As with everything at the Super Bowl other than the game itself, everything is simply about selling you something. There’s no intention to ‘entertain’ you, merely to keep you in your seats for as long as they possibly can, while you watch a thinly disguised advertisement for Apple products (or did no one notice the similarity to iPhones with the platforms the ‘entertainers’ were on..?)

Plus, it might be noted, no one promised a halftime ’concert’, it’s a SHOW. Their words. There’s no mention of a ‘live’ performance. Yeah, Rihanna’s mic might be live at times if they got time for something spontaneous, but it’s all tracks…

Thing is, most TV show and movie ‘live music’ is equally dubbed or overdubbed, mixed post-fact, auto-tuned and corrected. Is it only the Super Bowl halftime show that gets a brickbat for not being ‘live’ any more? ‘Live’ is a thing of the past. The minute we decided that technical perfection was more important than slightly flawed honesty, actual ’live’ broadcast and movie music disappeared (about the time that digital editing and Auto-tune appeared).

Why do we expect anything different at the Superbowl?