

The band’s keyboardist, PJ Morton, told People that they thought carefully about whether to play, and decided they could toe the line: “We can support being against police brutality against black and brown people and be in support of being able to peacefully protest and still do our jobs. And so a petition with 112,000 signatures and counting calls for Maroon 5 to drop out of the Super Bowl, and some celebrities, such as Schumer, have echoed the message. Perhaps since this is not really a band known for politics-the members seemed genuinely unaware of the “alt-right” connotations of their 2017 album title, Red Pill Blues-they would be exempt from the fray.īut a boycott drive is a boycott drive: The point, for Kaepernick’s supporters, is that no one should sing. And in a moment of division, maybe the fact that no one can’t hum along to “She Will Be Loved” could be thought of as unifying. Pop’s provocateurs can’t be called on every time. In any year, Maroon 5 would seem like a suitably bland choice for the Super Bowl stage, in line with the smiley mass appeal of the previous performers Coldplay and Bruno Mars. Still, after a reportedly difficult search, a willing headliner was found: Maroon 5, the Los Angeles septet that’s released airy-voiced diet-pop-rock smashes since 2002. And the comedian Amy Schumer said she turned down a Super Bowl commercial because of the athlete. Rihanna, Jay-Z, and other stars have spoken publicly about declining the 2019 gig out of allegiance to Kaepernick’s cause. Into this maelstrom comes the supposed diversion of the halftime show.

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Meanwhile, on the right, Trump has called for tuning out pro football because it’s not been more punitive to “ that son of a bitch” Kaepernick and his peers. By the fall of 2018, his followers had taken up a boycott effort in solidarity. When Kaepernick left his contract with his team at the start of the 2017 season and was not hired elsewhere despite solid performance stats-raising suspicion that he was being blacklisted for kneeling-he filed a legal grievance with the league. The situation has built to the point where even the most milquetoast entertainer will have a tough time navigating halftime. Kaepernick spurred a protest movement among players, which drew an intense backlash that Donald Trump gleefully stoked. The former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s 2016 decision to begin kneeling during the national anthem at the beginning of games, a gesture against institutional racism, set off a domino line that’s still falling today. The issue of race has indeed put the 2019 halftime show-and the game around it-in a strange spot. And Beyoncé helped usher in a new discussion about race by punctuating Coldplay’s set in Black Panther Party couture. In M.I.A.’s middle finger, America experienced the revenge of the punkish types whom the mainstream routinely steals from and defangs. Janet Jackson’s “ wardrobe malfunction” kicked off debates about decency and double standards. But popular culture’s fault lines have a way of surfacing, too. Big-tent icons-Prince, Bruce Springsteen, Madonna-have put on defining performances. Which is why the halftime show has historically been often dazzling, often disappointing, and perpetually contested. No musician would ever otherwise have that kind of audience for a single performance.
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Year after year, more Americans watch the game than any other TV event, and even with cord-cutting and controversy eating into NFL ratings recently, the Super Bowl still draws more than 100 million viewers from red and blue America alike.

There’s no bigger concert stage than the Super Bowl halftime show.
