‘The Wild True Story Behind Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl Halftime Show’

Angela Watercutter, with a great behind-the-scenes look at the Apple-Music-sponsored halftime show by Kendrick Lamar:

While “making it work” means one thing when you’re putting on a Madonna concert or the Democratic National Convention, it means something different when you’re trying to squeeze it into a national title match between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles. For one, you have to get all of the staging, lights, dancers, and the artist themselves onto the field in 7.5 minutes and then get them off 6 minutes after the final note. For another, you have to do all of this on a field where the biggest NFL game of the year is being played — without screwing up the turf.

It seems like a great ongoing relationship for Apple Music to sponsor these halftime shows. Amazon Prime has Thursday Night Football, and Google’s YouTube TV has the NFL Sunday Ticket package (which Apple seriously bid for, but didn’t get). That leaves Apple TV+ as the biggest streaming platform from a big tech company that doesn’t have any NFL games. Sponsoring the Super Bowl halftime show gives the NFL a relationship with Apple.

And Apple seems happy to let the shows themselves be artist-centric. This was Kendrick Lamar’s show, presented by Apple Music — not Apple Music’s show featuring Kendrick Lamar. I could be wrong, but I think the old Pepsi halftime shows were more Pepsi-centric, more focused on spectacle than showmanship. There were some small lyrical adjustments, but those might have been at the NFL’s behest more than Apple’s. Apple let Lamar do his thing, despite the fact that the target of his enmity, Drake, was literally the artist who Apple invited on stage at WWDC 2015 to introduce Apple Music.

★ Tuesday, 11 February 2025