When the NFL announced at midnight ET that Apple Music is the new sponsor of the Super Bowl Halftime Show, the Swift-iverse went into overdrive, speculating that Taylor Swift would be the performer: The announcement came at midnight, Taylor is releasing her new music at midnight (er, like 99% of all major artists in the streaming era) and her new album is called “Midnights”.
With no disrespect to Swifties, there are actually a lot more tangible reasons why Swift seems like a likely front-runner for the Super Bowl Halftime Show — which, with an estimated 103 million viewers this year, is the single biggest platform for a music artist in the entire the world.
First of all, “Midnights” comes out on October 21st — and will almost inevitably be followed by a major tour. Swift was scheduled to do a major world stadium tour in 2020 in support of her 2019 album ‘Lover.’ ,” which aired on ABC and remains her last live performance. Notably, “Midnights” will be Swift’s sixth album in just three years: She joins “Lover,” the two pandemic-era albums “Folklore” and “Evermore” and the two re-recordings of “Taylor’s Version” . of ‘Red’ and ‘Fearless’ – the rights to which, along with four other albums before ‘Lover’, were sold in Scooter Braun’s controversial takeover of Big Machine Records. Needless to say, it has a lot of material to display.
All of this points to the fact that the Super Bowl is often used as a teaser for a major tour.
However, a less obvious reason lies in Apple Music’s announcement – or, rather, the fact that Pepsi announced it will not renew its ten-year sponsorship of the Halftime show this year. The sponsorship began in 2013 – the same year Swift began a long-term partnership with Pepsi’s decades-long arch-rival Coca-Cola. While sources said Swift’s deal with Coke prohibited her from playing a Pepsi-sponsored halftime show, whether she did or not, it would be awkward. (Of course, there was Swift’s criticism in 2015 of the then-new streaming service for not paying royalties on music played in demos, but it quickly changed the policy and was even the exclusive streaming platform for her music until 2017 .)
Finally, there’s a more complicated matter: After years of criticism over his handling of sports-related issues that culminated in Colin Kaepernick’s effective ban from professional football, he made a strong effort to change the narrative by entering into a long-term partnership in 2019 with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation organization for entertainment — including the halftime show. The past three years have featured almost exclusively entertainers of color: Jennifer Lopez and Shakira (2020), The Weeknd (2021), and this year’s multi-artist classic hip-hop extravaganza, headlined by Dr. Dre and featuring Kendrick Lamar, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige and 50 Cent, with Anderson .Paak on drums. While Swift is obviously a white woman, the past three years have come a long way in addressing the issue, and it seems likely that she would bring in performers of color to follow her lead (though we won’t be holding our breath waiting for Kendrick Lamar to reprise his on Swift’s “Bad Blood” remix).
And finally, three sources close to the situation tell Variety it’s happening.
Representatives for Swift, Roc Nation and the NFL did not immediately respond to Variety’s requests for comment.
