Bruno Mars Returning To The Super Bowl Halftime Show?
By Michael Cerio
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- According to Entertainment Weekly, Bruno Mars has been offered the prime spot of headliner at this year's Super Bowl Halftime Show in Santa Clara, California.
If sources are correct, this would be Mars second time performing in three years, with Katy Perry going fins up in-between for 2014. This would also be an unprecedented repeat not seen since the days of Carol Channing in the early 1970s.
The Super Bowl Halftime Show first went pop culture in 1991 with New Kids On The Block in a performance which was actually tape delayed because of coverage of Operation Desert Storm. It was also overshadowed that year by the performance of the National Anthem, sung by Whitney Houston. The year before the headliner was an Elvis impersonator.
Gloria Estefan did some winter wonderland ice skating nonsense in 1992 when the game was held in Minnesota, but it was in 1993 when things got real. Michael Jackson jumped out of jumbotrons and healed the world with a giant globe in the center of the Rose Bowl that year, forever setting the standard for the Super Bowl Halftime Show.
They stumbled a bit through the rest of the 90s, often leaning too heavily on a theme. There was the salute to country music with Clint Black and The Judds, an ode to Indiana Jones with noted adventurer Patti Labelle, and a weird combination celebration of "Soul, Salsa, and Swing" that teamed Stevie Wonder with Gloria Estefan and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy.
Remember when that was a thing? We were all "so money" and we didn't even know it.
It was in 2001 though that the Super Bowl Halftime Show truly became a modern pop culture event, as Aerosmith, 'N Sync, Britney Spears, and Nelly took the field. Since then it has been a can't miss event, with everyone from U2, Paul McCartney, Beyonce, Prince, Madonna, and Bruce Springsteen taking center stage. It has brought wardrobe malfunctions, dancing sharks, and a phallic guitar into our world.
Now, it very well could bring us Bruno Mars, again.
Bruno Mars is great, but is "Uptown Funk" so good that we need to build a halftime show around him again just to hear it? He was just there.
And while we're at it, has Taylor Swift already said no? With Beyonce getting her turn in 2013, she has to be the first choice for everybody. Or perhaps this is the perfect goodbye to One Direction, or the chance to showcase the hits of the Foo Fighters. Rihanna probably scares the NFL board room to death but she would be amazing, or kick it country style with Carrie Underwood. The game is on CBS, maybe this is a chance to redo the finale of "How I Met Your Mother" in a manner more appropriate to people who stuck with it for nine seasons.
Sorry, that got personal.
The point is really that it's too soon to go back to the Bruno Mars well for an event as big as this. There's so much music out there that twice in three years seems uninventive and stale. Unless he brings along Left Shark, then let's do it.
