Good Lovin' Gone Bad

The National Football League has chosen one Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, known professionally as Bad Bunny (though I will defer to his birth name to show my contempt for preposterous hip-hop stage names), to headline the Super Bowl LX halftime show in February.  As I understand it, it's the first time a male Hispanic musical artist has been chosen to headline this prestigious gig.

Well, he is a Hispanic male.  But a rapper and a World Wrestling Entertainment participant could hardly be called musical or an artist any more than the Super Bowl half time show could be considered prestigious.

Martínez Ocasio has been attacked by the far right for having lashed out at Trump for his immigration policy and for planning to perform in Spanish, like he usually does in his shows.  Inevitably, many re-state football fans want to know why there hasn't been a country and western performer hasn't been invited to perform at the Super Bowl halftime show for the past twenty years.  Lee Greenwood - 83 years old and known for only one song, the spectacularly unlistenable "God Bless the U.S.A.," which owes its existence to the existence of beer-commercial jingles - has been suggested as a possible substitute.   

Martínez Ocasio has remained undeterred, insulting MAGA Republicans when hosting "Saturday Night Live" in Spanish and telling his detractors to learn the language quickly if they want to know what he said.  The biggest complaint MAGA football fans have with Martínez Ocasio headlining at the Super Bowl is the fact that he is from Puerto Rico, and they are incensed at the idea of a foreigner performing at the Super Bowl.  They had no problem with Rihanna, a Barbadian, or British bands such as the Rolling Stones and Coldplay, or the Irish band U2 performing at the Super Bowl.

You know what's funny?  I'll tell you.  What's funny is that the NFL has actually had any non-American performers at Super Bowl halftime shows when American football is virtually unknown and irrelevant outside the United States.

You know what's even funnier?  MAGA complaining that Martínez Ocasio isn't American when Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory and its inhabitants have been American citizens since 1917.

This, of course, is all just something for me to laugh at, as I am averse to American football and I am a rock and roll fan, thankful that rock has become too culturally and commercially irrelevant to be considered ever again for inclusion in a Super Bowl halftime show.  Because the whole all-American jock ethos represented by American football is everything I imagined rock and roll to be against.

But hip-hop - especially hip-hop performed by a WWE star named after a naughty rabbit - is a perfect fit for the vulgarity of a Super Bowl halftime show.

So, for that matter, is the sort of smarmy contemporary country music represented by Lee Greenwood. 

Rihanna Rings Like a Bell In the Night

Oh, sure, the Kansas City Chiefs won the Super Bowl, but Rihanna performed at the halftime show and that was the real highlight of the game.

For those who haven't been living under a rock lately - and for those who have listened only to rock (a rare and dwindling population) - Robyn Rihanna Fenty, a Barbadian pop diva, made a halftime appearance that many believed was actually a show that happened to be between the two halves of the Chiefs-Eagles game, complete with dancers in white hoodies and sweatpants and with Ms. Fenty herself in resplendent, royal red outfit that barely concealed what turned out to be a baby bump, revealing her pregnancy.  With her new clothing line gaining steam, her fans have dubbed her Queen Rihanna and officially solidified the dual matriarchy of Rihanna and Beyoncé over popular culture.

Oh yeah, and there was music involved in Sunday's night's show as well.  So I've been told.  

Meanwhile, with Rihanna having been hailed as a queen - quite odd for a singer whose homeland recently ditched the British monarch as its head of state - rock fans are wondering when an electric-guitar group will reign again as kings of the Super Bowl halftime show.  Uhh, guys?  How about never? After the Super Bowl halftime disasters that were Coldplay in 2017 and Maroon 5 in 2019, guitar rockers aren't even worthy enough to be pawns.   Take note: Former Trump White House physician, current Texas congressman, and noted white guy Ronny Jackson took to Twitter and bashed Rihanna for a slew of anti-Trump obscenities she made and said she was a poor choice for the Super Bowl halftime show, and the Rihanna Navy, as her fans are called, came out of their coves and sank Jackson with the sort of insults you'd expect from offended black women.  

Fans of hip-hop/R&B and pop acts have interesting names. Beyoncé fans are known as the Bey Hive, Taylor Swift fans are called Swifties, and Lady Gaga fans are called "Little Monsters."  You know what fans of heavy-guitar-rock are called?

MAGA Republicans. 

Back in the 1970s, they used to be called the Kiss Army. 😝

Rock and Roll Gets Marooned

"Mama, can we watch the halftime show to make fun of Maroon 5?"

