What a night.
What a night. Bad Bunny headlining as the first Latino solo artist to perform the halftime show almost entirely in Spanish. Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin as surprise guests. Green Day and pumps of visible steam opening, Charlie Puth on the anthem, and Brandi Carlile doing America the Beautiful. Bad Bunny refused to tour the mainland US over ICE raid concerns, then made this his one exception. He said "ICE out" during his Grammy acceptance speech the week before. Bay Area Levi's Stadium fireworks. Green Day steam was the local touch.
Manscaped "Hair Ballad" advertisement. Shaved, anthropomorphic body hair crooning a melancholy love song about the men they once called home. A hairball by the shower drain that has blinking eyes. Lines like "I was your scruff, your loyal friend" as they swirl toward the drain. Grotesque and tender. The Claude ads were strange or odd in a good way. Four spots titled Betrayal ... Deception ... Treachery ... and Violation. Showing a character asking a real question about their life and the chatbot pivoting mid-answer into a product pitch. Drum and thin guy at a pull-up bar, getting sold height-boosting insoles for short kings. The guy asking how to talk to his mom getting redirected to a cougar dating site called Golden Encounters. Sam Altman called the ads funny but clearly dishonest. Tech Crunch is what you say if the ads landed. Using advertising's biggest stage to argue that advertising doesn't belong everywhere. A good contradiction is one that doesn't resolve cleanly. The Super Bowl. America's weirdest annual variety show.
