Halftime show avoids youth

It’s hard to imagine artists like Tom Petty, U2 and The Who experiencing any kind of wardrobe malfunction during a performance.

     It’s not hard, however, to imagine a contemporary artists like Ke$ha or Lady Gaga to accidentally slip some skin onstage — especially with all those crazy costumes.

     This might be why the coordinators of the more recent Super Bowl halftime shows have stuck with older, more widely respected artists.

     Freshman nursing major Taylor Huffman tolerates the changes. “It’s not my era of music,” he said, “but it is a little more appropriate. We don’t want something else like the Janet Jackson incident — that was gross.”

     Before 2004, halftime shows consisted of several popular but rather new artists. In 2000, Christina Aguilera and Enrique Iglesias were among the performers. Britney Spears and ‘N Sync took the mic in 2001, Shania Twain and No Doubt in 2003 and Justin Timberlake, Nelly, P. Diddy, Kid Rock and Janet Jackson in 2004.

     Janet Jackson’s infamous Super Bowl XXXVIII performance aroused controversy — as well as a good majority of the male viewers that year.

     The term “wardrobe malfunction” became a pop culture meme, and Janet Jackson’s 2003 album “Damita Jo,” released a month after the incident, enjoyed high first-week sales despite not having a single commercial hit.

     In the ensuing years the number of performers slimmed down from around seven different artists to one.

     Alone Paul McCartney took the stage in ’05, the Rolling Stones in ’06 and Prince, Tom Petty, Springsteen and U2 individually played the subsequent years.

     This may or may not be a result of Jackson’s salacious halftime oopsie. After all, Prince turned his guitar into a giant silhouetted phallus in the 2007 show.

     Perhaps the Super Bowl coordinators want to recapture the respect it built up over the years before the wardrobe malfunction. And fewer artists have more respect than immortals like Springsteen, Bono and McCartney.

     Sophomore nursing major Melissa Moomaw feels the changes aren’t necessarily “a bad thing, because they don’t know what’s going to happen,” she said. “It’s just a precaution.”

     Asking The Who to play at the Super Bowl does seem like a pretty safe bet.

     While they probably will put on a good show, it seems unlikely that their performance will be worth re-watching on YouTube in several months.

     We’ll just have to rely on the commercials for that. t&c