Coldplay headlines Super Bowl Halftime Show
Listen to this articleThere will be hundreds of millions of people around the world watching Super Bowl 50 tomorrow. Many of them, maybe even most of them, will be interested, at least a little, in the game itself. The actual, true NFL football fans will make up a smaller segment of those viewers.
For millions of Super Bowl viewers the spectacle is all about two things: the commercials, which have become a genre all their own, and the Halftime Show.
This year the mid-game extravaganza will be hosted by Pepsi and will feature the British band Coldplay as the headliner. As special guests we will see Beyoncé and Bruno Mars, who only made it official on Friday that he would be a part of the show. Many people scratched their heads: “Coldplay?” when the band was announced as the headliners for this year’s event. Last year Super Bowl viewers were treated to Katy Perry who put on one of the most extravagant halftime shows in history.
Before Katy Perry, there was Bruno Mars and the Red Hot Chili Peppers and before them, in Super Bowl XLVII was Beyoncé Knowles and Destiny’s Child. How was Coldplay going to equal those shows, let alone top them? According to the band they don’t intend to try and top any previous halftime shows.
What they want to bring this year is a sense of their favorite concert venue, the Glastonbury Music Festival in the U.K. that features not only music, but theater, comedy, dance, cabaret, circus, cabaret and more.
During their press conference on Thursday in San Francisco, the band joked about how many sharks they would have and then defended the Left Shark in Katy Perry’s show, saying the performer did a great job.
Coldplay was very congratulatory to all the performers that have taken that stage in the past, saying it was one of the highest honors to play the Super Bowl halftime show — even if half the band knows “absolutely nothing” about American football and the other half that “almost knows absolutely nothing” about American football.
The message of their show, according Coldplay, can be summed up by the title of their latest album, A Head Full of Dreams. “The title of that album captures the hope and optimism about the future and I think that’s what we’re trying to celebrate with this halftime show — and the game itself celebrates people’s dreams, doesn’t it.”
Below is Claudia Gestro’s video report from the press conference.
All photos by Claudia Gestro.
Tim Forkes started as a writer on a small alternative newspaper in Milwaukee called the Crazy Shepherd. Writing about entertainment, he had the opportunity to speak with many people in show business, from the very famous to the people struggling to find an audience. In 1992 Tim moved to San Diego, CA and pursued other interests, but remained a freelance writer. Upon arrival in Southern California he was struck by how the elected government officials and business were so intertwined, far more so than he had witnessed in Wisconsin. His interest in entertainment began to wane and the business of politics took its place. He had always been interested in politics, his mother had been a Democratic Party official in Milwaukee, WI, so he sat down to dinner with many of Wisconsin’s greatest political names of the 20th Century: William Proxmire and Clem Zablocki chief among them. As a Marine Corps veteran, Tim has a great interest in veteran affairs, primarily as they relate to the men and women serving and their families. As far as Tim is concerned, the military-industrial complex has enough support. How the men and women who serve are treated is reprehensible, while in the military and especially once they become veterans. Tim would like to help change that.