Thus spake the child of one of my Facebook friends just before Maroon 5's appearance at the Super Bowl halftime show earlier this month.  It's as if the child knew what was coming.

When it was over, as we all now know, Maroon 5 were ridiculed for their  performance and their posturing, which were both deemed as lackluster.  Some viewers have said that the opportunity to ridicule Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine and his bandmates was the only reason to tune in.

Now that's cruel!  Don't these people realize that Maroon 5 were only trying to provide some entertainment?  Hey, can't we cut Levine and his band some slack?

Uh, no - we can't.

Maroon 5 (pictured below, with Levine in the center) have been around since 2002, and they're sometimes referred to as a rock band, even though their music belies the description.  I've heard a couple of Maroon 5 records, and I swear that they were so bland, I can't remember what they sounded like.  All I remember was that they didn't sound interesting.  Wikipedia describes Maroon 5's sound as pop, pop-rock, funk-rock, dance-pop, blue-eyed soul, neo-soul, R&B, and soft rock, which is a nice way of saying that they sound like everyone else on the radio.  A band like that barely holds your interest playing one song.  At the Super Bowl LIII halftime shindig, Maroon 5 played six songs.

In this age where hip-hop has a stranglehold on the American pop charts, one would wonder how a music act featuring white guys with guitars got to headline a show that has swung as far away from such bands as possible - especially after Coldplay left everyone cold at the 2016 Super Bowl halftime show.  Quite simply, it's because many black performers refused to play the Super Bowl LIII halftime show because of the rotten way the National Football League has treated Colin Kaepernick for taking a knee against police brutality during the playing of the national anthem when he was playing for the San Francisco 49ers.  The organizers weren't going to get a genuine rock band that would have taken a stand for Kaepernick onstage; first of all, they'd have had trouble finding one (more about that below), and secondly, the present-day rock bands who would take a stand for Kaepernick don't sell a lot of records these days.  Also, why would the NFL book such a band anyway if it knew they would express solidarity with Kaepernick?  And the NFL wasn't going to book a country-and-western act due to the large number of non-white NFL fans for whom the twang of a dobro or a redneck accent is offensive enough without hearing those redneck-accented vocalists sing lyrics about wanting God to bless the U.S.A. simply because there ain't no doubt they love this land.

Maroon 5 could have taken a stand for Kaepernick, and former Pink Floyd leader and unrepentant leftist Roger Waters (I love the man!) even pushed them to do it.  Levine refused.  He just wanted to put on a show that would offend no one.  But in these frightful times where refusing to take sides is no longer allowable, maintaining neutrality and trying to stay above the fray offends . . . everyone.   

Maroon 5's music is fine in its place, that place being on a radio or a piped-in music service that someone turns on for background noise.  But at a Super Bowl show full of pumped-up football fans living in the moment . . . eh, not so much.  And just when you thought Adam Levine couldn't annoy people more, he took off his shirt to reveal his sexy abs and his rad tattoos.  

Put on a shirt, dude, you're scaring the kids.

I hope people don't get the impression that Maroon 5 - who like to keep the origin of their inexplicable name secret, as if anyone cared how they came up with it - are a rock and roll outfit just because they're white guys with guitars.  Yeah, they're white guys with guitars, but so were Air Supply.  A real rock band wouldn't come up with slight songs like "Moves Like Jagger."  A real rock band wouldn't go out of their way to please everyone (and he who tries to please everyone pleases no one, of course).  A real rock band wouldn't lend out its frontman to the panel of a cheesy talent show (NBC's "The Voice").  A real rock band wouldn't see its frontman crowned People magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive" (2013).  A real rock band would make a statement that would make some people feel uncomfortable without caring what they think.  The late Tom Petty might have had a band like Maroon 5 in mind when he said in the early 2000s that rock and roll bands were becoming populated with the sort of guys you joined a rock and roll band to get away from.

As for the Super Bowl halftime show . . . as far as I'm concerned, rock bands shouldn't pine for a return to that stage.  The Super Bowl, like too many other things in this country, has become a celebration of the worst of America - braggadocio, military might, a bold, masculine patriarchal order, and a culture that values brawn over brains.  All of that, and the Air Force flyovers and the national anthem before the Super Bowl game, are the very things rock and roll stood and should still stand against.  I want to see rock and roll regain its relevance, but I don't care if I never see a rock and roll band play the Super Bowl again.  I don't like American football anyway.

Oh, yeah, the Patriots beat the Rams.