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IslandBreeze

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a friend told me today about a horrible article from het laatste nieuws :electropop: i hope it was that, as i'd hate it if there'd be another article in this boring country dissing her performance. she honestly doesnt deserve the hate she gets here. they're even trashing her for ticket prices (which are in the same amount as those of U2, where one one had a problem with)

Yep it was that one :rolleyes:

So where's that Newsweek interview where she talks about Ticket prices? I wanna c the real quote.

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Agree, although we cant understand how such a cunt got hs own show in the US, but you can keep him. Another reason to hate Simon Cowell for bringing this arsehole back to the mainstream.

He's worse than anything the UK has ever inflicted on us and for the life of me I don't understand how or why he has a tv show either. We are mad at you guys for spawning thst queen faggot cunt - the same spawn as that big-titted Simon Cowell queen. Here's hoping he gets cancelled.

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From the Chicago Tribune…

In the mecca of conspicuous consumption that is the Super Bowl, Madonna – the most material of all the girls – was right at home Sunday as the queen of halftime.

Wearing a winged tiara and knee-high leather boots, she entered like Cleopatra as part of a glittering parade, apparently on her to way to an S&M party in Ancient Egypt.

She strutted down nostalgia lane with “Vogue,” her vaunted dancing somewhat constrained, perhaps because of her high heels. She did sit astride another dancer, however, in keeping with the party “theme.”

By the end she was flogging a world peace message during the once-controversial “Like a Prayer.” If nothing else, the Super Bowl teaches us that even the biggest trend-setters and button-pushers tone it down and become acceptable eye-candy between halftime dips into the chili bowl.

She was accompanied by a cast of hundreds: dancers, drummers, tightrope-jumpers, plus pop stars LMFAO, Nicki Minaj and Cee Lo Green. The one outlier was M.I.A., a singer-rapper with the kind of underground resume unusual for Super Bowl halftimes. But if you turned away to reload on nachos, you probably missed them — each performer got only seconds of screen time. This was Madonna’s party and besides breaking off bits of her greatest hits to remind people of a time when she was the biggest pop vixen on the planet, she had important career-advancing work to do.

Madonna, after all, never does anything unless she’s got something to sell, and with a new studio album due out in March and a tour to follow, she had plenty on her to-do list. The Super Bowl has become the biggest stage for shills of all kinds, pop stars included, and halftime has turned into a 12-minute branding opportunity in recent years for artists brandishing new albums, whether Bruce Springsteen or the Black Eyed Peas.

“Give Me All Youre Luvin’,” the new song inserted into the set list, had a – surprise! – football theme, a techno take on Toni Basil’s 1980s cheerleader anthem, “Mickey.” The song was glutted with cameos by Minaj and M.I.A., who dutifully moved their lips along with the backing track being piped through the stadium speakers in Indianapolis. M.I.A. did manage to insert herself into the post-halftime chatter, however, by flipping a left-handed, one-finger salute.

Twenty years ago, one might’ve expected such rudeness from Madonna herself, but in a pregame interview she vowed no “wardrobe malfunctions” to match the Super Bowl scandal pinned on Janet Jackson a few years ago.

Madonna has never really been about “live” performance; her concerts are essentially theatrical exhibitions accompanied by piped in music. This performance was no different. But the song fell flat for other reasons – it just isn’t arresting in the way prime Madonna could be. Rhyming “Ya wanna” with “Madonna,” recasting herself as a cheerleader for a sport that she’s barely noticed in decades past – it was the Material Girl who couldn’t deliver the goods.

The National Anthem was notable if only because the performance by Kelly Clarkson was so straightforward. Unlike last year, when Christina Aguilera tried to make the song all about her and flubbed a line in the process, Clarkson gave a strong, dignified reading backed by martial drumming and a children’s choir. Not coincidentally, Clarkson’s rendition checked in at 1:34, a full 20 seconds more concise than Aguilera’s gymnastics exhibition. Clarkson’s anthem was preceded by Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert, who dished up dignity with a twang on “America the Beautiful.” Understatement at the Super Bowl – what a concept.

Read more: http://www.madonnarama.com/posts-en/2012/02/06/madonnas-super-bowl-halftime-show-draws-mixed-reviews/#ixzz1lZPbraDs

:doh:

She has mimed TV appearances on her record (as so do many other acts, even those who are considered vocally more endowed than she is) and some parts of some tours (BAT, GS and parts of S&S) but if you write that you're implying to a casual listener/reader she NEVER sang or sings live which just isn't true.

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Madonna’s Superbowl Halftime Show: A Celebration of the Grand Priestess of the Music Industry

http://vigilantcitizen.com/musicbusiness/madonnas-superbowl-halftime-show-a-celebration-of-the-grand-priestess-of-the-music-industry/

Edited by dollhouse
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It turns out this had been coordinated for some time. Madonna’s team contacted Wintour and the magazine in early January. Vogue, which has a longstanding relationship with the pop icon, immediately cooperated and authorized the use of its trademark. There was no charge.

“We’re so very grateful to Madonna to have been part of such a spectacular performance,” Wintour said, not surprisingly — when does a magazine get free publicity in front of 100 million TV viewers? As Wintour said, “We naturally expect a new audience of football fans.”

:bow:

Only Madonna could come up with such a brilliant idea.

By doing that she's also saying "I am the Queen of Fashion and the Entertainment industry" :clap:

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One of my FAVORITE reviews: ESPN. (Read from beginning to end, starts out questionable and ends up definitively).

Gay Coding and Madonna's (Brilliant) Halftime Show

In most male sports and some movies, it's entirely possible to not notice that sometimes the grabbiness, emotional intimacy, and prolonged contact is absurd. It's possible to watch 300 and think, with a straight face, that it's just the greatest man-to-man combat movie ever made, that there's nothing gay about a bunch of half-dressed warriors battling for control of some place called the Hot Gates. Madonna is not one of those people. Madonna is Miss Hot Gates 1984-1995. She probably watched 300 and thought it needed another zero. So last night during her Super Bowl halftime show, there that zero was.

A phalanx of muscled gladiators brought her to the stage on a Roman float (the guys in 300 were Greek, but let's not mince civilizations), and she opened the show with "Vogue." Unlike previous halftime acts, Madonna doesn't have a "Let's Go Crazy," a "Start Me Up," or a "Let's Get It Started." She has a no. 1 hit inspired by a poor, black, gay underground that held drag balls inspired by old Hollywood glamour and Dynasty. Madonna kicked off her halftime show with that. She lip-synched the show in a way that turned her into a drag queen doing herself, and cleverly remixed the song so that "ladies … fellas" became just "ladies." Vogue cover boys struck poses on the field of screens at her feet, while her costume people gave us a taste of how the Caesars Palace version of Eyes Wide Shut might go.

Next, she brought out some impressive parkour B-boys and one wire-dancing gentleman in a toga from Cirque du Soleil who made the world grab its collective crotch. She featured a bland new song whose best parts are rapped by Nicki Minaj and M.I.A., two women as subversive now as Ms. Hot Gates used to be. (M.I.A. actually gave the finger to the cameras.) And to close the whole thing out, Cee Lo Green, a marching band, and a choir showed up for what became "Like a Prayer." Then, in a blast of silent-movie fog, Madonna was gone.

She had come to Indianapolis to feminize, kitsch, and queer the Super Bowl, and by that measure her 12 minutes were a success. Madonna's genius as an artist has been to remove subtext and eliminate the underground, to put everything out in the open. (I mean, she published a sex book called Sex.) This doesn't mean she is free of mystery (do you understand "Like a Prayer"?), but, for decades, her entire point is that everything good and important should be mainstream. No one should hide or be hidden. There is no shame in whoever you are.

It's true that this message was more exciting coming from a 33-year-old Madonna than from the current 53-year-old version. But I'd rather get it from her than from, say, the importantly self-important Lady Gaga, Madonna's most aggressive acolyte. With Gaga, every anthem is a hashtag. With Madonna, the anthems have actually lasted. At the height of her powers, Madonna wouldn't have been asked to go near the Super Bowl (as Gaga today would never be), but last night was a reminder that she's far from irrelevant.

