Skip to footer

Beyonce at Super Bowl 50: A look at the NFL's selection process for halftime

Singer Beyonce will return to the Super Bowl stage after having headlined the halftime show in 2013. She joins past acts such as Katy Perry and Bruno Mars.

|
Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP
Beyonce poses in the press room at the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards.

Singer Beyonce will be returning to the Super Bowl stage next month to perform alongside previously announced performer Coldplay. 

In 2013, Beyonce performed a halftime show along with former bandmates Michelle Williams and Kelly Rowland of Destiny’s Child.

Since this year’s game will be the fiftieth Super Bowl, some have wondered whether the NFL will bring back various past halftime show performers. 

Beyonce’s last studio album was the self-titled work which she released unexpectedly in 2013. Her albums have regularly topped the Billboard 200 chart, which measures album sales, within the last several years. 

Bringing back Beyonce may be a path to ratings success. Prior to a "wardrobe malfunction" incident involving Janet Jackson in 2004, the NFL often invited then-current performers like Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, and Justin Timberlake to take the stage during the halftime show.

But after 2004, the NFL invited a string of older acts to headline the show, including Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, and The Who. It has only been within the past several years that the shift has been made back to singers who are currently dominating the music charts. 

Last year, the Super Bowl featuring a performance by Katy Perry became the most-watched Super Bowl of all time. Second only to that show is the 2014 game, in which Bruno Mars, also an artist with hits that have recently appeared on the charts, took the stage. 

The NFL is most likely hoping to replicate this success by bringing Beyonce back to the stage (her 2013 show also did well in the ratings and is currently the fifth-most-watched Super Bowl of all time).

The group with which Beyonce will be sharing the stage, Coldplay, has done well recently on the charts as well, with their recent hit songs including 2014’s “Magic” and “A Sky Full of Stars.”

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Beyonce at Super Bowl 50: A look at the NFL's selection process for halftime
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Culture-Cafe/2016/0108/Beyonce-at-Super-Bowl-50-A-look-at-the-NFL-s-selection-process-for-halftime
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe