Ed Note: Juwan J. Holmes is a journalist and multipotentialite from Brooklyn, New York. He is currently a Contributing Writer at Mediaite.com and his work has appeared in The Independent, Rolling Stone, and Xtra Magazine, among other publications. He can be found on social media platforms at @JuwantheCurator in addition to @JuwantheWriter on Twitter.
Envision a time when the NFL’s place in American culture was tenuous. The world was becoming increasingly war-torn. An array of sociopolitical issues of the time gripped the entertainment and news cycle week after week. Social justice had a rising importance. Sports were not nearly as much of a distraction from the world as one might expect.
This time may seem close to the present, and largely, it is – but you could have also envisioned the world 30 years in the past, because a lot of these conditions were also in effect in early 1993, by the time Super Bowl XXVII occurred. Yes, that Super Bowl marked the Dallas Cowboys winning their first championship under Jerry Jones. But a more eternally legendary moment came from that game: The Halftime Show was headlined by the one and only Michael Jackson, who was the biggest superstar to ever perform at the time he held the gig (and, arguably, still is, although the competition’s much stiffer) as the most famous people to appear in Halftime Shows before the ‘90s were Anita Bryant (yes, that Anita Bryant) and Mickey Rooney.
Now, the upcoming Halftime Show will be headlined by Usher, just over 30 years after that show, which was months before his commercial debut as a music artist. There are more than a few similarities between Jackson and Usher – raised as child stars, world-renown for their dancing as much as their singing, endless intrigue into their personal lives – and the timing of their opportunity to perform during television’s most watched broadcast also comes at a similar point in both their careers and the NFL’s trajectory.
When Jackson performed at the Halftime Show, the NFL was desperate to avoid the embarrassment that had happened the year before: Fox, which wasn’t a NFL broadcaster at the time, aired In Living Color to counter-program the Super Bowl XXVI Halftime Show (featuring Gloria Estefan in a 1992 Olympics-themed figure skating display) and successfully beat them in the ratings during that half-hour. The year before, the NFL had the closest version of a modern Halftime Show with a Disney-produced show featuring the boy band New Kids on the Block right before the end of their prime – but the broadcast of it was preempted for most viewers by coverage of America’s initiation of Operation Desert Storm, which had commenced just days before in Iraq.
There were a lot of potential reasons why the NFL faced trouble going into the 1993 Super Bowl (cable networks on the rise, the 1992 LA race riots, that Super Bowl being held in Pasadena instead of its original host city – Tempe, Arizona – because the state initially refused to recognize Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as a holiday.) But with the King of Pop on stage, the NFL averted disaster – and in fact saw a boost in ratings mid-broadcast for the first time in history. Jackson’s performance is still considered one of the best Halftime Shows ever, and one of his last great performances of all time.
While no one alive compares to Jackson, especially in terms of global fame and universal acclaim, we can’t forget that Usher is one of the best male music artists of the present day. He has at least 18 releases with platinum record sales certifications from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for his own albums and singles alone; easily more if you incorporate worldwide certifications, non-RIAA plaques, and/or records he’s featured on (such as Romeo Santos’ “Promise,” which is RIAA-certified platinum 34 times over on its own.) In plain terms, he’s one of the most successful entertainers in history.
The Super Bowl’s mainstream cultural relevance is nowhere as insecure as it might have been in the 1990s, but the NFL’s place with supremacy in the American zeitgeist has been. Over the last several years, the league has been plagued with controversy after controversy of any and all kinds, ranging from (but not limited to): bullying, coverups of scientific data, abuses of power, and medical injuries, its mismanagement of domestic violence, harassment and abuse allegations, and settlements and lawsuits because of the aforementioned and many other issues. But no one issue has marred the NFL as much as racism: its occurrence in the league, how it’s viewed by those in the league, and how the league responds to it. It was at a Super Bowl pre-game press conference that former NFL.com columnist Jim Trotter confronted Roger Goodell about the lack of diversity in the league’s media department, mere months before he lost his job there.
The NFL has been trying to resolve their PR issues in part via the Halftime Show, especially since the Super Bowl LIII debacle in 2019, when several acts were reported to have turned down the invitation to headline before they settled for Maroon 5. After subsequent backlash at the lack of Atlanta-originating or Black entertainers at the Atlanta-hosted event, Big Boi and Travis Scott were subsequently – and awkwardly – pushed into the show, and the traditional pre-game press conference was canceled. Shortly afterward, the NFL partnered with Roc Nation and tasked Jay-Z with restoring the league’s image with a race-conscious – but also mainstream – approach.
The Roc Nation experiment has been met with mixed reception, and it’s been a steady source of criticism for both the NFL and Jay-Z, including from this writer. But the purpose of it has always been, and remains, clear: as I have also argued before, and the NFL has learned time and time again, the league relies on Black audiences to excel commercially, and the Super Bowl is not excluded from that. While Super Bowl LIV in Miami featured Shakira and Jennifer Lopez headlining the Halftime Show, every show since has been headlined by hip-hop and R&B acts, not coincidentally as it has become the most popular selling music genre in the world.
