An opinion piece from Jay Kirby

It’s undeniable that Kendrick Lamar is, at this very moment, one of the most unstoppable forces in worldwide popular music. One doesn’t simply win a rap beef with Drake, drop a chart-dominating album and win five Grammys for a single diss track— Kendrick has done all three in the last twelve months. Even now, the victory lap is continuing as Sunday night saw the rapper with more eyes on him than ever before when he performed at Super Bowl LIX. The show wasn’t without its detractors though, with every element (from the setlist, to the performance, to the messaging) receiving a mix of immense praise and harsh criticism. Here’s my two cents: whether you found the set enjoyable or no, comparing it to previous halftime shows misses the point entirely.

The focal element— and main discussion point— of Kendrick’s show concerned its political messaging, which is, in itself, a great accomplishment for the Pulitzer Prize winner: no artist before has managed to turn their thirteen-minute ‘greatest hits’ medley into a piece of cutting social commentary, and even an attempt to do so is worthy of praise. As ever though, Lamar pulled it off in spades, threading a narrative throughout the show. For those who missed it, Uncle Sam (played by the one and only Samuel L. Jackson) welcomed viewers to ‘the Great American Game,’ symbolised by the four PlayStation symbols that made up the staging. The initial run of tracks, including hits like ‘HUMBLE.’ and ‘DNA.’ was mocked up Sam, who labelled the show as “too reckless.” This stand-in for corporate America seemed much more in-favour of the more accessible songs ‘Luther’ and ‘All The Stars,’ both featuring SZA. Kendrick’s never been one to play to that crowd though, ending out the show on diss track ‘Not Like Us’ and recent hit ‘TV Off,’ which reportedly prompted 1.3 million Americans to do just that! There’s far more to the performance than I’ll list here— the red, white and blue costumes of the backing dancers come to mind— but the point remains that Kendrick’s halftime show was a powerful statement of resistance in the face of adversity.

To many viewers— there were 127 million, after all— these observations could do little to stop a wave of disappointment. Though not every point of judgement is worth attention, there are nonetheless several valid critiques to be made of the Super Bowl LIX halftime performance. A common complaint has been the lack of show-stopping visual displays, which have long been a staple of this historic event: whether it was Lady Gaga’s dive from above the stadium in 2017 or The Weeknd’s dazzling use of fireworks in 2021, it’s always been a treat for both the eyes and the ears. Of course, 2025’s offering was hardly devoid of visual entertainment. In comparison to previous years, however, Kendrick’s host of dancers led to a fairly stripped-back, minimalist show by Super Bowl standards, leading to the understandable disappointment of many.

This is little more than a symptom of a large issue though: Lamar’s ‘Super Bowl LIX halftime show’ doesn’t really put the emphasis on the ‘show.’ Though complaints that Kendrick doesn’t have the catalogue to support a performance of this magnitude are certainly unfounded, your average viewer might be justified in coming to that conclusion based on this setlist alone. With ‘Money Trees,’ ‘Swimming Pools (Drank),’ ‘Alright,’ ‘King Kunta,’ ‘m.A.A.d. city’ and many, many more classic hits failing to find their way into the show, it’s only natural for some viewers to feel underwhelmed by the tracks chosen, despite Kendrick and SZA’s impressive performances and the generally slick, well-rehearsed feeling that pervaded the concert. For other fans though, an inverse argument could be made— with ‘Not Like Us’ being teased throughout the show, and then receiving the most overwhelming response, its easy to see how Lamar may be painting himself into a corner where the public know him not as a talented rapper and visionary artist, but as the ‘A Minor’ guy.

These points miss the forest for the trees though, in my opinion. This was certainly not your conventional halftime performance, and haggling over particular song inclusions or choreographic choices misses the show’s wider goal— unlike the question of “why didn’t Prince play ‘When Doves Cry’ in 2007,” critiquing Kendrick’s setlist or staging misses the wider point of the concert. Fans are definitely justified to feel disappointed in this performance for a number of reasons, many of which aren’t detailed here: calling it “the worst Super Bowl halftime show of all time” is simply a matter of improper categorisation though. For all its ambition and social commentary, the 2025 show belongs in a grouping all its own, separate from the offerings of Usher, Rihanna or Dr. Dre in years prior. Lamar could, arguably, have delivered a more crowd-pleasing show this week— he certainly has the showmanship and the catalogue to set the world on fire. The choice not to, in favour of something more unique, is worthy of praise nonetheless.