009, after years of turning the NFL down flat, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band performed an electrifying four-song medley during the half-time show at the Super Bowl in Tampa. Springsteen and the band — who unlike nearly all the half-time acts in recent memory actually looked as though they were enjoying themselves — were augmented by the Miami Horns on loan from their roadwork with Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes.
Bruce and the band tore through abbreviated versions of “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out,” which in one of the many comical moments in the short set, saw Springsteen’s signature knee slide across the stage land him straight into the cameraman who caught it all on tape — including Springsteen cracking up at the bang-up; “Born To Run” which dropped the “Wendy let me in. . .” verse; the new “Working On A Dream” backed by the Inaugural Celebration Chorus, who first backed “The Boss” the previous month in Washington, D.C. at the Lincoln Memorial; and finally “Glory Days” with the baseball lyrics replaced with football terms including the no-brainer switch from “speedball” to “Hail Mary.” Springsteen and right-hand man Steve Van Zandt had fun vamping as they brought the song to a close.
The highpoint for die-hard fans was seeing Springsteen play his retired Fender hybrid Telecaster-Esquire guitar, which has been completely absent from his live shows over the past few years. The guitar — which has a Telecaster body and an Esquire neck — was Springsteen’s primary instrument from 1972 to 2000 and is pictured on the album covers of Born To Run, Live 1975-1985, Human Touch, Plugged, Greatest Hits, and theWrecking Ball album.
