A Brief History Of The Super Bowl Halftime Show

The Super Bowl is the biggest sporting event in America every year, and one of the most watched shows on TV all around the globe annually. The halftime show has been known to average over 100 million people watching which is an insane number of people all watching the same thing at the same time. And with such a huge audience you’d think that the halftime show was always packed with the world’s biggest stars. That’s not really the case though. In fact it wasn’t until Michael Jackson performed in 1993 that having big name stars perform became a thing.

Early on as the game grew in popularity they would start to feature bigger and better shows every year, but they still amounted to a regular football games halftime show, often with university marching bands and and old Hollywood stars from long ago like George Burns and Mickey Rooney. That was as recently as 1987. Up With People was a regular performer throughout the 70′s and 80′s, appearing at least 5 times up until 1986. Starting around the mid-70′s Disney even got involved and would often do Disney themed shows. Disney actually produced at least 6 halftime shows. The last time Disney was the producer was Phil Collins 2001 performance.

But it was 1993 when Michael Jackson hit the stage that the powers that be at the NFL noticed the draw of having actual current stars perform the show. After MJ there were a few weak years, my opinion, but the overall enormity of the show and the quality of the production clearly started to step up dramatically, to what we now know as the greatest halftime show anywhere every year.

Here’s a list of the lineup starting from 1993 until today. Notice how in 2001 when MTV started producing the show the acts got younger and more current. To see the full lineup from when the Super Bowl actually started back in the 60′s check out the Wikipedia page with all the history.

1993: Michael Jackson

1994: Clint Black, Tanya Tucker, Travis Tritt, The Judds

1995: Patti Labelle, Indiana Jones & Marion Ravenwood, Teddy Pendergrass, Tony Bennett, Arturo Sandoval, Miami Sound Machine (Miami played host city)

1996: Diana Ross

1997: The Blues Brothers (Dan Aykroyd, John Goodman and James Belushi), ZZ Top, James Brown,

1998: Boyz II Men, Smokey Robinson, Martha Reeves, The Temptations, Queen Latifah, Grambling State University Marching Band

1999: Gloria Estefan, Stevie Wonder, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Savion Glover (Miami played host city again)

2000: Phil Collins, Christina Aguilera, Enrique Iglesias, Toni Braxton, 80-person choir, Edward James Olmos (narrator)

2001: Aerosmith, NSYNC, Britney Spears, Mary J. Blige, Nelly (Tampa hosted the game this year.)

2002: U2

2003: Shania Twain, No Doubt, Sting

2004: Jessica Simpson, Janet Jackson, P. Diddy, Nelly, Kid Rock and Justin Timberlake