Seton Hall students weighed in on the Pepsi Super Bowl Halftime Show on Feb. 3 and provided mixed reactions on the performances.
The Pepsi Halftime Show was a musical collaboration between the main act, Maroon 5, and rappers Travis Scott and Big Boi. The set list included a variety of songs such as, “Harder to Breathe,” “This Love,” “Girl’s Like You,” “Sicko Mode” and more.
David Farrelly, a junior business major, said he can sum up the majority of Seton Hall students’ reactions for the Super Bowl halftime show. “It was so boring,” Farrelly said. “I’d rather watch Hallmark Christmas movies.”
When asked, students on campus had an overwhelmingly negative response to the show. More particularly, one common dissatisfaction was the lack of the song “Sweet Victory” from the Nickelodeon show, “Spongebob Squarepants.”
Fans of the show also commented on Change.org to voice how they wanted the song from the episode “Band Geeks” in the Super Bowl as a tribute to the death of the show’s creator, Stephen Hillenburg, who passed away in November 2018.
Alex Cittadino, a senior visual and sound media major, said, “I’m a big Spongebob fan, and it was very disappointing. You might as well have had a Spongebob commercial that lasted longer than that sad cameo.”
Cittadino offered a different solution. He said, “It seems weird how we decided that the whole episode with Spongebob and the marching band should go into Maroon 5’s halftime show when there could have been another artist who would have incorporated it more, like Katy Perry.”
Some students said they didn’t appreciate the aesthetic of the halftime show. Colleen Sullivan, a sophomore graphic design major, said, “I didn’t understand the purpose of the comet for Travis Scott’s intro. Spongebob takes place underwater and then suddenly a comet appears? It doesn’t flow with the aesthetic.”
Sullivan said she also disliked how the performance was not focused enough on Adam Levine, the main act. “Adam Levine let Travis Scott take over,” Sullivan said. “He just became another one of the guitarists in the background and everyone only paid attention to Travis.”
Carl Yetter, a sophomore sports management and marketing major, said he thought the artists who were selected to perform was an odd pairing. “An Atlanta rapper, a Texas rapper, and then Maroon 5,” Yetter said. “They performed well though, despite the fact that they didn’t complement each other.”
He added, “They had something going advertising wise when they picked big names, but I feel like the real hype was behind the fact that Big Boi was from Atlanta. I feel like if they picked a genre that complimented the area and the age demographic it would have gone over better.”
Olivia Seaback, a sophomore psychology major, also said she thought the acts performing didn’t fit well and that she expected to hear “Sweet Victory” as well.
“I personally think that Adam Levine is a good musician and live performer, but he and Travis Scott didn’t mesh together onstage,” Seaback said. “The songs they played from their album “Songs About Jane” were well done, but I feel like everyone wanted to hear ‘Sweet Victory.’”
Claudia Emanuele can be reached at claudia.emanuele@student.shu.edu.
