At Super Bowl XLVI on Sunday, Madonna will play "three old songs and one new one," she announced at a press conference in Indianapolis. There are also reports that a championship football game will be played between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots.
There's little doubt as to what the new Madonna song will be: Madge released her new single Give Me All Your Luvin' with Nicky Minaj and MIA on Friday, teasing it with a clip of her new video on Thursday night's American Idol. Both Minaj and MIA announced they would perform alongside the 53-year-old Material Girl on Sunday, cannily bridging any generation gap between headliner and target demographic.
But most fans will probably want to know what familiar songs she plans to perform in her 12-minute set. The diva's lips are sealed. At the Thursday press conference, Madonna said she's saving that surprise. It's hardly a borderline move: Sunday's will likely be the biggest one-time crowd of her career. Last year's Super Bowl attracted 111 million US viewers, the largest ever US audience for a single TV broadcast.
"I am so excited to be here; incredibly nervous," Madonna demurred. "In over 25 years of performing, I have never worked so hard or been so scrupulous or detail-oriented – or freaked out as much."
While it's hard to imagine Madonna with a case of stage fright, the payoff for a solid performance to a 100 million+ audience can be enormous.
The Black Eyed Peas, last year's Super Bowl half-time artists, enjoyed a 332% jump in sales of their single Where Is the Love in the week after the big game, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The day after his performance at Super Bowl XLIII, Bruce Springsteen had the two most popular albums on Amazon: the double and single-album version releases of his newly released Working on a Dream, according to Billboard.
So Madonna has clearly timed the release of her new single well. But even the three older songs she plays will likely surge on digital download charts next week. For the six weeks after Prince performed at the 2007 Super Bowl, sales of his greatest hits record shot up by 348%, according to Nielsen.
No stranger to controversy herself, the Like a Virgin superstar who kissed Britney Spears at the MTV video awards in 2003 will be the first female to headline the Super Bowl halftime show since Janet Jackson's infamous bodice-ripping "wardrobe malfunction" incident of 2004, when Justin Timberlake tore off a chunk of her bra. In the ensuing fallout, the Federal Communications Commission levied a $550,000 fine against CBS, the network that aired the game, for indecency.
Not prepared to take any chances, the NFL has been working with producer Ricky Kirshner – son of legendary rock producer Don Kirshner. Lawrence Randall, the NFL executive who hired both Kirshner and Madonna for Sunday's game, said "ever since Janet", the league has been very careful about who they invite to play at the big game.
"Madonna is an icon. There is no target demographic – it's eight to 80," he told the Guardian. "We've had the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, the Who, Prince, Bruce Springsteen on our stage. After Madonna, there aren't many rock and roll pop icons left."
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