Key events
Adrian Horton
Puthers rise! Those opening jazzy keys made me a little nervous that we were heading into Fergie national anthem territory, but Charlie Puth, the niche-beloved pop artist (“You smoked, then ate seven bars of chocolate / We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist” goes a choice Taylor Swift lyric) delivered a smooth-as-butter rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner. Complete with a flyover and cutaways to troops in the Middle East (eek) of course. I will once again be returning to his excellent and deeply underrated 2018 album Voicenotes.
Benjamin Lee
Because it’s hard to put your shoes on, right?
Skechers here providing much-needed aid to adults struggling to put their shoes on without having some sort of breakdown. Their easy slip-ons are smooth enough to impress Sofía Vergara, an actor worth a reported $180m, who can probably just pay someone to put them on for her, I would have thought.
Benjamin Lee
Hoppers
Pixar, a company that used to turn the wildest premises into both critical and commercial gold, has been struggling to impress either side in recent years. After Elio was a historic flop for them, they’re hoping Hoppers might turn the tide, and they might have a safer hit on their hands. It’s a fun, grabby premise – tech that allows humans to masquerade as animals – and while there’s not that much here in this big game spot, here’s hoping the recent billion-dollar success of Zootopia’s animated animals will help nudge it along.
Benjamin Lee
Scream 7
Poor old Sidney Prescott. It’s almost been 30 years of menacing phone calls, non-lethal stab wounds, severed relationships (some literally), unwanted press attention, and now, as the Scream franchise continues to be more commercially successful than ever before (the sixth chapter was a record-breaker), here comes Ghostface threatening her teenage daughter. But as Sidney’s bad luck continues, Neve Campbell’s does the opposite. The actor was lured back after taking one film off over a pay dispute and it’s her most substantial role, and we assume salary, to date. The new spot offers more of the same, keeping the film’s long list of back-from-the-dead cameos under wraps, but the repetition is almost reassuring, the biggest secrets not being spoiled just yet.
Justin and Hailey Bieber are here, spotted entering a private suite to watch the game.
Adrian Horton
Ok we’re back to the musical performances, with Americana singer-songwriter and Washington State native Brandi Carlile for America the Beautiful. We’re now 3 for 3 on solid performances – she sounds gorgeous, with just the right level of twang.
And for the New England Patriots, we have… Jon Bon Jovi? Ok this one confuses me as Bon Jovi is famously from New Jersey, home to the New York Giants and now the New York Jets, but I guess he is a Pats fan. Where are the Wahlbergs?
Benjamin Lee
Your hair is sad
A quick moment here to feel bad for all your unwanted body hair which, according to Manscaped, misses being on you so much that it sings a sad little song before it’s washed down the drain. Pretty scary, honestly.
Owen Myers
Nostalgia-bait goes boring
It’s hard to make accounting software sexy, and it’s some credit to Ramp that they don’t even try with their ad featuring The Office US’s Kevin Malone. But it doesn’t do much beyond prompting a watery smile of recognition, and I still have no idea what Ramp is actually for.
Adrian Horton
We’re drifting dangerously close to the football here, but the teams are taking the field with the now-traditional blessing of some celebrity fans. First up, longtime Seattle Seahawks diehard Chris Pratt, who introduces his hometown team with his young son.
Owen Myers
As a procession of Super Bowl MVPs walk on to the pitch Green Day take to the stage, opening with Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) and segueing into Holiday. As the crowd on the pitch pump devil-horns foam fingers , the trio look like they’re having a great time, and Billie Joe Armstrong still sounds incredible. After a bit of Boulevard of Broken Dreams, the short set climaxes with American Idiot accompanied by a bizarre procession of football legends like of Tom Brady, Peyton Manning and Joe Montana onto the stage. A fun, punchy opener.
Adrian Horton
Reason number 454984 to love Bad Bunny: he understands that when the 2014 banger that is Break Free by Ariana Grande featuring Zedd comes on, you gotta belt.
Owen Myers
According to a feature in the Hollywood Reporter, the cost of booking a 30-second Super Bowl ad will now run you up to $10m, with most companies paying at least $8m for a commercial at the US’s most-watched TV event of the year. That price has doubled since the $5m going rate in 2017, leading brands to tighten their belts with A-list talent fees. “The days of a $10-or-15-million-dollar payday for a Super Bowl commercial are largely over,” WME’s Tim Curtis told THR. Lest you feel too sorry for the celebs, though, they can still expect to make $3-$5m per ad.
Adrian Horton
The musical performances have started! First up we have R&B star Coco Jones, singing Lift Every Voice and Sing, the hymn widely known as the “Black National Anthem.” In a dramatic outfit that recalls, to me, Whitney Houston’s iconic Super Bowl tracksuit, she sounds simply incredible, especially that last high note.
Owen Myers
The Carter family have arrived to Levi’s Stadium, with Jay-Z, Blue Ivy and Rumi all clad in black game day looks. That only leaves Beyoncé as a conspicuously absent …
Owen Myers
Expect to see a whole lot of AI in the commercial breaks, whether with mostly AI-generated ads (such as Svedka’s dancing robots) or commercials that show AI assistants like Google Gemini and Amazon Alexa interacting with real people. Last week, Anthropic released an ad poking fun at OpenAI’s move to allow ads, which Sam Altman quickly slammed as a “dishonest” take on what is in store for ChatGPT users. Super Bowl night will also mark a newcomer to the AI race with an ad for ai.com, the new platform from Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek. His product is billed as an autonomous agent that can organize your daily tasks and even update your dating profile.
Adrian Horton
Happy Benito Bowl day for all who observe! While I suppose some are here to watch the football, many more will be tuning in for Bad Bunny’s half-time show, the first ever performed in Spanish.
The Puerto Rican superstar, who sings almost entirely in Caribbean Spanish, has promised a “huge party” – and as a fan, I have no doubt he will deliver – but his very presence on the biggest stage in US pop culture is freighted with politics, especially as the Trump administration is actively profiling Spanish speakers for immigration enforcement. Numerous members of the Trump administration have denounced him. At the same time, many fans who now see him as a symbol of resistance are racing to learn Spanish ahead of his show. So last week, I spoke with several experts – Bad Bunny scholars, Puerto Rican scholars and half-time show historians – about how the artist born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio found himself at the center of a very heated US culture war.
Benjamin Lee
Non-football celebrities are here! Many more to come…
Bad Bunny, good time?
Benjamin Lee
Here we go again. The NFL’s biggest night, set to be watched by more people than anything else on TV this year, has arrived and here’s where to find everything that doesn’t involve who wins or loses.
For non-sportsheads, it’s a major night for Bad Bunny who, like Kendrick Lamar last year, is following up major success at the Grammys with the prized halftime show. He’s an easy pick, given both his popularity and well-documented experience with impressing a crowd, but at this divisive moment, he’s also become a controversial choice for some on the right. He showed last Sunday that he’s unafraid to go there if needed, with a direct anti-ICE speech, but we’ll have to see how he chooses to play it tonight and how Trumpers will react. Hoping and praying for as little conflict as possible…
Every development will be tracked here along with all of tonight’s biggest and most expensive ads (spoiler: it’s a big night for AI slop). Stick with us!
