The Super Bowl halftime show is often highly praised or panned, we rarely seem to get mediocre results in America’s most famous musical show of the year. I was recently looking back through the past performers and realized I’m uniquely positioned to comment on the history of these events due to my age.

For the first 25 years or so the halftime show for the Super Bowl was largely an extremely conservative affair featuring a college marching band and some sort of cheesy theme. Occasionally, you’d see an individual performer included and later a dance group may be involved or even an organization such as Up with People who were featured in a few Super Bowls into the 1980’s.

Let’s just take the 1973 Super Bowl in the undefeated Miami Dolphins ’72 season for an example of an extremely yesteryear halftime show. That year in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum during the warmest Super Bowl ever (84 degrees at kickoff back when the game was during the day) the University of Michigan Band (gross) performed 3 songs and gave way to then 45-year old vocal singer and TV show host Andy Williams performing two more songs. Riveting stuff!

The first real modern Super Bowl halftime show didn’t occur until January 1991 when the Buffalo Bills lost the first of 4 straight title games that night inside Tampa Stadium when Scott Norwood’s game-winning kick sailed wide right. A couple years ago, SB Nation featured this performance in a video as their worst halftime show in NFL history:

In case you didn’t click on the video, the XXV halftime show was preempted by Gulf War coverage and only showed after the game in specific regions of the country, but the bones and layout of the modern Super Bowl performance were created featuring New Kids on the Block coming off the success of their multi-platinum fourth album “Step by Step.”

Most consider the 1993 Super Bowl (featuring the Bills getting blasted in their 3rd Super Bowl courtesy of the Cowboys) the real beginning of the modern halftime show thanks to the appearance of Michael Jackson. Eleven-year old me vividly remembers this performance:

Jackson was in the final year of his “Dangerous” tour, at the tail-end of his music and pop-culture icon status, and was able to do the unthinkable by increasing the rating of the Super Bowl during halftime. Remember, this was an era where rival networks would regularly promote their own content during halftime because the Super Bowl performances were always so boring and forgettable. For his part, Jackson would give his first one-on-one interview in nearly 15 years with Oprah 11 days after this performance, which also garnered mega ratings, and then he was accused of sexual assault in the summer of 1993. His life would never be the same nor would his career as an American icon.

These days, the NFL is spending upwards of $10 million for a 15-minute performance during the Super Bowl and they still do not pay the acts involved!

Interestingly, the next 4 halftime shows after 1993 were kind of duds (going from Michael Jackson to a ‘Rockin Country Sunday’ inside the Georgia Dome featuring Travis Tritt, Clint Black, and Wynonna Judd is a tough one for the NFL) before the Temptations and Boyz II Men brought things back for a Motown 40th Anniversary celebration during Super Bowl XXXII in San Diego.

Recently, Vultre.com ranked the best Super Bowl halftime shows (beginning with the iconic ’93 Jackson performance) and the results are interesting–and paired along with the recent show by Shakira and Jennifer Lopez–got me thinking about what we’ll see in the decades to come.

To me, there are two inescapable facts of modern Super Bowl halftime concerts:

1) The music continues to be close to irrelevant

2) Women acts are much more popular than men

We know the NFL tried to hit the re-set button after the controversial wardrobe mishap between Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson to end the 2004 Super Bowl. Luckily, the league was saved by the 2007 performance by Prince (#1 in Vulture’s and just about everyone else’s list) but that iconic show was surrounded by Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, and The Who through 2010. That’s some of the most popular musicians of all-time but it was an aging group that bombed on the big stage of the Super Bowl.

You’d think Justin Timberlake’s 2018 performance would’ve worked well but even that halftime show (#22 according to Vulture) was not received well. To be fair, Timberlake was at least a decade past his prime by this point (harsh but fair) and in the middle of a strange and poorly-selling album but you’d think perhaps the biggest male singer of his generation pumping out a string of hits would work well.

Is it simply a case of female sex sells more to the male-dominated NFL demographic?

Among the top 11 from Vulture you have Madonna, Beyonce, Katy Perry, Diana Ross, Lady Gaga, and the recent Shakira/Lopez show, plus Beyonce featured in the #8 performance (headlined by Bruno Mars), Janet Jackson and Jessica Simpson appeared for the #7 performance, and Britney Spears and Mary J. Blige showed up for #4 halftime show.

It does feel like the visual performance, dancing, and stage show aspects of the Super Bowl halftime shows are so impressive now that they are overshadowing the music. And these types of shows appear to favor women more especially when it comes to outrageously complicated and stunning outfits from the performer and supporting cast alike.

Take Beyonce’s 2013 performance, for example. She performed songs from 2000 and 2001 (Destiny’s Child songs with Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams in tow), two songs from 2003, one each from 2008 and 2009, plus two each from 2011, and one from 2012. Clearly, none of these songs were ancient but also nothing overwhelmingly fresh within the modern music scene at the time, either.

Yet, the show was fierce in large part because Beyonce (who made minimal costume changes, ripping off a small jacket) is simply fierce herself.

This is what makes the Super Bowl halftime show so unique. You don’t really need hot, fresh, or currently popular songs to carry you (Jennifer Lopez hadn’t released a solo single in 3.5 years prior to her Super Bowl appearance) but the need for an over-sized personality seems paramount.

Still, as I was watching the 2020 edition I couldn’t help and think that the halftime show is starting to have an Olympic opening ceremony feeling to it, especially as they ripped through 15(!) songs many with a distinctive Latin vibe. That made me curious if many years down the road we’re going to see even more elaborate and expensive halftime shows free from the shackles centering around one or two mega superstars.

I’d think this could happen once the Super Bowl begins its journey of being played outside of the United States. Will the NFL want a lineup of Billie Eilish and Lizzo attempting a German-themed show in Berlin for 2038 or is it better to use that time to craft an authenticate German show without American stars? This seems counter-intuitive to the celebrity-driven halftime shows now yet less concern for a musical star could provide the NFL with a longer time to craft a more creative and elaborate show in the future.