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Turning Point USA’s “All-American” Halftime Show will probably go down in history as the most painful thing I experienced this week, and that will include the root canal I have scheduled on Thursday.
While millions of Americans tuned into Bad Bunny’s much-anticipated performance during the real halftime show during the actual Super Bowl, I was tasked with watching and recapping the “All-American” alternative thrown by Erika Kirk (widow of the late conservative podcaster Charlie Kirk) and led by Kid Rock. There were also a handful of country music Z-listers I’d never heard of until this week. I can only assume this was some sort of karmic punishment for taking French instead of Spanish in high school.
Before this show even began, its mere existence raised some eyebrows. For example, “all American” as opposed to what? Bad Bunny is from Puerto Rico and is therefore a natural-born U.S. citizen. Even if that wasn’t the case, where was this patriotic fervor when non-Americans like Paul McCartney headlined in the past?
This is only hypocritical if your notion of what constitutes an American includes frivolous technicalities like citizenship, but compared with MAGA’s well-established standards, it sounds about white.
Others may be confused by the fact that this performance happened at all. You may be wondering, ‘Didn’t I see something about a bunch of artists dropping out of this show? Like Ludacris and Shinedown?”
Reader, that is a totally different disaster of a MAGA music event, the Rock the Country festival, led by Kid Rock, scheduled for this summer. The conservative music world is tiny and insulated, so it’s not uncommon for events and headlines to sound repetitive after a while.
As I set up the TPUSA livestream in an incognito window (because I’ll be damned if these clowns mess up my carefully curated algorithm), my husband called me to the living room to watch the Bad Bunny set with him, insisting that there’s no reason why I can’t see both shows.
“They’re supposed to be happening at the same time,” I said.
“Yeah, but Turning Point probably doesn’t have their shit together,” my husband replied. And he had a point. At 7:41 p.m., a 15-minute countdown began on the livestream, as did a series of creepy, conservative ads for things such as the TPUSA “Make Heaven Crowded” tour and the United States Department of War, as well as vague concepts like “saving our civilization.”
When the countdown ended at 7:56 p.m., a graphic on the screen promised that the event would start soon. It sat there for another 15 minutes. Mercifully, there were no spooky ads this time.
The show itself was structured like a music festival, working its way up the undercard to the headliner. The non-Kid Rock performers appear to tell a story about the kind of acts TPUSA wishes it could’ve booked but couldn’t afford. Brantley Gilbert has several years of country airplay under his belt, but his best-known songs are ones he’s written for Jason Aldean. Gilbert even performed one of his Aldean hits, “Dirt Road Anthem.”
The third opener was Gabby Barrett, who is also a country singer because there’s apparently only one genre in “real America.” Remember being in the car with your mom as a kid and begging to stop at McDonald’s, only to be told no because you have food at home? Barrett is the “we have Carrie Underwood at home” of the lineup. I’d note the similarities between her hit “I Hope” to Underwood’s “Before He Cheats,” but that’s an overdone comparison at this point.
A singer named Lee Brice was also there. His set was the most overtly political of the three and included his new song, “Country Nowadays.” The track bemoans how hard it is to be a red-blooded, working-class American who just wants to go to church and drink beer in a country that’s becoming woker by the minute.
“It ain’t easy being country in this country nowadays,” Brice crooned. It’s worth noting that this self-professed man of the people has a net worth of $6 million and lives in the large city of Nashville, TN. But his songs are in English, so that must mean he’s just like you.
As Brice’s set came to a close, so did the actual Super Bowl Halftime Show. I had missed a surprise appearance from Lady Gaga to listen to some posturing millionaire cry about pronouns, and we still hadn’t even gotten to the meat and potatoes of the show: singer, rapper and ghoul, Kid Rock.
As Rock took the stage and treated the audience to his unique musical stylings, hooting and hollering his song “Bawitdaba” surrounded by all of the same flash and spectacle of Charlie Kirk’s funeral, the view count, which had peaked at around 5 million, started dipping. I assume this was because the actual game was back on, and while TPUSA’s target audience certainly cares about Kid Rock more than Bad Bunny, football still reigns supreme on their list of priorities.
Halfway through his set, Rock left the stage and was briefly replaced by a violin player and a cellist. Their performance was the best of the night, but by then the stream had lost over 700,000 viewers. When Rock returned, he was reintroduced by his government name, Robert Ritchie, and played a cover of Cody Johnson’s “Til You Can’t.” It was quite literally preaching to the choir, positing to a room full of frat-flicking conservative Christians that the Bible might just have some good ideas.
Confoundingly, this acoustic ballad was the grand finale. All that was left of the “All-American” Halftime Show after that was a tribute to Charlie Kirk, and then the remaining audience was free to get back to the game.
I have to give credit where credit is due, though: The lengths that conservatives will go to in order to avoid mild discomfort never cease to amaze me. They were so repulsed by the notion of a show they didn’t have to watch in a language they didn’t speak that they poured their time and resources into putting on this embarrassing dumpster fire instead. If I were trying to prove my organization’s bona fides as a massive, influential youth movement and the best I could get to represent me was someone who hasn’t known relevance in two decades, you could not torture me into going on with the show anyway.
Even amid all of the horrors and chaos, America deserves better cultural representation than whatever the “All-American” Halftime Show thought it was doing. Prove me wrong — you can’t.