Superbowl LVI halftime show

People my age are now in the centre of the Superbowl halftime show demographic, i.e. people who don't follow contemporary music too much and wax maximum nostalgia for music from thirty years earlier. It's true that the boomer-era stars had a good run for most of the first decade of the 2000's, and haven't headlined since The Who in 2010.   The last ten plus of headliners have skewed much younger, certainly nobody can claim that The Weeknd (last year's headliner) isn't a huge star at the top of his game.  But don't fool yourself, do the math.  When Paul McCartney headlined in 2005, it had been twenty years since his last US top ten hit ("Spies Like Us", a song I remember nothing about).  In 2022, it has been eleven years (not including appearances as a featured artist) since Dre's last US top ten hit ("I Need a Doctor"), and twenty seven years since his last top ten before that ("Keep Their Heads Ringin"). Bruce Springsteen's last top ten was fifteen years before his SB headlining appearance, Prince's last was thirteen years previous.  Justin Timberlake, Shakira, Jennifer Lopez, and Coldplay were all twenty year veterans of the music business when they headlined.  These are criticisms only if you want them to be. Prince was a commercial force more recently than Dre (at the time of his SB headlining gig) and many people consider his set to be the best ever.  

This year's show felt fresh and different.  The staging was unique and highly original. Dre and Snoop looked like they were having the times of their lives out there.  Kendrick Lamar and Eminem were great for the most part, Mary J. Blige and 50 Cent not so much.  Obviously Eminem's kneeling gesture was approved by the NFL, this is a non-controversy that's been overblown.  If he had gone off script the director would have cut away or reframed the shot, in fact the opposite occurred and the camera lingered on him for about twenty seconds.  MJB's vocals sounded weak and nondescript, although that might have been due to the poor stadium acoustics and double tracked vocals for all the performers.  50 Cent appeared lazy and unmotivated, but no different than in the prime of his career in that sense.  Dre and Snoop came off like kings of the MF'ing block, STILL, after all these years.  All in all, it wasn't a perfect show by any means, but it was certainly one of the most memorable.