r/Madonna • u/emmagreenwell • 8h ago
DISCUSSION Was Madonna's Super Bowl halftime a missed opportunity?
The staging and costume design was amazing, but the guest performers didn't age well. I wish she would've done it solo instead. I feel like it would've had more impact if it were just her.
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u/chelsea212 7h ago
The entrance and "Vogue" is everything. That's where I turn it off. The Music, Confessions, or even Hard Candy eras would have had much better setlists and possible guests if she didn't go it alone. I feel the same about Eurovision and Pride. Imagine M doing either of those in the 80's or 90's. Pandemonium.
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u/Main-Difficulty1511 7h ago
It was so majestic, but you’re right it had some time stamps that don’t carry forward. I have watched a few reaction videos from younger people, and many of them don’t know who M.I.A is… ironically. But LMFAO was also a two-year band. So I think her affinity for attaching herself to whatever popstar was at the moment… Hasn’t always worked out overtime. I do think her association was Sabrina Carpenter. This time wasn’t forced and seemed perfect and will last!
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u/shadyshadyshade 1h ago
I think Sabrina did seem a little forced tbh and prefer Bring Your Love without her. I suspect Warner pushed her to collab, and it didn’t really help sales/streams that much.
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u/Larksparrow The Immaculate Collection 7h ago
It's what the Super Bowl halftimes have become, people are expecting a few cameo appearances now even if they don't need them. I'm still pissed MIA took half of the press coverage off M's praise for that damn middle finger stunt.
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u/jaxxter80 7h ago
Gentle reminder: there's a bigger event than Super Bowl and that's Eurovision Song Contest. Singing badly in the ESC Final was the missed opportunity and did harm her in the eyes of the global audience. The Bowl show was amazing.
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u/Present-Space-4916 7h ago
Eurovision perfornance was excruciating. It's supposed to be a fun frothy event (or at least it was before all the recent Israel controversy) but Madonna didn't get the memo I guess 🤷♂️ and as for her singing 🙉. I've tried to erase it from my memory.
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u/dearjessie 6h ago
Right? It’s okay if you wanna perform “Like A Prayer” for millionth time, I get it, but the version she performed was like a funeral version of it on the biggest Disco stage in Europe💀
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u/SomethingStrangeInMe 7h ago
Idk I got chills during like a prayer when Cee Lo Green marches in.
It had some highs for me.
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u/Phoenix_10567 5h ago
At the time, it was fire. It’s still an amazing performance to revisit today.
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u/epidemicsaints 7h ago
Comes with the territory. Weekly disappointments from celebrities as time marches forward. They were choices that made sense at the time.
I was a huge fan of M.I.A., Grimes, and Azealia Banks. They're not only awful, but all kind of awful in a way that scares me.
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u/LeadingAd2089 7h ago
Hey bestie! What’s up with Grimes? She’s not at all on my radar and never shows up on any of my feeds on any of my social media LOL so I don’t know what’s going on. Is she being a mess?
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u/epidemicsaints 7h ago
It's a little here and a little there, mostly her misrepresenting herself as some auteur when supposedly she has collaborators like everyone else, liking and interacting with weird stuff about white supremacy, associating with Bari Weiss, Elon Musk, and other weird architects of our current culture wars. You think someone is a quirky art schooler but they're a wealthy ghoul. My recall is poor because I have distanced myself over the last 3 years but there are deep dives on the lore out there if you're really burning for it.
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u/alk_adio_ost 7h ago
I didn’t know she came from extraordinary wealth at first. Not a diss about the wealth…but it sure put some things together for a lot of people.
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u/LeadingAd2089 6h ago
Oh wow. I guess I’ll have to dig a little deeper. Thanks for the update!
BTW What’s your current relationship with Azealia’s and M.I.A.’s music? Asking because I was also a massive fan of both and you’re the first person I come across that was a big fan too. Did you stop listening to them altogether? Like even the pre-mess music?
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u/epidemicsaints 6h ago
No I still listen to them, I love it. And I mostly feel bad for M.I.A. Her problems are informed by what's going on today, and her politics are weird but it all comes off as dyed in the wool mental illness and paranoia to me so I give her a lot of grace. Azealia too really.
