Did you see and hear Paul McCartney on the Superbowl Halftime Show?
Here’s our condensed review:
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz….
I was in the other room (writing a post for a blog) in fact, when I heard him sing. It wasn’t terrible…but it seemed so sedate. Paul: you are in danger of becoming the Lawrence Welk of the baby boomer generation.
He promised there wouldn’t be a “wardrobe malfunction” this year; but there was a charisma malfunction.
One person watching the game said: “How could they tone it down so much? You can see from the commercials the people they’re appealing to. This is so…..”
He struggled for a word. And I never thought that I (a baby boomer) would let this word pass my lips:
“…OLD?”
The New York Times puts it this way:
He simply played four songs – “Drive My Car,” “Get Back,” “Live and Let Die” and “Hey Jude” – in versions very close to the ones he recorded in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Sir Paul was in fine voice; he easily hit the high note in “Hey Jude” and smoothly carried “Live and Let Die” from piano ballad to hard rock. The National Football League had vetted the lyrics of the songs, but what once was mildly risqué is now merely droll. McCartney could mention “California grass” and hint at transsexuality in “Get Back” without objections.
The production used the full stadium as a TV theater: projecting videos of automobiles (not unlike the Super Bowl’s advertising) on the extended stage for “Drive My Car,” blasting fireworks and flashpots in “Live and Let Die,” providing flashlights for audience members to wave during “Hey Jude.” The giant letters “NA” appeared in the bleachers during the song’s “na, na, na, na-na-na-na” chorus.
“I want to hear everybody in the world sing!” McCartney called out.
Sing? They probably didn’t. Sleep? A possibility.
It wasn’t a bad performance, but something about it shouted out that P.M’s time has passed; he was so unexciting and nonthreatening.
Which is what the Superbowl planners apparently wanted this year.
UPDATE: From the comment left in our comments section, two emails and from this comment by Oxblog’s David Adesnik, I see I’m in the minority on this (which would not be the first time..)
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.