by Vendela Krenkel ’20

So many great artists have emerged with new music, so why is it that the Super Bowl Halftime Show features an old singer whose time has passed?

Justin Timberlake’s performance for the Super Bowl Halftime Show this year was underwhelming. The show started backstage with his new song “Filthy,” which was the only song he used from his new album, “Man of the Woods,” that he released on the Friday of Super Bowl weekend. Timberlake made his way up the stairs and out into the stadium where his dancers accompanied him onstage. He stuck to his old songs that were popular enough for the audience to sing along. The song choice was great. Each one was catchy and familiar and lined up well. However, most of the transitions between songs were sloppy and didn’t make sense because they chopped up songs and patched them together poorly.

Timberlake next moved on to “Rock Your Body,” the song infamous for the wardrobe malfunction, but cut off the song on the line before he had broken Janet Jackson’s top in their 2004 duet. In the middle of the show, Timberlake slowed things down with a Prince tribute in which he played piano and harmonized with Prince’s songs “Until the End of Time” and “I Would Die 4 U.” While the memorial came from good intention and honored a very talented star, Timberlake’s part in it was strange: he would sing in short bursts of harmony with Prince’s recording, but was quiet apart from that. The performance ended with “Can’t Stop The Feeling,” an upbeat song that finished the halftime show with a bang.

The choreography was impressive; Timberlake and his dancers were all in sync, in both movement and costume, but not impressive enough to save the show. And whoever put together Justin’s outfit needs a stern talking-to. He wore a neon orange bandana that looked like it was swallowing him up, a button-down shirt with a deer on it, and a full camouflage suit. All of this added together (his song choice, his Prince tribute, and his fashion faux pas) did not make for a good performance overall. Hopefully next year the NFL will feature someone more representative of the pop culture of the times rather than an artist of the past.

Grade: C