The Best Super Bowl Halftime Shows In History

This Sunday marks the 49th (or, more appropriately, the XLIXth) celebration of America’s High Holiday: The Super Bowl. While ostensibly a sporting event, the NFL Championship Game has grown to reveal and reflect all of our most cherished traditions and cultural values; including sitting in front of the TV, being advertised to, and watching big guys try to hurt one another. Just like the Founding Fathers dreamed!

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed with the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of Budweiser Commercials

Indeed, the Super Bowl is so much more than a football game that it’s most identifiably American quality happens when the players aren’t even on the field - the Half-Time Show. Were the NFL catering to football fans only, the halftime entertainment would be the same every year: CCR playing their greatest hits while Kate Upton fires a rocket launcher in her bikini. But instead, the halftime show aspires to be the pinnacle in America’s greatest cultural expression - middling entertainment aimed at the lowest common denominator!

So as we celebrate another Super Bowl, let’s look back some of the greatest halftime spectacles of all-time!

4. (Tie) Up With People, Super Bowl V / Up With People, Super Bowl X / Up With People, Super Bowl XIV / Up With People, Super Bowl XVI / Up With People, Super Bowl XX

Did I say Up With People? I meant Up With White People

Being forced to choose the best Up With People Super Bowl halftime performance is as difficult as having to choose the best of your five terrifyingly cheerful children. For the benefit of those fortunate enough to have repressed the memory, Up With People were a 500-member singing group that performed around the world in the 1970s and 80s to spread a message of global understanding. They spread this message primarily through chaste clothing, wholesome dance moves and manufactured happiness. They were like the Jonestown cult if their poisoned Kool-Aid made you perform peppy cover versions of Beach Boys songs.

Over the years, Up With People performed in FIVE Half-TIme shows, which is as many Super Bowl appearances as Vince Lombardi, Dan Marino and Brett Favre combined. And with thematic performances ranging from Beat To The Future (1986) to 200 Years And Just A Baby: A Tribute To America’s Bicentennial (1976), it’s easy to see why they were invited back. But their most representative presentation was easily 1982’s Salute To Motown, a performance that may go down in history as the whitest appropriation of black culture since the Mormon Tabernacle Choir covered "Straight Outta Compton."

3. Phil Collins & Edward James Olmos, Super Bowl XXXIV

♫ I can PHIL it COLLINS in the air tonight, ED-WARD / And I’ve been waiting for this moment for all my life, OL-MOS ♫

In 2000, the NFL decided to ring in the new millennium by featuring two of the hottest rising stars in the entertainment industry circa 1985.

The big names in the Super Bowl XXXIV half-time show were none other than Phil Collins and Edward James Olmos, a pairing the public had been clamoring for since that one episode from season two of Miami Vice they were both on. Presenting the theme Tapestry Of Nations, Edward James Olmos narrated between songs performed by Enrique Iglesias, Christina Aguilera, Toni Braxton and Collins, proving that you only need three countries to make a tapestry.

But the star of the show was undoubtedly Collins, whose performance of a song from Disney’s Tarzan soundtrack reminded the audience why he’s had such a long career in the music business: because that really awesome five seconds of "In The Air Tonight" where the drums come in is so cool we’ll forgive everything else.

2. Janet Jackson & Justin Timberlake, Super Bowl XXXVIII

Super Bowl Boobs Ranked: 1. Janet Jackson 2. Fridge Perry’s Man Boobs

This was a controversial halftime show to say the least, and not just because it included Kid Rock for some reason. After cameos by Nelly and P. Diddy, Janet Jackson thrilled the audience with a performance of "Rhythm Nation" before Justin Timberlake appeared and showed just why he was known as the Cute One That Rips Other People’s Clothes Off back in his N'Sync days.

Janet’s exposed breast created a (pointless) media firestorm and (baseless) moral panic, the likes of which the Super Bowl hadn’t been seen since Mean Joe Greene punched the kid in that Coke commercial. In subsequent months, the NFL went to great lengths to pretend to apologize to all the people who pretended to be offended by the ‘wardrobe malfunction’ and the FCC fined CBS $500,000 - or roughly the cost of a 30 second Super Bowl ad for erection medication. Ultimately, the Nipplegate controversy proved that the halftime show isn’t just about the crappy music. It’s also about brief glimpses of nudity.

1. George Burns & Mickey Rooney, Super Bowl XXI

Who better to reflect the ‘80s than two guys actually in their 80s?

By Super Bowl XXI in 1987, the entertainment industry had shifted away from the old fashioned song-and-dance medleys associated with Up With People and other earlier halftime shows. New styles and attitudes were taking hold of popular culture, and it was time for the Super Bowl to finally embrace hip-hop culture and the MTV Generation. It was time to produce a halftime show starring...George Burns and Mickey Rooney!

That’s right, the Super Bowl banked their half-time show on the appeal of two performers with a combined age of 158. But Burns and Rooney weren’t just your run-of-the-mill extremely old guys. awaiting the grim spectre of death. They were extremely old guys awaiting the grim spectre of death...with entertainment in their blood!

In the end, Burns (then 91 years old) and Rooney (a relatively spry 67) put on a great show featuring marching bands, dancers and costumed Disney characters; putting on a performance that would have made their fans proud had their last surviving fan not died of old age the year before.

Ned Petrie (@NedPetrie) is a Toronto-based actor, writer, and 4-time Canadian Comedy Award nominee. He is the co-creator of the animated series Erik The Pillager (BiteTV), co-stars on Crack-Duck (Mondo Media), and hosts The Panel Show. If you follow him on Twitter, he’ll give you a MILLION BUCKS!