She knows that she and football have nothing to do with each other, but her show managed to embrace womanliness and flamboyance in a way that didn't affront masculinity. Nothing homosexually gay happened on that stage. But it seemed to liberate people who watch sports both casually and obsessively to observe, with what sounded like a degree of amused catharsis, how gay Madonna's show felt. For a moment, we got a break from "no homo." Still, you wonder whether Elton John, George Michael, or Adam Lambert performing the same show would have produced the same sense of relief — or just panic. That's not Madonna's barrier to break. That's the NFL's.

Madonna's 12 or so minutes didn't feel entirely strange. They felt safe, and in that safety, the show was actually fun. Nearly everyone in the Boston bar where I watched the game was into it, even the big, stressed-out white guy in the Patriots sweatshirt who just knew New England would lose — that guy pointed at one of the 52-inch monitors and mouthed, "Come on. Vogue." As Madonna would put it, that's music. But with her, it's always slightly more than that. We've had almost 30 years of Madonna. And I'd say she's proven as integral to our understanding of self-expression as the Children's Television Workshop.

Wow thanks so much for posting this. It's a super amazing article .

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Guest Xanthium

Piers Morgan is an insane person. I bet he furiously masturbates to the thought of Madonna. Why does he think that anyone would care if he hates Madonna, which is obvious that he doesn't. He would so have her on his show in a heartbeat if she said she wanted to.

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Guest groovyguy

http://music.uk.msn.com/talking-points/madonna-v-lady-gaga-how-the-queen-of-pop-reclaimed-her-throne

Madonna v Lady Gaga: How the Queen of Pop reclaimed her throne

Why Madonna's Super Bowl performance proves she's still light years ahead of Lady Gaga…

6C48D9CCF3CD18707C92712AD04BBC.jpg

For the last three years it has seemed as if The Queen of Pop was a title we only bestowed on Madonna as an affectionate courtesy for all the work she's put in, and that the real crown was actually now firmly on the head of Lady Gaga (when she isn't wearing a cup, some ham or a fascinator made out of beagles and moon rocks).

At the half-time of a sporting event we can't begin to fathom, Madonna changed the game.

Or more accurately, Madonna used the 2012 Super Bowl to remind everyone that the game is hers and that she is still the best pop star we've got, and any young pretender, no matter how ambitious/creative/deranged, is going to have to work a whole lot harder for a whole lot longer to even get near the ball.

Long gone are the days when the pop world was ruled by giants. Madonna, Michael Jackson and Prince once strode about the Earth performing vast, dazzling, theatrically thrilling, stadium-busting concerts other acts could only dream about (as their accountants pointed to the bank balance and shook their heads).

Now, even our biggest stars seem to exist on a more manageable scale.

Certainly pop concerts are still big, flashy, laser-filled, dancified affairs, packed to the popcorn-odoured rafters with costume changes, trap doors, daft props and glitter canons.

But such fripperies are now commonplace, expected and done on the cheap.

That was until Gaga decided it was a perfectly shrewd business move to lose money on a tour - such were her extravagant technical tastes.

66967E7AF4A3DA10AF11118E6645D.jpg

Madonna takes it to 'a whole other level'

Yet while Gaga's gigs are a riot of high camp, gore and awe (recently revealed stage plans for the Born This Way tour suggest the action will take place in a castle), Madonna's Super Bowl show was on a whole other level.

We'd go so far as to call it her most inventive and impressive display since 1990's Blond Ambition concerts and the best use of a video floor since the Beijing Olympics.

Most importantly she made several million dollars worth of excessive, advertiser-attracting, attention-demanding spectacle look almost effortless and hugely entertaining. Did you clock that smile during Music?

Madonna genuinely looked to be having the time of her life up there with the hyper-real Nicki Minaj, M.I.A. and her naughty finger, the frat-buffoons LMFAO, the Reverend Cee Lo Green, Roman centurions, cheerleaders, marching bands, and... oh my, we had forgotten what we were missing.

Madonna makes pop fun; now we remember!

Because no matter how fascinating The Haus of Gaga's work is (and we're not bored yet, despite the media saturation), their creative director sure goes a long way to make it seem like a thankless task.

In her interviews she's always keen to stress just how much "hard work" goes into being this otherworldly superstar.

And while we appreciate the extra effort, her job is simply to make some nice pop records, wear daft clothes and emerge from an egg from time to time.

