Let's anticipate Justin Timberlake's Man of the Woods...?

https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/justin-timberlakes-super-bowl-halftime-show-meh-personified/

it was definitely kinda meh.

i enjoyed pink though.

The disrespect. pic.twitter.com/3lCCjkYjQc

— The Athlete's Plug™ (@TheAthletesPlug) February 5, 2018

the most over the top moment last night was the intro song/video by some country singer i'd never heard of. it was like nashville gaga.

oh wait i do know carrie underwood i just didn't recognize her.

what's a super bowl without ludacris?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldvl33e44PI

performance was pretty meh, the sets and staging were very cool, though. but

he's not gaga or springsteen

he's a bigger star / more qualified to do this w/o guests than gaga!

i don’t get the shoe photo

creased his incredibly rare brand-new Jordans! (sneaker heads don't crease their shoes)

You can’t crease the Jordan IIIs, bro. This is a huuuuuuuge violation https://t.co/mwlBHHU6kk

— tristan walker (@tristanwalker) February 5, 2018

I thought it was fine/boring, it lacked the bonkers charm to me anyway of the Katy Perry one...his outfit was so dumb, male pop stars are so boring.

The Prince thing was weird just cuz like..what was the point? It was in Mpls? Prince did a good halftime show once?

If you really wanted to do a Prince tribute just get Morris Day & the Time out there or bring the Revolution out as yr band (of course then you run the risk of getting yr ass handed to you onstage)

Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis spotted rocking out to Bob Mould on Saturday night is a zillion times more appropriate nod to "Minneapolis" (barf) then just yelling out the town's name a bunch.

the prince thing was def shoehorned in but the lights and symbol outside the stadium were really cool. getting the time to play would have been all time but 99.9% of the viewers would have had no idea who that was.

I thought the halftime show was fine, I guess I never understand what ppl expect out of it.

it was weird how the knives are out for Timberlake, felt like the thinkpieces were half written before the thing even happened, especially since they went up so quick

― bhad and bhabie (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, February 5, 2018 7:41 AM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

right, it was pretty clear at least judging from my timeline that if you were one of the people who had been dragging him for the past couple of weeks, you also hated the performance. (there was a lot of “janet would have been better”, which, without commenting on whether that is true or not, says a lot about the reliability of the commenter). it was a pretty objectively tight performance, good song choices, good choice of prince song, all around solid

I think the new hipster poptimism means a real tribal sense of calling anything super mainstream either REALLY REALLY GOOD or REALLY REALLY BAD. It's almost like the old college radio vs mersh divide but recalibrated for a world where Rihanna is the Pixies

— whiney

nuance doesn’t get you retweet$

is this album his Smiley Smile

objectively tight? his vocal was often terrible and the opening bit’s sound seemed like it had been put through a melon baller. also the arrangement of “my love” was way too massive - obv it’s tv and a stadium but it just sounded like an awolnation remix of the original

the vocals were really bad, no presence at all

it just sounded like an awolnation remix of the original

lol and otm

yeah good call ha

if you were dragging Justin Timberlake for the past few weeks I don't really see how a reheated clip show (the best-case scenario for most Super Bowl halftime shows, realistically) could be expected to win you over

I don't really see how a reheated clip show (the best-case scenario for most Super Bowl halftime shows, realistically)

that's what i'm saying, i just don't really understand what the point of complaining about the super bowl halftime show is, outside of the shark wackiness it didn't seem that far off from katie perry imo which everyone seemed to think was so great

complaining about things is americas actual pastime

maybe it should be the halftime show from now on

people thought Katy Perry was great?

i thought her halftime show was

she was pretty good but the shark made it

the show is always just as much about the spectacle as it is the performer tho so I include them all as a package deal

Katy was great. my memory is fuzzy but when she rode ... something? ... way up into the air singing Roar, I think? that was awesome!

^^^ lol i have an identical half-formed memory of that

xp maura I didn’t really notice how bad the vocals were, they sounded fine to me but there was some crosstalk at my watch party so maybe it warrants rescreening. everyone I watched with thought the choreography was solid tho, and I personally thought the song selection was on point. like UMS said above, I guess I just don’t know what people are looking for in a halftime show if that was bad

right, this is kind of the point of the halftime shows......?

oops that was an xp to this:

the show is always just as much about the spectacle as it is the performer tho so I include them all as a package deal

― Hi diddley dee, hen fapper's life for me (Neanderthal), Monday, February 5, 2018 2:28 PM (forty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

xxxp that nytimes piece was indeed probably written before the show, yet at the same time is pretty much otm. Especially when highlighting how Janet Jackson was vilified and JT can go about like nothing happened.

I do find it weird when people get rockist about a Super Bowl halftime show. I think the Black Eyed Peas one was the only recent one I considered completely terrible.

The Who were pretty bad

i watched with a music savvy crowd on a tv with a nice soundsystem
that said the “it’s supposed to be background noise” argument is a ... strange one? jt’s voice and the mixing itself was bad, and it was noticeable even in the context of the telecast

People generally like JT, he's had a lot of hits (both solo and with a group), he's a modest singer but a very good performer, and he's had decades of experience entertaining huge crowds. That he had all of that going for him and was still pretty indifferently received indicates something was not firing right, technical or otherwise. Not enough spectacle? Played it too safe? The fundamental thin-ness of pop without enough distractions (costumes, explosions, choreography)? Something like that. Doesn't help that as much as I like a lot of his stuff, very little JT is particularly exciting, let alone rousing. Probably why stuff like Mirrors and the Trolls song did so well. They're more conventionally anthemic, though that is probably too strong a word.

agree with all that ^ but everyone remember "we" exist in a bubble, no matter who you watched it with. 90% of norm women/kids absolutely loved it, 75% of norm men rolled their eyes and wanted "real" music and 25% of norm men did the whole "i can't believe i'm going to say this but i think the guy is very talented and seems like a cool dude" thing to contrast the eye-rollers.

the scores of millions of people who loved it aren't in yr twitter timeline

we had about 15 kids (12 and under) watching it and they were all like "this is weird / lame" "i dont like this who is this" and then 'cant stop the feeling' came on....

my 1 year old girl was rocking back and forth the whole time, my 3 year old boy paid no attention at all

I think y'all are on to something here

I tried to convince my 3 yr old to watch cuz "there are people dancing, you like people dancing" she was non-plussed and demanded we watch whatever she wanted to watch.

i watched with a music savvy crowd on a tv with a nice soundsystem
that said the “it’s supposed to be background noise” argument is a ... strange one? jt’s voice and the mixing itself was bad, and it was noticeable even in the context of the telecast

― maura, Monday, February 5, 2018 2:28 PM (thirty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Vocals sounded weird/bad to me but I was unclear if it was on purpose or a bad mix or what

Usually in these sorts of situations where I assume there are scads of professionals working on it when stuff sounds weird to me I just think its me and not that it's bad or mistake

What are you going to believe, your ears, or science?

I assume all terrible sounds are aesthetic choices

man of the woods title track is some looney tunes shit, what the f was he thinking

eheh, exactly !
Why not for a cartoon ost or something but on an album (and more so a supposedly "serious/spiritual/whatever" album)...

I got suppli-yiii-yiiiiieees

"supplies": because "Carry Out" wasn't bizarre and strained enough a metaphor