The last few Halftime Shows have been noteworthy and nowhere near as bad as many of the other shows in the 90s and 2000s, but they did not give the Big Game the lift in significance that shows from the late 2000s and early 2010s did, and the numbers don’t lie: between 2017 and 2023, every Super Bowl had lower ratings than Super Bowl 50 in 2016, and only 2020 had an increase in total viewers from the previous year’s event. 2017 was, uncoincidentally, the same year the Super Bowl was first held after Colin Kaepernick began kneeling during the national anthem.
With time and some changes (the NFL settled a lawsuit from Kaepernick and Eric Reid, and Kaepernick has resumed efforts to get back in the league), the NFL’s image has improved, but not fully mended, since. Getting Rihanna – perhaps the most notable name and one of the few confirmed to have turned down the show prior due to Kaepernick’s treatment – to take the job in February appears to be their biggest leap toward remedying the issue yet. There were few other artists left with the caliber of talent and resume in the realm other than Usher that would make a good choice to follow her up, since she received the highest ratings in the show’s history and made buzz for days after her midair pregnancy reveal.
Thus, Usher headlining this year was destined to be, and as written by Andscape’s Justin Tinsley prior to his announcement, he was really the only practical choice. Plus, he’s already been part of a Halftime Show – in 2011, as a guest of the critically-panned Black Eyed Peas-headlined show – so he’s not exactly a stranger to the moment.
His reputation has taken a few hits and his popularity has somewhat waned in the last decade, but Usher has excellently manufactured a career renaissance and maintained relevance in the recent years. Not only has his Vegas residency consistently sold out in advance since 2022, but he continues to chart and make radio waves with recent songs “Boyfriend” and “Good Good.” While his 2004 album Confessions clearly remains his magnum opus and most notable album, the 44 year-old is not in decline as an entertainer, and it has repeatedly shown with his continual ability to capitalize on going viral or collaborate with a litany of new-age artists that no one over the age of 25 probably pays much attention to.
Usher’s not particularly known for being outspoken specifically on racism, but he is not pretending to be race-blind either. In an Evening Standard profile last week, he said, “No matter how much we claim there’s fair treatment of people of colour in America today: there still isn’t. Progress starts with a recognition of our history. We can’t truly move forward until we understand, and acknowledge, our past.”
All of that is just supporting evidence to the main pull of Usher headlining the Super Bowl: he is just an undeniably unparalleled showman. Usher laid the foundation for a class of braggadocious, provocative, Jackson-wannabe crooners, but none have been as critically acclaimed in music or commanding a presence in culture as Usher has been, let alone for as long as he has. He is already considered one of the richest entertainers on the planet too, so the NFL’s longstanding policy not to pay their headliner (or most of the other on-stage talent in the show, until recently) probably isn’t too big of a barrier. But there is another driving factor that Usher has to try and appeal to the largest audiences available, especially now.
“I am now an independent artist [for the first time],” he told the Evening Standard, “so I am approaching the music with that energy and playfulness like it’s the first time again and I’m only just breaking through. I feel young when I’m on the stage.”
On the other end, it helps that the NFL and its media partners are currently fueling the tabloid frenzy around pop sensation Taylor Swift and Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce by fixating on her attendance, her actions during the game, and airing ads and marketing content around her mere presence at games. While cringeworthy on its face, it should be a positive sign for them that the league is conscious of its pop culture status. That means the league is at least not trying to actively embarrass itself, and the NFL has gotten this far with doing the bare minimum already, so I guess that makes it commend-worthy.
With the sideshow that is Aaron Rodgers off the field (for now), the exodus of walking PR disaster Dan Snyder and removal of the racist team name he championed, and the willingness of the public to move on from most of the league’s other glaring controversies, there is finally an opening for American football to pique pop culture interests once again.
The Super Bowl stage itself, though, is no stranger to controversy, the infamous “nip slip” wardrobe malfunction with Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake in 2004 chief among them, and while Paul McCartney and the Rolling Stones in 2005 and 2006 helped by avoiding further embarrassment, it wasn’t until Prince’s appearance in 2007 where the Halftime Show returned to – if not gained a new height of – modern glory. Sure, he rocked out on guitar rather than answer questions at the traditional press conference, and during the show he made a sexually suggestive silhouette of himself, but above all else, Prince put on the ultimate show. Intentionally or not, he showed the NFL – and the world – something that poet Robert Frost already hypothesized: the best way to move on from uncertainty is to go through, and put on the best show available. (“We all knew God was a fan of Prince when that happened. You couldn’t have curated a better moment,” Usher told the Evening Standard himself.)
Usher is the best show available to the NFL this time around, and he has the opportunity to re-envision it in a new fashion. Whether that will be closer to his or the NFL’s liking will be the most intriguing question leading up to the show. But even if Usher does something controversial or, even less likely, somehow bombs, the moment is primed for success.
