Super Bowl 2014: Watch Bruno Mars and The Red Hot Chili Pepper's Half Time show
Half Time show at MetLife Stadium is cruise ship naff on mega budget
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The booming stadium announcement rang around the MetLife Stadium : “The National Football League welcomes you to the Pepsi Half Time show” (scroll to see video).
Then just to make sure everybody heard: "The National Football League welcomes you to the Pepsi Half Time show."
The lights came up and for the second time in the evening a slightly scary choir of children took centre stage, holding hands as 'PREPARE' flashed up behind them in ten foot high letters.
Before the first half, the night had kicked off with Queen Latifah and the New Jersey Youth Chorus belting out 'America the Beautiful' with the sort of patriotic zeal that only an American sporting event seems to be able to produce.
The Half Time show is an American institution, with everyone from Michael Jackson to The Rolling Stones having performed, so perhaps for some this year’s choice of Bruno Mars was a little underwhelming.
Unfortunately that was probably as good at it got for the headline act.
Clad in a natty sparkly gold jacket and backed with a band dressed to match, it’s quite hard to shake the feeling that things were all a bit like the evening’s entertainment on a cruise ship, just with a massive budget.
In fact when the first Saga cruise ships take holidaymakers into space rather than round the Mediterranean, you’d imagine this is what the band will look like.
Next comes a surreal interlude as the Red Hot Chili Peppers storm the stage.
If you’d stopped to think about it this was one of the most bizarre musical collaborations since Ozzy Osbourne and Miss Piggy, but this is the half time show so somehow that doesn’t matter.
A shirtless Anthony Kiedis, wearing knee length socks that appear to be made out of spare material from a quilt his grandmother once made, steals the show, jumping around with a roguish moustache and with such abandon that you forget he’s 51.
It’s not just Kiedis who’s jumping around though, Bruno Mars and his gold-suited chums join in slightly awkwardly as well.
That was it for the Red Hot Chilli Peppers though and things soon moved onto a collection of recorded tributes to the military before Mars finishes up his set.
Then there are fireworks, lots and lots of fireworks, fired from seemingly every available point on the roof of the New Jersey stadium in a spectacular finale.
Just like that it’s all over, the stage is cleared and things return to normal.
As half time shows go, it probably won’t go down as a classic.
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