Beyoncé will join Coldplay at Super Bowl halftime show

Jan. 7, 2016 5:02 PM PT

How do you enliven a Super Bowl halftime show performance by Coldplay, the English pop-rock band whose 2000 hit, “Yellow,” rhymes with “mellow?”

In a word: Beyoncé.

The superstar singer, who headlined the 2013 Super Bowl halftime show, will share the stage with Coldplay when the four-man band performs at Super Bowl 50 on Feb. 7 at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara.

By coincidence, Beyoncé is the guest singer on “Hymn for the Weekend,” a song from Coldplay’s seventh and newest album, “A Head Full of Dreams.”

The question now, at least for fans of Queen Bey, is: How much will she steal the show from Coldplay? (The same question could be inverted to ask: How hard will it be for her to tone down her act in order not to steal the show from Coldplay?)

Actually, there are other questions to ponder as well. Namely, are Chris Martin and the other members of Coldplay at this very moment learning how to play “Drunk in Love” and “Single ladies (Put a Ring On It)?”

Can Martin rap? Or will he move back to the piano and invite Beyoncé’s husband, Jay Z, to drop some rhymes?

In turn, is Beyoncé learning such Coldplay songs as “Clocks” and “Vida La Vida?” Will Martin and Beyoncé do any joint choreography? Or will he wisely let her command center stage? And will either of the two dancing sharks who accompanied Katy Perry at last year’s Super Bowl halftime show make a cameo?

Either way, Beyoncé’s addition to the lineup seems like a well-calculated move by the NFL and Pepsi, the halftime show’s corporate sponsor, to boost ratings.

Remember Beyonce’s 2013 Super Bowl half time performance? Watch below:

Beyonce Super Bowl 2013

https://youtu.be/uxVeJpYNE4Q

Source: DiscoverSD

Music

George Varga

San Diego Union-Tribune music critic George Varga began drumming in rock bands at 12 and writing professionally about music at 15. A Louisiana native who grew up mostly in Germany, Varga has earned three Pulitzer Prize nominations for his writing at the U-T and is a voting member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In addition to providing live coverage of the Grammy Awards and festivals from Coachella and KAABOO to the 1994 edition of Woodstock, he has interviewed everyone from Miles Davis, Britney Spears and (over a game of chess) Ray Charles to Willie Nelson, Kanye West and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis. A triple first prize-winner for criticism and arts writing at the 2022 San Diego Press Club awards and a first prize-winner at the 2022 San Diego Society of Professional Journalists awards, Varga is also a contributing writer for Jazz Times magazine and has written for Billboard, Spin and other publications. After attending San Diego City College and San Diego State University, he created and taught the 2002 UC San Diego Extension course, “Jazz in a Post-Ken-Burns World.” Varga has written liner notes for more than a dozen albums, including by jazz sax greats James Moody and Michael Brecker, and contributed two chapters to the book, “Dylan: Disc By Disc.”