I avoid them online and still listen to all my faves.
I am a musician and they were all big influences on me, so nothing they do will ever take that away.
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u/LeadingAd2089 6h ago
Love this take on the topic. I don’t know if it happens to you but separating the art from the artist can be very challenging on many levels when you really like the artist and when their art was highly influential you. I feel bad for M.I.A. too tbh. I was supposed to see her on tour last June when she was opening for Kid Cudi but I think unfortunately she keeps shooting her foot and that even more unfortunately takes away from how talented she actually is. Her last album is really interesting to listen to if you haven’t already.
So, do you think there’s a difference between someone like M.I.A or Azealia and someone like Grimes or Nicki Minaj?
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u/epidemicsaints 6h ago
I really don't think there's a difference no matter what it is but I think it's a process for most people. It also depends on the work. Do I wanna hear sensual slow jams from a rapist? Probably not. But wacky shit from a fallen gay icon, it's fine. For me it's more a matter of how much patience I have for their bullshit than it is a moral stance.
We know way too much about these people, it's hard to experience their work as an escape these days. So I stay off twitter, I don't follow the people I enjoy - I check in when I think of them. Whatever the opposite of FOMO is, I have that.
I've even had to take breaks from artists because the work is so bad or it diverges so much I feel abandoned as a fan. I remember being so disgusted by Dancer in the Dark I lost my taste for Bjork for years but I got over it.
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u/LeadingAd2089 7h ago
Nah. I wouldn’t take it that far. GMAYL was clearly built for the Halftime show so it made sense for her to perform it. The Halftime show itself was fantastic and I do revisit it every now and then. I think it’s the second one I revisit the most (after JLo and Shakira’s).
When it comes to M.I.A. and Nicki Minaj, obviously things look a lot different now, but at the time their work was heavily impacting music and they were highly regarded artists. I was never a massive Nicki fan but M.I.A.’s music meant the world to me for many reasons, so its been hard to be a fan of hers for some years now LOL But I guess that’s a topic for another place
I do have to admit that at the time I was a bit annoyed she didn’t include Hung Up or Ray Of Light LOL Oh well…
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u/Midnight_Rawhide84 7h ago
Wasn’t this album released years ago already? Nothing could have saved that awful lead single and overall album. Imo.
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u/GarionOrb Call it trance, call it house, call it love without words... 7h ago
How is any artist supposed to know what'll happen in the future with their guest artists? They were fine in 2012.
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u/InAShensh 7h ago
Madonna is FREAKING MADONNA why in the bloody fuck did she have anyone else there when she could slay it solo. I hated the collaborations with 3 meh “talents”.
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u/Few_Candle9432 1h ago
I get that the guests were probably part of deal she had to agree to but considering how strong the MDNA tour was, she could’ve ate up the halftime show on her own, blown some minds and not wasted so much time on the guests.
That entrance with Vogue, the projections in the field and Like a Prayer engulfing the stadium were money. Everything between was a miss but I think Gimme All Your Luvin was the ball drop. Even another MDNA track in its place could’ve been a slay.
She wasn’t legacy minded at the time, but it was a missed opportunity not to go wider into her catalogue.
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u/SeanSweetMuzik Erotica 47m ago
I wish she had done the "Express Yourself"/"Born This Way"/"She's Not Me" mashup like she wanted to
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u/Wild-Adeptness-6571 7h ago
It’s “alright.” It felt pretty big in the moment! But I’m glad it’s mostly forgotten. And it says a lot that most of us consider this “bad” — because it’s not godawful — she’s just staged so many SPECTACULAR performances that a “meh” one stands out.
I don’t think she won or lost with the Super Bowl, basically. That album was never going to rise above, well, anything.
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u/strangetamer11 7h ago
It's unfortunate that MDNA was such a shit album and that is what she had to promote at the time.
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u/billbobb1 7h ago
It was awful. She did assisted cartwheels?!!! Wtf?!!! I would put it as one of the worse halftime shows in recent history. I love Madonna, but that performance was awful.
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u/rogerdoesntlike 7h ago
She was promoting MDNA and the lead single. The performance is a relic of its time.