Written by Jon Williams
This coming weekend, the biggest American sporting event of the year will take place. Super Bowl LIII will determine the year’s NFL championship in a matchup between the Los Angeles Rams and the New England Patriots. Beyond its implications for the sport, the Super Bowl has become a huge cultural event, with over a hundred million people likely to watch in North America. Even people who normally don’t follow football tune in—for the camaraderie of sharing the event with friends, for the innovative commercials that air during the broadcast, and, of course, for the halftime musical entertainment.
With such a
wide audience, it’s no wonder that the halftime show is such a coveted slot for
musicians. The featured performer this year will be multiplatinum rock band Maroon
5. They’ve been a fixture in the music scene since 2004, when singles like “This
Love” and “Sunday Morning” propelled their debut album, Songs
About Jane, to multiplatinum status. They’ve released five more studio
albums since then, all of them selling over a million copies. Their most
recent, Red
Pill Blues, was released in 2017, driven by singles like “What Lovers
Do” (featuring SZA) and “Girls Like You” (featuring Cardi B). Singer Adam
Levine has also helped to keep the band in the spotlight by serving as a judge
on the hit musical talent show The Voice since its inception in 2011.
Traditionally
the Super Bowl halftime show is a collaborative affair, and this year is no
different. One musician joining Maroon 5 for the festivities will be rapper Travis
Scott. After several EPs and mixtapes, his debut album Rodeo
was released in 2015 and went platinum on the strength of singles “3500” and
Antidote, as well as guest appearances from stars like Kanye West, Justin
Bieber, and the Weekend, to name just a few. He followed that up in 2016 with Birds
in the Trap Sing McKnight, another platinum outing. His newest album, Astroworld,
was released in August of last year and is still a staple near the top of the
Billboard albums chart. Scott is nominated for three awards at this year’s
Grammys, which will take place a week after the Super Bowl.
Another
musician joining Maroon 5 and Travis Scott onstage will be Big
Boi, who hails from the Super Bowl’s host city of Atlanta. Along with Andre
3000 as the multiplatinum hip-hop duo Outkast,
Big Boi came into the spotlight in the mid-1990s. The duo has released six
albums together and won six Grammy Awards, including Best Rap Album and Album
of the Year for Speakerboxxx/The
Love Below in 2003. Since their last album together in 2006, Big Boi
has focused on his solo career. His debut, Sir
Luscious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty, came out in 2010. He’s
followed it up with two more albums, the most recent of which, Boomiverse,
came out in 2017.
While the
halftime show is the musical focal point of the Super Bowl, it’s also an
enormous honour for a musician to get the opportunity to sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" before the game kicks off. This year that honour goes to another Atlanta
native, Gladys
Knight. With a career dating back to the early 1960s, she is a true
R&B/soul music legend, both with her band the Pips and on her own. Known
for her early work, she has continued to record, with her most recent album, Where
My Heart Belongs, coming in 2014.
With so many
people watching the Super Bowl and its musical performances, patrons will no
doubt be interested in hearing more from these incredible artists. Make sure to
have plenty of their CDs on your shelves, and if your library is a hoopla Digital customer, don’t forget
to direct your patrons there as well—they’ll find these artists and more,
available with no holds, no waiting, and no late fees.
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