Iconic Rock Stars That Performed At NFL Games And It Went Embarrassingly Wrong

NFL performances and halftime shows are always something of a train wreck waiting to happen. For every instance of Prince singing "Purple Rain" in the rain at the 2007 Super Bowl and U2 performing a legitimately touching 2002 Super Bowl 9/11 tribute, there's Elvis Presto, the Elvis impersonator at the 1989 Super Bowl, and — yes, we can't not mention it — Nipplegate at the 2004 Super Bowl courtesy Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson. Sometimes failure falls at the feet of event organizers, and sometimes it's the fault of terrible singing or exasperating showboating. And sometimes, not even rock's biggest names can escape.    

But first, when we talk about NFL performances and prominent rock stars, we kind of have to stay limited to big games like the Super Bowl. Sorry, but Paul McCartney isn't going to show up to play "Here Today", let alone "Hey Jude," at game eight of the Chiefs' regular season — or anyone else's. We also have to stay limited to halftime shows. Sometimes, a singer-songwriter like Chris Stapleton will sing the national anthem, like he did in 2023. But he's a country singer and not a limb flailer like Mick Jagger. Plus, Stapleton did a killer job. 

That leaves the quality of the performance. Some rock or rock-adjacent stars popped up in oddly-matched pairs or ensembles that were head-scratchingly meh, but not super terrible. Shania Twain opening for a Sting and Gwen Stefani "Message in a Bottle" duet at the 2003 Super Bowl comes to mind. Other times, performances were soul-shrivelingly embarrassing or completely confusing, but not always because of the rock star in question. From Steven Tyler to Adam Levine, Slash to Flea, here are some of the worst.

It's the dawn of the second millennium. Y2K has come and passed, and not crashed all global computers. MySpace will launch in three years in 2003, and on January 30, the Rams beat out the Titans 23 to 16. It was on that day that we beheld a bizarro Super Bowl halftime show featuring dancing ice harlequins worshipping a resurrected puppet god amidst plumes of sacrificial flames, some spike-headed dudes (like #5 in Slipknot), and animated skeletons bopping around to tribal flutes, and terrible alleged lip syncing courtesy of everyone, but especially Christina Aguilera and Enrique Iglesias. It was into this mire that beloved Phil Collins stepped, rocking a beatnik hat and cargo pants.

It's not Phil Collins' fault that the Disney World Millennium Celebration — as it was called — was so weird. He just didn't fit. But there's a reason why he was there. Disney's "Tarzan" was released the year prior in 1999, and Collins had a colossal single off of it, "You'll Be In My Heart." The song swept awards that year, winning a Grammy, Golden Globe, and Academy Award. And, as the name of the show implies, Disney was in charge of the Super Bowl show. For whatever reason, they modeled it after the Tapestry of Nations show at Epcot Center, and got Edwards James Olmos to host it.

All this is to say: No matter Collin's talent for songwriting, the quality of his singing or voice, or the popularity of the "Tarzan" soundtrack, the entire halftime show was considered a bizarre, jumbled, left-of-field semi-disaster. It was a Disney marketing exercise stickered with predictably recognizable pop musical names that roped poor Phil Collins into the mix.

Following on the heels of 2000's weird Tapestry of Nations Super Bowl halftime show, we got a 2001 show that looked like a mid-budget karaoke festival, complete with a recorded comedic bit featuring a pre-"Zoolander" Ben Stiller. The boys from NSYNC ran on stage and actually sang live while dancing and bopping around — good on them. Then Joe Perry and Steven Tyler of Aerosmith quietly entered the scene and started strumming and eating the mic, respectively. That's when viewers' hearts sank further and further into vicarious shame.

Aerosmith was running on something of a hot streak at the time. 1998's "Armageddon" — a save-the-Earth-from-an-asteroid disaster flick featuring Bruce Willis, Ben Afflex, and Liv Tyler (Steven Tyler's daughter) — had introduced the '70s rockers to a whole new generation thanks to the movie's theme song, "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing," aka, the most overplayed song in the history of ever. At the 2001 Super Bowl, Tyler and the gang performed the first verse and chorus of the song before the show cut to the next selection from the musical grab bag. And then came the ending.

The shows ends in a gallery of frantic self-hype and random dances, with Britney Spears and NSYNC joining Nelly, Mary J. Blige, and Steven Tyler for a pellmell version of Aerosmith's "Walk This Way," complete with Tyler getting a bit too up in Blige's business. In the end, the whole thing felt like a disjointed, purposeless snapshot of transient, pop memorabilia that now serves as nothing more than an uncomfortably awkward time capsule. As NSYNC admitted and sang in "Bye Bye Bye," "I just want to tell you I had enough."

