Fastest 3 Minutes in Music Blogging: Super Bowl XLI Edition

Here in America, this country shuts down for four hours one Sunday every year for the Super Bowl. And every year, people talk more about the commercials than the actual game itself. Here let's talk about the music involved with the game, the half-time and ... the commercials.

-- That Prince half-time show was above-average in the context of Super Bowl halftime. The halftime is usually over-produced, over-commercial and over before you know it. The best was U2's post-9/11 show in 2002. The worst, a tie between the Janet Jackson idiot fest and the Aerosmith/*NSYNC/Britney Spears show in 2001. Both of those featured Justin Timberlake. Coincidence? I think not. Anyway, Prince did what he could with that bum hip of his and that driving rain, but, man, can he play that guitar like a god. He left the dancing to the two hotties in the high-heels.

-- That pre-show Cirque de Soleil performance with Gloria Estefan ... what the fuck was that? It looked like Big Gay Al from South Park put that together.

-- My money on who's going to be the act next year in Super Bowl XLII in Arizona: Coldplay. They'll have that Brian Eno album to promote, so by then, they'll probably overpower U2 as the most popular band on the planet.

-- Billy Joel did the national anthem. His voice is shit now.

-- We were saved from hearing that John Mellencamp car commercial with his song, "This Is Our Country." I'm sure that song was made with good intentions, but, oh my God, after hearing 7 times during a game for 17 weeks, it throws me into fits of rage.

-- The song that was played a lot, "Galvanize" by the Chemical Brothers. CBS used it as bumper music from coverage to commercials.

-- Quick stat -- Number of songs about masturbation performed by a Swedish band played in the background during the Super Bowl: 1. That song was "Jerk It Out" by Caesars.

-- One of the good commercials was the car ad with the robot who finds himself out of work. The whole ad is set to Eric Carman's "All By Myself." It's one of those songs from 70s that was made with serious intents, but now, you can't help by laugh your ass off because it's dated and over-dramatic. Another song like that, "Without You" by Air Supply.

-- Let's not forget "The Final Countdown" by Europe, which was used for a FedEx commercial. I still think the best use of that song was for Arrested Development as Job's theme.

-- Beck snuck into the broadcast. You can here "Think I'm In Love" during the half-time while the field was being set-up for Prince.

-- Jay-Z debuted another Budweiser ad, this time he's playing a futuristic electronic football game against Don Shula. Come on, Hova. You're the best M.C. of all time, you don't need to lower yourself like this. It's rumored that he's next doing a Cherry Coke ad. It's all going towards his goal of being the first hip-hop billionaire. Please, how about making a better album than Kingdom Come?

-- Another artist who stooped to the commercial level was Sheryl Crow for Revlon hair products. It was lame beyond belief.

-- My favorite ad of the night: the Careerbuilder.com ads with the office workers in the jungle, who then run in a pack and then fall off a clip.

-- I'm a big football fan, so I actually do watch and care about the game. It was a real game until the third quarter. Defense wins Super Bowls, hence the Bears secondary was too afraid to give up the big play downfield, which allowed Peyton Manning to throw underneath at will the whole game.

-- I watched the game on my parents new HDTV ... must .... buy .. H ... D ... T ... V. Noooooo, somebody stop me. Take my credit cards away from me

-- In the car drive to my family's place, I got caught up on some CDs. The big surprise is the new CD from the Electric Soft Parade which comes out April 24. It's entitled No Need To Be Down-Hearted. Mark my words, this will turn a lot of heads. It's a musically diverse extravaganza of garage rock fuss mixed with big stadium vocals and space-age electronic blips and bleeps. I'll have to do a whole post on it because it's a special listen. You heard it here first.

-- I'm kinda of disappointed with the new Bloc Party album. It's a tall order to top their masterpiece of a debut. Weekend in the City is a bigger sounding album, but what one of the reasons Silent Alarm worked was how stripped down it was. You can hear every note on a song and it mattered. There's just a little too much in the new one. It's an adequate effort, but when you invest so much into a band, you kind have to roll with their new direction. It might take me a while to dig it. It reminds me when Blur made 13, which was such a downer of an album because it was all about lost love and disappointment. Now, I find it musically interesting. Maybe I'll feel that way about Weekend in the City in a few years. I have the stream of the album on the left, so you can judge for yourself.

 

Comments

[peter]

I just read your article on the super bowl and wanted to ask if you know the instrumental song that was played when the teams entered the ground? It was a combination of classical music and techno.
thank you.