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That's accurate, but a big underlying tension to the halftime show drama for a decade now is the degradation of pop music as a common part of American civic religion. When Michael Jackson, Justin Timberlake, or Prince played the halftime show it was expected that better than, what, 75% of viewers would enjoy at least some of their music? I don't think an act exists today that hits that kind of penetration. You're either picking oldies, like Bruce Springsteen, or what are ultimately by the standards of pop music up until the 2000s niche acts. Adjusting for population size, Thriller had a penetration of like 25% of the population listening to it; the best selling albums of 2025 like Taylor and Wallen only get to about a fifth of that. Morgan Wallen is notable as a crossover country star with sales so large that he shows up on the "normal" charts, but he's less than half of Shania Twain's penetration at her peak. The top selling acts of today are more like niche styles, where they used to be universal. The highest penetration acts are ten or twenty years out of date, which brings accusations of being stale, the modern acts are loved by 10-20% and hated by 10-20%, and mostly have lyrics that can't be repeated on television. Spanish language being the hack around this.
Growing up I just sort of understood this, I don't know who told me exactly, but in elementary school I thought of it as just a thing you were supposed to do that one listened to Counting Down the Hits with Casey Kasum every weekend to know what was going on in the world, and that not liking what was popular was somehow a bad thing. A Good American was supposed to appreciate Linkin Park, Eminem, Shania Twain, Cher, and Metalllica; at least a little. The county fair could be counted on to get one or two real pop acts every year, and young people went to them whether it was your favorite band or not, because it was a big time pop show in our little town.
I guess I have trouble understanding how anyone is getting worked up about Bad Bunny when Kendrick and Dre were unquestionably "worse" on culture war grounds. I didn't have to explain what was being bleeped out to my parents. Playing foreign rap music was basically how I got around requests for rap when I managed a gym with a "family friendly" mandate on the radio.
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