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The uber-hype over Madonna’s upcoming Super Bowl halftime: A) extravaganza, B) marketing ploy, or C) disaster drill, with appearances by Nicki Minaj and M.I.A. got me to wondering whether this 12-minute made-for-TV blast has more potential for catastrophe than the much-maligned Nickelback appearance at the Detroit Lions’ Thanksgiving Day game at Ford Field.
To be fair, Nickelback never really stood a chance in November when the Canadian alt-rock band swooped down from the Great White North to: A) promote a new album, B) play a new song indistinguishable from their old songs, and C) jinx the Lions in their battle with the Green Bay Packers. After all, thousands of Take-Your-Nickelback-Back fans had signed an online petition begging the NFL to boot the band from halftime but were summarily ignored. Not surprisingly, the boos rained down on Nickelback’s halftime parade.
But while the nation’s eyes were peeled to that Turkey Day contest and Ndamukong Suh’s much-publicized: A) stomp, B) attempt to get “on balance” or C) complimentary cleat tattoo, the entire universe will tune into Sunday night’s Super Bowl pitting the New York Giants against the New England Patriots.
That means the pressure falls squarely on the marketing master, Madonna, to split the uprights with what amounts to a halftime commercial for her upcoming vowel-impaired album, “MDNA.”
Of course, if history is any measure, I’m guessing much of this contrived spectacle will be pre-recorded anyway to avoid: A) vocal slip-ups, B) wardrobe malfunctions or C) reality. In the tradition of: A) Britney Spears, B) Milli Vanilli and C) “The X Factor,” don’t believe everything you see/hear. Hey, I’m with Elton John on this one.
Nevertheless, the savvy material girl already is getting oodles of favorable publicity and she probably hasn’t even picked out what shoes she’ll wear that night. New York Magazine gushed in a recent headline that there are “Eight Reasons to Get Excited About Madonna’s Super Bowl Show.” Of course, the magazine was so darned excited that one of the eight “reasons” was: “It’s Madonna.”
Even the video for Madonna’s new single, “Give Me All Your Luvin’, ” (which she’ll apparently perform Sunday along with older hits such as “Vogue” and “Music”) segues into the Super Bowl by adopting a football theme as the 53-year-old singer attempts to revisit her high school cheerleader past.
She told MTV in P.T. Barnum-style that she has to assemble “the greatest show on earth” for halftime viewers who aren’t: A) taking a potty break, B) Tweeting their ratings of first-half TV ads, or C) watching the “Lingerie Bowl.”
As terrifying as this manufactured, three-ring pop circus might be when it unfolds under the Indy big-top, some Madonna fans might point out that:
– On the “Pure Michigan” front, Madonna is a Bay City native who attended the University of Michigan (and who said this week she’d like her daughter to Go Blue); Nickelback is from Canada and a U-M student started the stop-Nickelback-at-halftime petition drive.
– When you enter “Nickelback songs” into a Google search, “Nickelback songs sound the same” will pop up under popular searches. When you enter “Madonna songs” in a search, “Madonna songs everyone knows” appears.
I guess that means pretty much EVERYONE will be watching Sunday … but who would you really rather see?
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Email: jsinkevics@gmail.com
