Welcome everyone to the latest edition of Top Five Fridays! This weekend is a big one for fans of the NFL with Super Bowl 52 on Sunday afternoon. Even if you aren’t the biggest football fan, the halftime show is sure to be appointment television with Justin Timberlake being the perfomer this year.
It’s always entertaining to see what’s going to happen when the performer’s out on stage and who’s going to be brought out as a surprise guest (remember when the Red Hot Chili Peppers performed with Bruno Mars? This was a thing.) With that in mind, let’s get to the top five Super Bowl Halftime Shows.
5. 2001 Super Bowl Halftime Show
This is one of the first halftime shows I remember seeing and it’s the most 2000s halftime show ever. You’ve got Britney Spears in her prime, N’Sync at the top of their game, and…Aerosmith? Okay cool, let’s roll with it.
While it hasn’t aged well, it was good for what it was with the lineup of performers getting all their stuff in within that limited timeframe that they had.
4. The Who
Having The Who perform on a Super Bowl that CBS was hosting seemed like a no-brainer at the time. All three CSIs used their music, why not have them perform all the hits? This was during the period of time when the NFL had older artists perform to avoid an incident like what happened in 2004 with Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson. From The Boss to Tom Petty, they didn’t exactly bring in that younger audience that some of the previous one did.
While some of those failed to meet the mark, this one was one of the best for a number of reasons. The biggest reason why was because of the fact that this was the Saints Super Bowl. The Who and the Who Dats: a perfect combination!
3. Michael Jackson
This was the beginning of an era of great halftime performances with the King of Pop truly putting together one of the absolute best. Prior to this, most halftime shows consisted of a marching band from the host city or something to that extent. This was an event that set the bar for everything that came after it
From James Earl Jones introducing the whole event to his appearance on the stage, there was absolutely nothing like it. Then he had a great performance with older songs and capped it off with We Are the World.
2. U2
Less than five months after 9/11, this Super Bowl was important for a lot of reasons. It started the Belichick-Brady dynasty that’s still going on in 2018. It was also the first truly big event after the national tragedy and it seemed appropriate to have Bono and crew perform live in the Superdome.
I wound up rewatching some of the past performances and this one was still fresh in my mind. Having all the victims of the heinous attacks projecting behind them was the lasting image that I will never forget seeing as they’re seeing “Where the Streets Have No Name” is so hauntingly beautiful. Such an iconic moment that transcends football deserves to be towards the top of the list
1. Prince
How can it not be Prince’s halftime performance? It seems appropriate since this year’s Super Bowl is in Minnesota. I mentioned earlier how they toned things down after what happened in 2004, but this got people up and moving right off the bat with “Let’s Go Crazy” and even covered the Foo Fighters “Best of You”.
Then comes the grand finale with him performing “Purple Rain” in the rain! Seriously, you can’t plan this out. Justin Timberlake could break out a hologram of Prince playing Purple Rain on Sunday and it wouldn’t come close to this. On second thought, that’d be pretty awesome!
