At the biggest, most important performance Madonna has ever mounted, the Material Girl was loud and over the top in her 12-minute, too-much-is-just-enough spectacle — like the Super Bowl itself.
In other words, she what comes naturally — found success in excess.
Anybody who tuned in to hear how a pop star — old enough to have mothered all of the players — stumble would have been sadly disappointed. Over the course of her set, she romped like a Roman surrounded by a phalanx of gladiators for the oldie “Vogue,” she discovered her inner pompon-shaking cheerleader for the tunes “Music” and “Give Me All Your Luvin’ ” and ultimately found religion in a stunning, gospel-soaked version of “Like a Prayer.”
Madonna, 53, was surprisingly spry, considering that she accidentally got smacked on the schnoz during rehearsals last week and that she’s been plagued by a hamstring injury that nearly placed her on the disabled list. That injury surfaced at the start of the song “Music,” when she faltered stepping onto a bleacher-style seat.
While Madonna was never the greatest pop dancer, at halftime, despite the injury, she held her own, moving and grooving with M.I.A. and Nicki Minaj, who reprised their rap vocals in “Give Me All Your Luvin’,” the single off the upcoming record “MDNA.” That tune featured the set’s only off-color moment when naughty M.I.A. rapped, “I don’t give a s–t,” while flipping the bird to a national audience as the censors were slow on the blip button.
Less risqué were guest appearances by the LMFAO duo, who did a snippet of their hit “Party Rock Anthem,” and Cee Lo Green, who helped Madonna with her gospel cred. No wardrobe malfunctions, just an exuberance to the gig that no doubt stemmed from the sheer size of the audience. For Madonna, the international exposure was like a dip in the fountain of youth.
She looked good and sounded good — which probably surprised Elton John, who’s been bad-mouthing Madonna over the past few weeks in an ongoing catfight. Seems the gap-toothed-queen of England has insisted the gap-toothed-queen of pop would lip-sync her way through this performance.
While nobody but the sound man knows for sure, it sounded as if the performance had enough grit to be organic. The only real complaint was that, as always, there was an excess of everything except stage time. The brevity of the format is a mid-winter musical tease, whether it’s by Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Prince, The Who or Tom Petty.
But in the end, it seems we couldn’t keep Madonna on stage a second more without collapsing the national economy. When you do the math, razzle-dazzle has a price. A 30-second commercial slot costs $3.5 million, and on that scale, Madonna’s stage time was worth $84 million. Nobody’s that good, not even the Material Girl.
Before the coin toss, country stars Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert twanged a powerful but simple guitar-and-voice take on “America The Beautiful.” Then, Kelly Clarkson, aided by a children’s choir, added her vocal acrobatics to a pop cover of “The National Anthem.”
Unlike Christina Aguilera, who fumbled the words last year in a version that become known as the “Star Mangled Banner,” Clarkson nailed it in a rousing cover. The first and most famous Grammy-winning American Idol easily hit the notes with passion and recalled all the words, doing Francis Scott Key, as well as Simon Cowell, proud.