9758ABB6221CFD2C3F5615F894237.jpg

"Her job is simply to make some nice pop records, wear daft clothes and emerge from an egg from time to time"

Gaga doesn't seem to enjoy herself

And yet we don't get the sense Ms Germanotta is actually enjoying herself from the über-serious and often incomprehensible way she discusses her art. To borrow a phrase from an old editor of ours, we don't want to hear the labour pains; we just want to see the baby.

The main difference between Madonna's approach to her work and Gaga's is that Ms Ciconne never makes it feel like a task. Being Madonna is always what Madonna has wanted to do, and it's what she does best. She positively revels in being Madonna. Or at least she used to before the marriage, religion and film directing made her boring.

The first sign that the fun, solipsistic Madonna was back came when she was overheard expressing her disgust at the flowers presented to her by a fan. It was the Madonna of In Bed With Madonna - hilariously callous and particular.

The second sign was when she responded to the media brouhaha about hydrangea-gate with a tongue-in-cheek video begging for absolution (once a Catholic...)

The third indicator that the Queen of Pop was returning to her throne was a literal one: her arrival onto the Super Bowl stage on a colossal, man-pulled chariot - fit for a Cecil B. DeMille directed Cleopatra.

These are good signs.

"What are you looking at?"

When Michael Jackson played the same show in 1993, he pulled off the illusion of darting from one side of the stadium to the other, as if to say, "You think you see me but you don't. I'm elusive. You can't pin me down". By contrast, Madonna's entrance was slow, stately and supremely confident. All eyes were on her as she drawled, "What are you looking at?"

It was the entrance of someone at ease with her self, her stardom and her sense of humour.

And no, we don't think Give Me All Your Luvin' (don't you just hate that spelling?) is going to trouble any 'best songs of all time' charts. Personally, we'd rank it as only our 59th favourite Madonna single, although we appreciate the Daphne & Celeste influence (we'll never forget you, girls).

And judging by the titles on her upcoming album MDNA (that joke isn't funny anymore, is it?) we're not looking at classic songwriting (Gang Bang? Really?)

"And if you think singing live is more important than being spun upside your head by impossibly elastic dancers, then you don't understand pop at all"

But it doesn't matter if these new songs aren't the best songs of her career, because we've 11 previous albums to pick from. There's no shame in trading on past glories if no one else's current glory comes close.

Lady Gaga has made two and a half albums so far, and while she's racked up a few cracking singles, at this point in her career Madonna had given us Holiday, Lucky Star, Borderline, Like A Virgin, Material Girl, Crazy For You and Into The Groove.

There's no comparison.

It seems ludicrous and unfair to Gaga that we even began to consider her worthy of pop royalty so soon. She's achieved an awful lot in a very short amount of time, but let's give it 30 years before we see if Madonna needs to abdicate.

And no, as we're tired of reading in the comments sections of websites, Madonna didn't sing live for the majority of the performance, but then you can't be spun upside your head by impossibly elastic dancers and still hold a note immediately afterwards.

It's one or the other.

And if you think that singing live is more important than being spun upside your head by impossibly elastic dancers, on a night like that, then you don't understand pop at all.

However, for those of you who still think singing is a competitive sport, her rendition of Like A Prayer was all her own live voice and it was faultless.

Touchdown Madonna.

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http://music.uk.msn.com/talking-points/madonna-v-lady-gaga-how-the-queen-of-pop-reclaimed-her-throne

Madonna v Lady Gaga: How the Queen of Pop reclaimed her throne

Why Madonna's Super Bowl performance proves she's still light years ahead of Lady Gaga…

This article pretty much says it all. :clap:

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http://music.uk.msn.com/talking-points/madonna-v-lady-gaga-how-the-queen-of-pop-reclaimed-her-throne

Madonna v Lady Gaga: How the Queen of Pop reclaimed her throne

Why Madonna's Super Bowl performance proves she's still light years ahead of Lady Gaga…

6C48D9CCF3CD18707C92712AD04BBC.jpg

Madonna takes it to 'a whole other level'

Yet while Gaga's gigs are a riot of high camp, gore and awe (recently revealed stage plans for the Born This Way tour suggest the action will take place in a castle), Madonna's Super Bowl show was on a whole other level.

