It’s safe to say that Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl Halftime show was a triumph. Teasing the introduction and uncaging of five-time-Grammy-winning Song and Record of the Year Not Like Us throughout, and featuring bizarre bonus side-appearances by Serena Williams and Samuel L Jackson, Lamar made certain that the headlines would be his.
And when Not Like Us – a track heavily swathed in both innuendo and legal threats from rival Drake – eventually dropped, it’s safe to say that – just as when the Philadelphia Eagles claimed victory over the Kansas City Chiefs – the crowd went wild.
Similarly, sitting at home and barely watching, it’s equally safe to say that Noel Gallagher wasn’t impressed.
The Oasis songwriter and deputy mouthpiece voiced his take on the action via Talksport, a platform that has no business appraising the quality of the Super Bowl’s musical break but which clearly spotted an open goal and proceeded to slot Gallagher’s fizzing hornet's nest precisely within it.
Cage duly rattled, a sufficiently prodded and stoked Gallagher said of Lamar’s ground-breaker: “I had to switch it off. It was absolute nonsense. I didn’t watch it all, I just switched it off,” before accurately observing that: “There was like 300 people getting out of a car in the first two minutes.”
And the surprises just kept coming,
“I don’t like the halftime nonsense. It’s usually artists I don’t like,” before adding, “I never watch it, I’m not interested in it.”
And it’s not just music’s place in sport that’s got Gallagher rattled: “Americans are taking over our sport, they’re taking over the Premier League, they’ll take over the Champions League, trust me, 20 years from now it will all be nonsense,” he said.
Elsewhere, however, it’s safe to say that Lamar scored something of a touchdown. His performance is now on record as the Super Bowl’s most-watched Halftime show performance of all time, with 133.5 million viewers.
That’s - incredibly - more viewers than watched the sporting event that surrounded it, which managed to tempt just 126 million viewers to watch the Philadelphia Eagles claim American football’s biggest prize, beating the Kansas City Chiefs 40 to 22 and ending their hopes of taking the title three times in a row.
Wondering what brother Liam might have to say on the matter? And his take on the likelihood of similar surprise special guest appearances at Oasis's reunion gigs? Wonder(wall) no further.
