Fireworks! Wow!: Thoughts on the Super Bowl Halftime Show

As a die-hard Seahawks fan, this year’s Super Bowl was very disappointing in ways that will haunt me for a long time. The ecstasy of that incredible bobble-catch followed up by the agony of the botched final offensive play was too much for me, and I would just like to forget about the actual sports aspect of the event for a good long while. Thankfully, I can turn my attentions to the other main attraction of the Super Bowl: Katy Perry’s halftime show.

As a primer to the rest of this article, I would just like to say that I feel no strong opinions one way or the other about Katy Perry. Like many Top 40 artists, she has songs that I love and songs that I hate yet have stuck in my head on a constant loop. Her lyrics are generic—she never sings about anything but sex or self-empowerment—and her voice is decent, but her production team and management have crafted her into an entirely unique pop phenomenon regardless. In today’s pop landscape, she occupies a sort of “bombshell” archetype that few other singers seem to gravitate towards; in public appearances, she tries her hardest to come off as glamorous yet still fun, crass and identifiable. Perry loves kitsch and Americana, rejecting the traditional Marilyn Monroe inspirations that so many singers favor these days in pursuit of being a modern-day Bettie Page.

This was all on display at this year’s Super Bowl halftime show. My expectations were low after Bruno Mars’ blandly competent and exceedingly dull showing last year, so I was pleasantly surprised at how entertaining Perry’s performance was. Perry’s halftime show was chockfull of spectacle, energy and, above all, fun. She reinforced the notion that she exists in a Technicolor fantasia, and her sets were basically living cartoons.

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Perry opened the show resplendently riding a Julie Taymor-esque giant tiger and singing her hit “Roar” in a get-up not unlike Chad Michael Michael’s figure skating outfit from Blades of Glory. The rest of the set showcased a vertiginous chessboard, a beach full of anthropomorphic trees and beach balls and a comet that cheesily soared around the stadium. There were, of course, fireworks by the dozen, but what Super Bowl halftime show would be complete without excessive pyrotechnics?

Perry, as always, was game throughout the whole thing. Her voice, which veers towards shoutiness in smaller venues, proved to be a natural fit for filling the massive University of Phoenix Stadium, and she was a competent lip-syncher when not singing. Her dancing was lovably goofy, never more so when flanked by one of the two breakout stars of the whole show. The dancing sharks were the perfect representation of her aesthetic, a great blend of cartoony nonsense and shameless fun. That they were out of sync while dancing made it all the more fun and enjoyable. For Perry, though, the other breakout star almost clouded over her entire performance. The comeback of Missy Elliott, ten years in the making, was the true highlight of the halftime show and indubitably the biggest water-cooler moment in the subsequent days.

Elliott was utterly dominant in her return to the public spotlight after a long bout with Grave’s Disease. Performing a medley of her classic hits “Get Ur Freak On,” “Work It” and “Lose Control,” she was electric, dancing and rapping as she stole the show. Perry was wise to sit back and play hype-man for Elliott’s set, and she added to the sense of camaraderie and looseness prevalent throughout the whole show. However, the exceedingly high quality of Elliott’s vocals and performance overshadowed Perry, and the momentum died considerably after Elliott left and Perry ascended her shooting star to perform “Firework,” her one major vocal misfire of the night. Both artists fared incredibly well in comparison to poor Lenny Kravitz, who was reduced to faking his way through a guitar solo and singing a gender-reversed version of “I Kissed A Girl” in what was essentially a cameo.