We'd go so far as to call it her most inventive and impressive display since 1990's Blond Ambition concerts and the best use of a video floor since the Beijing Olympics.

Madonna makes pop fun; now we remember!

Because no matter how fascinating The Haus of Gaga's work is (and we're not bored yet, despite the media saturation), their creative director sure goes a long way to make it seem like a thankless task. In her interviews she's always keen to stress just how much "hard work" goes into being this otherworldly superstar.

Gaga doesn't seem to enjoy herself

And yet we don't get the sense Ms Germanotta is actually enjoying herself from the über-serious and often incomprehensible way she discusses her art. To borrow a phrase from an old editor of ours, we don't want to hear the labour pains; we just want to see the baby.

The main difference between Madonna's approach to her work and Gaga's is that Ms Ciconne never makes it feel like a task. Being Madonna is always what Madonna has wanted to do, and it's what she does best. She positively revels in being Madonna.

Word

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Guest jamesshot

That review confirms Like A Prayer was sung live. On youtube, from the many videos posted by those in the audience, you can hear her breathing in and out as she sings the song but that isn't the case for Vogue, Music or GMAYL.

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Guest groovyguy

http://www.forbes.com/sites/lizgarcia/2012/02/06/response-to-madonnas-half-time-show-was-ageist/

Response to Madonna's Half-Time Show Was Ageist

Liz W. Garcia, Contributor

The talk in the press today, the day after the Superbowl, is all about musician MIA giving the middle finger to America during the half-time performance. But the talk DURING the halftime performance was all about Madonna being old, a trend I find disturbing and lame given that on any other year, it’d be Tom Petty or Garth Brooks, or a middle-aged male musician whose appearance would not elicit ageist remarks. But in spite of the fact that Madonna is 53 years-old and lept from a kneeling position to standing, over and over whilst wearing spike heels (go ahead, try it, and when you’re done icing your knees, read on) and keeping pace with her twenty-something backup dancers, the focus was on her age. ‘Least it was, overwhelmingly, on my social media feeds. And no, I’m not just friends with jerks.

During her performance, I logged in to Twitter to find at least a dozen varieties of the same joke, that went something like “Nice halftime show (insert name of old person here.)” Comedians I admire had their turns at her: Steve Martin said Maggie Smith. Michael Ian Black said Joan Rivers. Friends of mine mentioned “grandmother” and “melting skin.” So, while the facts –i.e. the performance that, according to Deadline Hollywood, 48.1 million eyes beheld — suggest that Madonna is quite vital, the jokes suggest that people watched her and they found her laughably old. What’s so funny about a 53-year old woman performing the half-time show? Tom Petty was 57 and Bruce Springsteen was 59 when they did their respective halftime shows. Must be the ‘woman’ part of the equation, huh?

We live in a world where Fox makes an “amusing” commercial from clips of 63-year-old musician Steven Tyler flirting with American Idol contestants, who, because of the contest’s age restriction, we can deduce are younger than 30. In one, after a particularly spirited and sexy audition, he says ‘You must be crazy… (falters, catches himself) on the dance floor.’ Oh yeah, real hilarious. After you’ve read this article on Jezebel about his history with underage women, you’ll laugh ’til you cry. And it’s a world where we cut down an uber-successful female entertainer because she dares to entertain at the age of 53. It’s a world where every darn TV pilot season, I read the same words “our female lead, (Name), age 28.” Twenty-eight. Were you solving crime, busting terrorists or performing heart surgery at 28? I sure wasn’t. But women on TV have to be young. Women romancing our leading men in the movies have to be young. When I read about Clint Eastwood’s latest film starring himself and Amy Adams, I half-expected she’d be playing his wife (well, he DOES have a thing for redheads).

What does any of this matter, apart from the icky burst of mean-spiritedness? It matters because your wives and daughters and sisters and mothers are gonna get older, too, y’all, and they’ll take those kind of cracks seriously. It matters because this ageist mentality translates to the images we send out into the wide world in TV and film, and where we disproportionately prioritize youth we send the message to our young women that they are relevant only briefly and superficially, like shooting stars. Or like pop stars.

Read the comments on the article. Very interesting comments.

