Timberlake’s Return For Super Bowl Half Time

Super Bowl LII took place on February 4 and like every Super Bowl since, the halftime show was highly anticipated. Michael Jackson was the first artist to headline a halftime performance during Super Bowl XXVII.

This year featured a pop artist performing and Justin Timberlake was chosen as the man for the job. Timberlake became the first person to perform in three different halftime shows having performed with NSYNC in 2001, with Janet Jackson in 2004, and now 14 years later.

Timberlake had a lot to prove due to his last performance on a Super Bowl stage in 2004 featuring “NippleGate”. An incident that had Timberlake accidentally reveal Janet Jackson’s nipple on national television. That incident actually led to the NFL not booking pop stars and instead booking classic rock acts like The Who, Paul McCartney, and The Rolling Stones up until 2011. Needless to say tensions were high for the former NSYNC star to deliver on a good, non-controversial halftime show.

The performance began with Timberlake being introduced by The Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon, and the rest of the show was the normal halftime show formula that had Timberlake play cuts from his new album and his past hits.

Timberlakes performance was actually marred in controversy even before he performed due to the rumor that he would use a hologram to superimpose Minnesota native Prince on stage with him. Holograms are something Prince himself called “demonic.”

It’s unknown whether Timberlake planned on this and backed out once he saw the backlash or if it was never in his plans, but at the end of the day he just projected images of Prince onto a screen while performing Prince hits.

Timberlake’s return to the biggest performance stage in sports is symbolic albeit par for the course or even average compared to other halftime shows.