You know the feeling of absolute, pestilent shame upon seeing your drunk dad cavort on the dance floor trying to do some moves that he thinks are new and hip, but have actually been dead for 10 years? Neither do we, but it's not too hard to imagine. Now substitute your dad with Slash from Guns N' Roses, plunk him on stage at the 2011 Super Bowl, watch Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas fumble through "Sweet Child 'O Mine," and then look up the very handy German word, "Fremdschämen" (shame at another's shameful actions).

To be fair, the NFL disaster in question isn't really Slash's fault, nor was he drunk (we assume). The Black Eyed Peas were groan-worthy but tolerable, decked out in futuristic garb. At least they were actually singing. And at least when Slash showed up, the top hat-wearing, frizzy-haired guitarist hit all his notes and kept his head down — literally. It's just .... Listen, if we've got to explain why it's embarrassing to see Slash play the well-tread, eight-note riff from a 1987 track while Fergie undulates her body and croons Axl Rose's vocals through a mouthful of marbles and a fraudulently amped-up circle of white-clad cultists jump and clap in unison around the stage (or whatever they were supposed to be) ... Well, we already mentioned Fremdschämen, right?

This Super Bowl also featured Christina Aguilera's infamous rendition of The National Anthem. Amidst absolutely unnecessary vocal runs and a Kermit the Frog timbre, there was the garbled line, "What so proudly we watched at the twilight's last gleaming." Aguilera isn't a rock singer, but she gets an honorable mention, anyway.

At this point, the reader ought to be noticing that some NFL shows tend to degrade into cringe. They also contain odd mixtures of aging rockers grafted onto newer pop stars to keep all the dads in the audience happy, plus the transparent choice on the part of show's event coordinator/designer to chase musical fads. We're sorry to report that the Red Hot Chili Peppers fell prey to all of the above during the 2014 Super Bowl alongside Bruno Mars.

Mars kicks off the Super Bowl's halftime show by smashing on a drum kit like he's about to get an assault charge (okay, the fills were decent). As it turns out, the drumming was part of a prolonged intro for Mars' 2012 "Locked Out of Heaven," which segued to a Motown-inspired gold jacket segment and medley that ended in the "Give it away / give it away / give it away now" line from the Red Hot Chili Peppers' 1991 track. It's not clear why this callback existed until the actual Chili Peppers appeared on stage to remind the audience that they existed.

Here's where things descended to all of the criticisms we outlined above, plus two unnecessarily shirtless dudes (Flea and Anthony Kiedis). Once the oddness of the Chili Pepper's introduction wore off, the performance felt something like a normal concert. It's when the solo hits that things veer towards madness and eventual on-stage absurdity. The guitarist flips out so mightily during the solo that, 1) Is there an EMT nearby?, and 2) How can he play while trashing around like a lobotomized lemur? Thus, the ruse was revealed: the instruments were pre-recorded. Kiedes, at least, sang live.

Because we saved the worst for last, we end on a universally panned Super Bowl performance that will make you say, "Dude, what is wrong with you? Keep your shirt on!" (and we don't mean Flea and Anthony Kiedis). From that info alone, some folks will be able to guess that we're talking about Adam Levine, largely considered one of the most insufferable, peacocking, self-absorbed men in rock and pop who also doesn't care how he comes across. Come 2019, Levine's most characteristic Levine-isms were on full display at the Super Bowl halftime show, paired with some truly terrible vocals from Travis Scott and a mismatched Big Boi performing Outkast's "I Like the Way You Move."

Much of the failure of the show in question falls on Levine's tattooed shoulders. His singing wasn't the problem, nor was his delivery of some of Maroon 5's greatest hits, interspersed with Scott and Big Boi match-ups. It was Levine strapping on a guitar and doing some elementary pentatonic fills with a pained expression on his face that was awful. It was the play-acting directly to the camera, complete with pursed eyebrows and feigned relationship sorrows. It was the slow, smug saunter through reams of cheering faces. And finally, it was the hip gyration leading to tanktop removal and barechestedness while singing, "You say I'm a kid / My ego is big / I don't give a shhhhh" from 2011's "Moves like Jagger."

At best, The New York Times' headline read, "Maroon 5 Barely Leaves a Mark at the Super Bowl Halftime Show." At worst, the Independent broke down exactly why the show was the "worst in event's [Super Bowl] history."