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NY Post

It was a Madge of honor

Eternally young Material Girl did nation proud

Last Updated: 11:57 AM, February 6, 2012

Posted: 2:19 AM, February 6, 2012

06.2n004.halftime2.C.TA--300x300.jpg

GIMME AN ‘M’! Madonna and her dancers combine Cleopatra and cheerleaders while performing “Music” and her upcoming single, “Gimme All Your Luvin’ ” during the halftime show at yesterday’s Super Bowl at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.

At the biggest, most important performance Madonna has ever mounted, the Material Girl was loud and over the top in her 12-minute, too-much-is-just-enough spectacle — like the Super Bowl itself.

In other words, she what comes naturally — found success in excess.

Anybody who tuned in to hear how a pop star — old enough to have mothered all of the players — stumble would have been sadly disappointed. Over the course of her set, she romped like a Roman surrounded by a phalanx of gladiators for the oldie “Vogue,” she discovered her inner pompon-shaking cheerleader for the tunes “Music” and “Give Me All Your Luvin’ ” and ultimately found religion in a stunning, gospel-soaked version of “Like a Prayer.”

Madonna, 53, was surprisingly spry, considering that she accidentally got smacked on the schnoz during rehearsals last week and that she’s been plagued by a hamstring injury that nearly placed her on the disabled list. That injury surfaced at the start of the song “Music,” when she faltered stepping onto a bleacher-style seat.

While Madonna was never the greatest pop dancer, at halftime, despite the injury, she held her own, moving and grooving with M.I.A. and Nicki Minaj, who reprised their rap vocals in “Give Me All Your Luvin’,” the single off the upcoming record “MDNA.” That tune featured the set’s only off-color moment when naughty M.I.A. rapped, “I don’t give a s--t,” while flipping the bird to a national audience as the censors were slow on the blip button.

Less risqué were guest appearances by the LMFAO duo, who did a snippet of their hit “Party Rock Anthem,” and Cee Lo Green, who helped Madonna with her gospel cred. No wardrobe malfunctions, just an exuberance to the gig that no doubt stemmed from the sheer size of the audience. For Madonna, the international exposure was like a dip in the fountain of youth.

She looked good and sounded good — which probably surprised Elton John, who’s been bad-mouthing Madonna over the past few weeks in an ongoing catfight. Seems the gap-toothed-queen of England has insisted the gap-toothed-queen of pop would lip-sync her way through this performance.

While nobody but the sound man knows for sure, it sounded as if the performance had enough grit to be organic. The only real complaint was that, as always, there was an excess of everything except stage time. The brevity of the format is a mid-winter musical tease, whether it’s by Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Prince, The Who or Tom Petty.

But in the end, it seems we couldn’t keep Madonna on stage a second more without collapsing the national economy. When you do the math, razzle-dazzle has a price. A 30-second commercial slot costs $3.5 million, and on that scale, Madonna’s stage time was worth $84 million. Nobody’s that good, not even the Material Girl.

Before the coin toss, country stars Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert twanged a powerful but simple guitar-and-voice take on “America The Beautiful.” Then, Kelly Clarkson, aided by a children’s choir, added her vocal acrobatics to a pop cover of “The National Anthem.”

Unlike Christina Aguilera, who fumbled the words last year in a version that become known as the “Star Mangled Banner,” Clarkson nailed it in a rousing cover. The first and most famous Grammy-winning American Idol easily hit the notes with passion and recalled all the words, doing Francis Scott Key, as well as Simon Cowell, proud.

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I'm just rejoicing this amazing Madonna's moment . She is the ONE and ONLY Queen of Pop / Life for me.

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-cox/super-bowl-halftime-shows_b_1258996.html

A Decade of (Bad) Super Bowl Halftime Shows

I enjoyed Sunday night's halftime show more than others from recent years. That's coming from a guy who has paid money for albums by The Who and Paul McCartney, and attended concerts by the Rolling Stones and Tom Petty.

Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction was a game-changing moment in halftime history. (That show also featured P. Diddy, Nelly and Kid Rock, with AOL as the sponsor; talk about a snapshot of 2004). After Janet's breast swung loose, the show went downhill. And by downhill, I mean old and British (in an attempt to avoid future wardrobe malfunctions).

