Surprisingly, the Superbowl, the American Football final is 55 this year. Who knew, who even thought there'd be a superbowl in 2021? It was my friend DJ Fuzzyfelt that got me thinking about all of this.
In that most perfect of American ways, the Superbowl is generally the first big social distraction of the year for American adults with any semblance of an income. Garage fridges will be filled, a mountain of chips will scoop up a gooogleweight of dip. Research indicates some 40% of adults plan to host or attend a superbowl party and most of them will be down at their local Lucky the day before the game guided by coupons, I've read, looking to make savings of up to $15. How cool is that consumers? On the eve of game day, everyone's a winner. (Got that bit from someone else's website before you ask).
Then there's the more churlish percentage of people who are coolly detached from the game, don't know the teams, don't know the players or understand the plays. Don't understand why there's still a team called the Redskins. Thinks the pants are too tight and that shoulder pads are so 90s. Some of these people get all excited about the consumerism. They watch the shows about the 'brilliantly creative' superbowl tv commercials. Watch out for the Oustsideleft TV ad this year. You're watching and waiting, oh... Oh these people aren't turned on by the players or the plays, what they can't wait for is their Half Time show, the star spangled musical performance. For sure, the soaring ambition of Whitney's star-spangled banner I can watch and weep.
The superbowl leaves no person untouched.
It's no surprise that 2020 was monumental for music, all those musicians cooped up given a chance to get back to creating music instead of the dragging their asses around their house party/pub backroom/Chicken in a basket/festival/stadium/oligarch's daughter/oligarch circuit. I know musicians suffered for it apparently. But in my experience time off is always great for new music.
And so we need to talk about Kelly. When you're doing that shopping, when you're chilling that beer, setting that bigscreen to that sport setting and so on. Everything you do will be tuned to the sound of Kelly Rowland's sort of Superbowl of a song, one of the NFL's Songs of the Season, so it gets played all the time, Hitman. You'll no doubt be familiar with Fela Kuti's Mr Follow Follow original and the story of what Fela Kuti endured around the release of the song...
Kelly Rowland's has always been great, no mere ugly sister to Beyoncé's Cinderella. And Hitman, hear that honking brass...Oh Wow! As DJ Fuzzyfelt mentioned, this is nothing less than a monster track.
Anyway... As soon as that, the season's over and the superbowl stuff is swept away pretty quickly because... Here comes Valentine's Day, the biggest restaurant night of the year, where the price of roses rocket, good restaurant reservations are as scarce as..., on the most perfect eating out night of the year too. More about that though, as soon as we get a date for it.
Meanwhile the legacy of this NFP season will not be the tons of dip tipped down the drain on the big day, the big hit of all the bog hits this season, Kelly Rowland's super Hitman. Oh and life will be better. A bit better for it.
