Watch Super Bowl LVIII between the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers from Las Vegas, live on Sky Sports NFL on Sunday, with build-up from 10pm ahead of kick-off at 11.30pm – Usher half-time show to start at approximately 1am
Usher is the latest music megastar to be awarded the honor of headlining the Super Bowl half-time show – but will his set be a bona fide ‘Yeah’ or will the eight-time Grammy winner crash and ‘Burn’?
Usher follows in the footsteps of legendary performers such as The Rolling Stones and Prince who have previously graced the half-time stage, along with RihaWnna, who brought the house down with a dazzling spectacle as last year’s Super Bowl.
But which songs will feature in Usher’s 15-minute setlist? Will he have any guest stars join him on stage? And will one of them be Taylor Swift?
Could Usher be joined on stage?
There was speculation that Swift herself could have been the half-time headliner this year, having never previously played the show – and with host city Las Vegas in need of a sizable superstar for its first year hosting the biggest sporting event on the planet.
Such speculation was ended when Usher was announced in September but, with Swift set to journey in on the red-eye following a concert in Tokyo in order to watch her boyfriend Travis Kelce in action for the Kansas City Chiefs, could she sub in for her beau as he heads to the locker room at half-time?
Perhaps there will be no guest stars, however. Last year, Rihanna said she was “thinking about bringing someone” when quizzed by reporters, only for it to become apparent mid-show that her pregnancy was the surprise she had in store.
Who has previously performed?
The list is long and star-studded, with the modern-day half-time show we now know and love really beginning with Michael Jackson’s set at Super Bowl XXVII in 1993.
Jackson changed all that, making quite the entrance, shooting up from under the stage, then standing motionless for a minute while the 100,000-strong crowd at the Rose Bowl in Los Angeles screamed in adoration, before launching into hits ‘Billie Jean’, ‘Black or White’ and ending things with ‘Heal the World’.
At the turn of the millennium, there was quite the churn of old-school rockers from either side of the pond, with Paul McCartney, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, The Who, Aerosmith and U2 taking center stage, the latter delivering a touching tribute to the victims of the 9/11 attacks in the first Super Bowl staged following the terrorist attack on New York in 2001.