Our Thoughts on Katy Perry's Super Bowl Halftime Show!

Now, before we dive into our analysis of Perry's halftime performance, allow us first to say that Perry is one of the few pop starlets these days who can SANG!  I don't just mean SING, I mean SANG, which is something altogether different and much more noteworthy.

Thing is, since she first hit the pop scene with her ridiculous co-opting of Jill Sobule's song title for her own "I Kissed A Girl", she's had the chance to chart her own path, but has chosen time and time again to be content playing Greg Brady (in an episode of "The Brady Bunch", he gets the record deal because the outfits the producers had already picked out fit him) than Madonna.

Last night's Super Bowl halftime performance was proof positive of that.  From the moment she appeared atop an animatronic elephant (That was a lion. Ed.), it became obvious that Katy was perfectly cool with being a bit player in her own global musical performance.

By the time she was flirting with a beach ball as surf boards danced behind her, it should have become crystal clear to everyone how Katy Perry went from being an unknown contemporary Christian artist to became "KATY PERRY": by being a team player.

Considering that football itself is the greatest of team sports, requiring eleven players to work in tandem to accomplish a unified objective play after play, there was no superstar better qualified to represent that mentality.

We've all seen artists of Perry's magnitude begin to believe their own hype and, in doing so, start demanding to take a greater role in the creation of their music, or their videos, or their album artwork. Kelly Clarkson did just that on her third album My December and her career has never quite recovered, even after she immediately went back to recording the songs the label picked out for her on her next album, All I Ever Wanted, which, ironically enough, included two songs originally written for Katy Perry's One Of The Boys album (on which Perry received partial writing credit).

Now, talent-wise, Perry could have just as easily wound up playing Snow White at Disneyland after her Christian record tanked, but, as mentioned above, this is a driven woman whose true talent and genius lies in her ability to simply allow others do the heavy lifting.

Her entire performance was a shining example of what can be accomplished when ego takes a backseat to the bigger picture.  Make no mistake, Katy Perry's name is the one up in lights, and that is her face on the Jumbotron, but without those writing and producing the songs on her behalf, or wearing the surf board outfits behind her, none of it would be possible.



And while there may have been some trepidation on the part of the NFL that Perry was unable to carry a halftime show all by herself, the inclusion of Lenny Kravitz and Missy Elliot proved to be completely superfluous and unnecessary. In fact, Lenny Kravitz completely sacrificed what little remaining rocker cred he had by taking part in a show where he came off as little more than a puzzling distraction to Perry's fan base, much less his own.

In a way, Kravitz could very well be commended for setting his ego aside too, but at what cost?  At least when the Chili Peppers were trotted out in the middle of Bruno Mars' halftime show last year, they came out and performed their own song, thereby injecting some much-needed energy into a show that was losing steam.  Kravitz, by comparison, brought nothing to the table.  I mean, how edgy is it REALLY to hear a dude singing about "kissing a girl"?

By the time Katy Perry began floating above the stadium as the iconic "The More You Know" logo trailing behind her, all she had to do to go home a winner was not plummet to her death.  That she agreed to take part in such an outlandish and potentially dangerous stunt is just further proof of her willingness to do whatever it takes to achieve victory.

"Now I'm floating like a butterfly,
Stinging like a bee, I earned my stripes
I went from zero to my own hero!"

Indeed.