Many of us are watching the Super Bowl for the football game. Many of us are watching the Super Bowl for the commercials. Many of us are watching the Super Bowl for THE HALFTIME SHOW, which this year features Katy Perry as the headliner.
Perry, the pop sensation whose shouty, flirty earworms have hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 nine times, will be joined by Lenny Kravitz and Missy Elliott. The halftime is a bit longer than the usual 15 minutes allotted to most NFL games, and typically performers get the chance to perform a medley featuring snippets of about 10 or so of their songs. Guests like Kravitz and Elliott typically get to join for one song of their own.
Here's what you need to know about the three people who will be taking the stage.
Katy Perry
I find it difficult to imagine a person who hasn't noticed Katy Perry's music by 2015. I don't say this simply because she gets a lot of radio play -- a lot of people get a lot of radio play -- but because her music is designed for you to sing it in your head 15 minutes later.
I am an unabashed Katy Perry supporter. These are my Katy Perry thoughts:
-- The best Katy Perry song is "Teenage Dream."
Watch the Halftime Show
Super Bowl Halftime Show
I will not hear debate about this.
-- Katy has a pretty deep catalog. She's released nine No. 1 singles, including five off of her 2010 album Teenage Dream, tying a record set by Michael Jackson. But I will wager a lot of money with bad odds that she will play "Roar."
-- Perry made one of the wildest career 180s out there. The daughter of devout born-again Christians, Perry primarily listened to gospel music growing up and began her career as a Christian musician. Her first record was 2001's eponymous Katy Hudson (that's her real name -- she adopted her mother's maiden name as a stage name to avoid confusion with actress Kate Hudson), a Christian rock album that sold fewer than 200 copies.
Fast forward seven years and she had her first hit single, "I Kissed A Girl."
Somehow a girl who grew up calling deviled eggs "angeled eggs" so as to avoid thinking about Satan ended up singing a No. 1 hit about sexual experimentation.
-- I think Katy Perry is our most talented yeller of stuff. I don't mean that as an insult! Listen to either of the two songs above, or "Hot N Cold," or "California Gurls" -- a pretty wide range of her songs just kinda feature Perry shouting stuff more than singing it.
And most of her songs feature at least one section of just noises. "Oa-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh" on Roar, "Wa-oh-ah-oh-ah-oh" on "California Gurls," etc.
I think that's okay! She can sing just fine, but her greatest talent is her ability to capture the verve and energy of her songs by just screaming.
-- Katy Perry generally likes to sing about fun and sex and drinking, but even within that spectrum, she has a specific favorite topic: horrendous drunk decisions. Two of her singles mention this up front -- "Waking Up In Vegas" and "Last Friday Night."
There's also a breakdown in her most recent single, "This Is How We Do," about this:
This one goes out to the ladies at breakfast in last night's dress ... Yo, this goes out to all you kids that still have their cars at the club valet and it's Tuesday... Yo, shout out to all you kids, buying bottle service, with your rent money... This goes out to all you people going to bed with a ten and waking up with a two
This is good, because a lot of her listeners make bad alcohol-related decisions. However, as Rob Delaney wrote in his hilarious critique of "Last Friday Night," that's kinda problematic, because a lot of her listeners make bad alcohol-related decisions!
Why do you have to tell your boss anything? Were your exploits reported in the paper? Is your boss also your landlord? Wait-aren't you international pop superstar, Katy Perry? I would have thought you were your own boss. Uh oh, I think we're arriving at why this song is not just awful, but is in fact dangerous. You are playing a character in this song! A character based on the young female demographic you target your music at: young women who do have jobs and bosses and mothers and fathers and necks and vaginas which sure as hell will be damaged and violated if they subscribe to the ideas you foist on them with your songs and the confusing "goofy slut" persona you've created.
-- My personal favorite Katy Perry sub-genre is Dark Mysterious Hip-Hop Jams Featuring A Rapper Half-Assing A Guest Appearance. The pinnacle is 2011's "E.T.," featuring a distracted Kanye.
But she hit No. 1 again with "Dark Horse" and a lazy Juicy J.
These are, for all intents and purposes, the same song -- one is about aliens, one is about magic -- and they are both JAMZ.
Lenny Kravitz
I'm expecting Kravitz to play a song alongside Perry -- he's been known to feature on other people's tracks where he's playing guitar and they're singing or rapping, and that would work well with a voice like Perry's. Whether that song be his or Perry's, who knows.
Kravitz is a pretty talented musician -- he's known for his guitar riffs, but he's been known to play every instrument on his songs. On 5, the album featuring "Fly Away," Kravitz is credited with vocals, acoustic & electric guitars, piano, keyboards, bass, drums, percussion and programming.
Kravitz's most popular songs all start with a distinctive, distortion-y guitar riff. I'd bet heavily on hearing "Are You Gonna Go My Way" or "Fly Away."
Kravitz is also known for his cover of "American Woman." That would be a possibility, considering he's performing with, you know, an American Woman. But make no mistake, if he does play it I will loudly point out that the song is originally by The Guess Who.
-- Kravitz is the son of Roxie Roker, who played Helen on The Jeffersons, in case for some reason you remember that show but have never heard of Lenny Kravitz.
Missy Elliott
Missy be the name that y'all should already know!
I have no idea what Missy Elliott is gonna do here. Missy has an incredibly unique, brash, obnoxious style that really doesn't vibe at all with Katy Perry's pretty-girl persona. Their music sounds nothing alike. My hope is for Elliott to enter, do her own thing for three minutes, and leave everybody confused.
I mean, look at this person.
She's weird as hell and she owns it. Missy Elliott's allure is that you can cover her in bees or put her in clothing that might be from the garbage or portray her as a child with an enormous head in a dunce cap and she'll STILL have a million times more swag than you because she's Missy freakin' Elliott and the beat is fly as hell. In a genre dominated by braggadocious, often chauvinistic dudes, Missy bragged with the best of them, and nobody questioned her for a damn second. She rapped about herself as a sex symbol even though she's not a centerfold model, and nobody gave her crap about it for a second.
I guess I'm just excited to see what the hell Missy Elliott is going to do, because I have no idea.