The Super Bowl packs a month's worth of pop culture into a loaded four-hour broadcast, so it's a little bit difficult to keep track of all its big music moments, but here's what jumped out at me the most:
* The Who's halftime show was a disaster, perhaps the worst halftime show in a decade. Many joked about the band being selected only because of their connections to CBS' "CSI" franchise, but it's hard to think of another reason CBS would have selected the corpse of this once-great band to sing a cruelly ironic medley of songs about youth. Roger Daltrey's voice was so shot to hell that even lip syncing couldn't disguise its wear. Mick Jagger caused a bit of a stir at The Rolling Stones' halftime show years ago when he exposed his abs. Pete Townshend had the same thing going on tonight, but to much less flattering effect. When I think of The Who, I want to think of eternal youth and rebellion. Townshend's exposed belly undermined that image.
* Arcade Fire won accolades from the entire Internet for donating the proceeds from licensing their song "Wake Up" to the Super Bowl to Haiti. Their generosity can't be overstated: They gave an estimated 200K to an admirable cause. I'd like to correct an assertion made by too many laudatory blog posts, though. Many of these posts, instead of simply commending the band simply for their remarkable generosity and commitment, lauded the band as icons of artistic integrity, compromising their values to license their sacred music to the Super Bowl, that universal symbol of mass-culture conformity (many posts noted the band once did battle with Fox for airing one of their songs during a Super Bowl without their permission). There was a bit of defensiveness to these posts, a certain “ordinarily the band would never do this” arrogance that left a sour taste behind in my mouth. I love Arcade Fire as much as the next guy, but let’s not ascribe false virtues to them. This is the same group that licensed that very same song in the ubiquitous movie trailers for Where The Wild Things Are, where it inundated us like Jerry Seinfeld’s frizzy hair in so many plugs for Bee Movie.
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* In related news, Grizzly Bear and Beirut featured their music in commercials. I’m guessing there will be no backlash.
%uFFFD * In unrelated news, T-Pain only appeared in one comedic Super Bowl commercial this year. I’d have guessed he was good for at least three or four.
