Seven years after a wardrobe malfunction turned the Super Bowl halftime show into the world’s most watched oldies revue, contemporary music made a low-risk return to the broadcast last night with a performance from parent-approved rappers the Black Eyed Peas. The show was as gaudy as expected, all bland, shouted cheer and feel-the-love sentimentality, yet it was surprisingly rough around the edges, riddled with technical glitches even though it didn’t attempt anything all that technically difficult. The group made the curious choice of not lip-syncing, so when their vocals weren’t muffled by choppy microphones, they were swallowed by the unforgiving acoustics of the cavernous Cowboys Stadium. Even when Usher literally dropped in to sing his larger-than-life will.i.am collaboration “OMG,” one of the loudest, most massive Jock Jams of the last decade, it all felt very, very smallthough Usher’s dancing had the unfortunately consequence of highlighting how little dancing the Black Eyed Peas did. For being a quartet of young, professional dancers, they looked less limber than many of the senior citizens who have bogarted the show over the last six years.
But, at the very least, the Black Eyed Peas weren’t The Who, whose depressing, “CSI” tie-in performance on CBS last year marked one of the halftime show’s all-time lows. The Super Bowl is America’s largest cultural event of the year, so its halftime show should mark American culture at that moment in time. For all its faults, the Black Eyed Peas' performance was very 2011, filled with hits that even the most passive listener probably recognized from TV or recent trips to the mall. Greyed classic rockers singing 40-year-old songs could never provide the same context. There are Green Bay Packers fans who will from now on well up with memories of one of the franchise’s greatest triumphs every time they hear the opening chords of “I Gotta Feeling,” the Black Eyed Peas song played relentlessly in the run-up to and immediate aftermath of the team’s victory. I guarantee New Orleans Saints fans don’t get that same rush from “Baba O’Riley.”
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