Write it down: When Lady Gaga wraps her performance at Super Bowl LI in Houston on Sunday, after the smoke clears and the confetti settles, Gaga will crack the Top 5 on our list of the all-time greatest Super Bowl halftime shows.
Call it a hunch, call it an educated guess, but Lady Gaga just strikes us as someone who will bring her A-plus-plus game to this stage sandwiched in the middle of a game that often isn’t as interesting or exciting as the extras that accompany it on television.
You might think she’s still the meat-dress-wearing weirdo who burst onto the scene in 2008 with her debut album and its chart-topping singles “Just Dance” and “Poker Face,” but if you’ve been paying attention she’s gotten much more accessible — singing the National Anthem at the Super Bowl a year ago, wowing the world with her performance at the Oscars, releasing her most straight-ahead rock (and almost country-sounding) album “Joanne” in the fall — while not losing any of her quirky artistry and independence along the way.
In other words, she’s poised to reach everyone from her adoring Little Monsters, some of whom will no doubt be present as fans on the field while she sings, to the Bud drinkers at home who’ll pause mid-dip-of-the-chip and wonder how she won them over.
The question of whether Lady Gaga will get political at the Super Bowl created a minor stir recently when one TV show reported that the NFL had banned her from saying anything controversial while in the spotlight. The NFL and Gaga’s camp both said that wasn’t so and it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing she’d force into her set even given her support of Democrat Hillary Clinton before the presidential election and her protesting of President Donald Trump after it.
After all, she can make any points she wants through the selection of her songs. “Born This Way,” which oddsmakers have as a 13-2 pick to show up in her set, is an anthem of freedom and empowerment for oft-oppressed groups such as women and members of the LGBT community, for instance.
And yes, you can bet actual money on elements of the halftime show: Odds that Gaga makes an anti-Trump statement either visually or vocally are a fairly short 10-13. Think someone is going to fall off the stage? That’s a 12-1 bet. Someone on stage catching on fire? 25-1. Gaga’s bellybutton being visible when she comes on stage? That’s a 5-8 bet.
Will there be a guest performer or two? Tony Bennett, with whom Lady Gaga has recorded an album of standards and toured will be present in a prerecorded bit before the halftime show — possibly with Lady, as he’s known to call her — and Beyoncé could make it two years in a row as a scene-stealing guest, but we’ve got a feeling it will be mostly a solo set.
Time will tell whether we’re right about how good this will be, so for now, let’s go to the list of the Top 10 halftime shows in the first 50 years of the Super Bowl, with a bit more movement in the rankings this year than in recent years given our changing views on what rocked and what did not.
10 Coldplay: By which we really mean to say Beyoncé’s second turn as a halftime show performer. The British quartet was lovely during their turn at Super Bowl 50 in 2016, and charming, too, in their English way. But they got overshadowed by Queen Bey’s bold and unapologetically political performance of her then-new single “Formation,” which underscored its message of black pride and power with backup dancers dressed in Afros and clothes reminiscent of the Black (not Carolina) Panthers. This more than anything Coldplay or second guest Bruno Mars did was what people were talking about the next day.
9 Katy Perry: Katy Perry is sorta Lady Gaga Lite. Sounds great, less filling, as it were. But she brought the bright colors and cheerful flash to the halftime of Super Bowl XLIX in 2015, riding onto the field on that strange, gigantic lion puppet, conducting a beach party dance-off during “Teenage Dream” that led to fame for Left Shark, forgotten for Right. Lenny Kravitz managed not to split his tight leather pants during his cameo on “I Kissed A Girl” and Missy Elliot added a jolt of energy when she popped out to do “Work It” and “Get Ur Freak On” as Perry played hype woman in a custom Super Bowl 49 jersey.
8 Bruno Mars: Bruno Mars is a timeless performer. He’d have fit right in as the star of a ’60s soul revue, and at Super Bowl XLVIII songs such as “Locked Out of Heaven” or “Runaway Baby” felt both fresh and classic and most of all fun. He sings, he dances, he drums! And that band is great, too. When he played in 2014, he set a record with 115.3 million viewers. It was the highest rating ever for halftime at the Super Bowl until Perry topped that a year later with 118.5 million tuning in.
7 Madonna: The Material Girl delivered the goods during halftime of Super Bowl XLVI in 2012. Huge ratings, an estimated 114 million viewers for the biggest audience to that point. It also ushered in the age of big production values, too, with the kinds of props and costumes and dancers you’d get at a Madonna show, including that one poor fella bouncing on his, um, groin on the slack wire. It also had a bit of controversy thanks to guest performer M.I.A.’s middle finger salute to the TV cameras.
6 Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake: No one remembers who besides Janet and Justin performed at halftime of Super Bowl XXXVIII. No one can remember because the only thing anyone remembers is the introduction of the phrase “wardrobe malfunction” into the lexicon of Super Bowl highlights after this 2004 set. Timberlake, of course, pulled off part of Jackson’s top, exposing her metallic nipple shield and thereby threatened to send the planet spinning off its axis. Such innocent times those were. This is absolutely the most talked-about halftime performance in history. And nobody was talking about P. Diddy, Nelly and Kid Rock, who were also on the bill.
5 Michael Jackson: The King of Pop preceded his little sister to the Super Bowl stage, arriving there in 1993 in a burst of fireworks before working his magic on the crowd at the Rose Bowl. Jackson is probably the only thing anyone but a diehard Dallas Cowboys fan remembers about the game – they whomped the Buffalo Bills in a dull contest – and I can still picture an image of Michael, arms spread, in an instantly iconic pose. No matter the sad final chapters of MJ’s life, when he played halftime in Pasadena way back then, it represented the end of a run of really tired choices and marked the start of big stars on this stage.
4 Beyoncé: Queen B made the Top 10 the year after her debut at the Super Bowl in 2013, because whenever Bey does something she does it fierce and she does it right. It was so smartly crafted and choreographed she impressed from start to finish of her turn, which also featured a reunion of Destiny’s Child, her earlier trio. In much the same way Michael Jackson shifted the game’s entertainment from the tired acts that preceded him, 20 years later Beyoncé represented another shift, from legendary rock acts such as the Rolling Stones, the Who and Paul McCartney to a younger, hipper star.
3 Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band: OK, sure, you remember the Boss’ crotch sliding into the camera and into your big-screened home theater (he even writes about the moment in his recent memoir), but c’mon, this halftime show had much more going for it. For a solid celebration of American rock ’n’ roll, you can’t go wrong with Springsteen, whose energy and enthusiasm – and always outstanding band – made this halftime at Super Bowl XLIII in 2009 a real winner.
2 U2: We were all still suffering when this first Super Bowl after 9 /11 arrived, and who better to lift up a nation, heck, world, with a rousing, emotionally cathartic performance at America’s national party than Bono and U2? As the band played, the names of the victims of that terrorist attack scrolled on a giant screen, and if that didn’t move you, well, there’s probably something wrong with your heart. This has to be the most emotionally resonant halftime show of them all. It was somber and weighty but joyful and memorable all at the same time.
1 Prince: Every year we move some picks up and down and out of the Top 10 this year – so long Rolling Stones! – but there’s no budging the performance of Prince, now, sadly the late Prince, at Super Bowl XLI in 2007 from our top spot. It would have been a classic simply for the songs he played, a sampling of his own hits (“Let’s Go Crazy,” “Baby I’m a Star”) and covers (Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower,” Foo Fighters’ “Best of You”). Add to that, though, the fact that he closed out his set in a downpour – while playing “Purple Rain” – and what you have is a Super Bowl halftime show for the ages.