Here's a look at every Super Bowl halftime show since 2001.

•2001: Ben Stiller, Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Aerosmith, 'N Sync, Britney Spears, Mary J. Blige and Nelly -- This was the glory days of MTV's Total Request Live, which I watched daily after school. This lineup is an accurate snapshot of that year's largest musicians and comedians. That makes it a quality billing in my opinion -- even though I'd never voluntarily listen to any of these artists.

•2002: U2 -- I understand the need for a 9/11 memorial, but did it have to be U2? This should have been Springsteen's year.

•2003: Shania Twain, No Doubt, Sting -- For some reason, I don't remember this halftime show. I know saw the Bucs beat the Raiders, but somehow I missed this. That's weird, because Shania Twain was my first concert (yep) and The Police are one of my favorite bands. I lived in a college dorm at the time, though, so I probably played a quick Bucs-Raiders Madden game at halftime (on my Game Cube).

•2004: Janet, Diddy, Nelly, Kid Rock and Timberlake -- This game's wardrobe malfunction would send halftime shows into a dark and boring place.

•2005: Paul McCartney -- McCartney's great. I can't insult him. But I don't want to hear a shortened version of Hey Jude. He shouldn't be playing the Super Bowl.

•2006: The Rolling Stones -- I was heavily into the Stones at this time, so I was excited. Halfway through the first song, I got a text message from my brother that said, "What do you think of your beloved Stones now?" The fact that I remember that exact text message speaks to the overall horrendous nature of the performance. They stunk, and they looked old. (Six years later, still rocking. If they make it another six, I say book 'em again).

•2007: Prince -- Fine with it. Better than the last two years, but still not quite right. This looked like we were inching closer to the pre-Janet pop extravaganza of the early 2000s. And then...

•2008: Tom Petty -- I've been to several Tom Petty concerts. I love him. But he's a the lead singer of an old rock band. You can only do so much with that.

•2009: Bruce Springsteen -- Bruce made up for the lack of youth by zipping around like a madman and getting sexual with his microphone stand.

•2010: The Who -- This is an all-time low. Even worse than the Rolling Stones. Terrible booking. To be quite honest, The Who has done nothing but let me down since the first time I heard "Baba O'Riley." It's been a long string of letdowns since then.

•2011: Black Eyes Peas, Usher and Slash -- Six years after Janet and Timberlake -- finally a modern pop group with upbeat, danceable songs. Too bad they suck.

•2012: Madonna, LMFAO, Nicki Minaj, M.I.A., Cee Lo Green -- I liked it. Madonna looked old, but not in a terribly sad way. She picked the right songs and the right accompaniment. She stepped around and let the green screen and Cirque du Soleil do the heavy lifting.

The halftime show, in my opinion, should feature (American) decked-out pop stars lip-syncing over computer-generated dance beats. It should be a lesson in pop culture. We should look back on it as a musical representation of the year that was. It's not a sample of what was good. It's a sample of what was big.

Looking back on 2010 and seeing that The Who played is stupid and confusing. Madonna is old too, but she transcends generations. And young people know who she is.

The only potential setback for next year was M.I.A.'s middle finger, which has turned into a bit of a controversy, but not nearly on the level of Janet's. The powers that be probably won't trust wildcards like Lady Gaga, Ke$ha or Katy Perry, but you never know.

Next year's game will be in New Orleans -- the first Bowl in that city since Katrina. That has U2 written all over it. The ultimate travesty would be a Green Day/U2 combo. They played "The Saints are Coming" after the Superdome was cleaned up and football resumed in New Orleans. (Also, I just realized the previous U2 performance in 2002 was at the Superdome. They almost seem inevitable at this point.)

Actually, wait. Scratch everything I just said about young, fresh talent. Randy Newman, I just realized, is from New Orleans. I want him.

Or maybe Master P.

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-cox/super-bowl-halftime-shows_b_1258996.html

•2012: Madonna, LMFAO, Nicki Minaj, M.I.A., Cee Lo Green -- I liked it. Madonna looked old, but not in a terribly sad way. She picked the right songs and the right accompaniment. She stepped around and let the green screen and Cirque du Soleil do the heavy lifting.

:rolleyes:

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