Super Bowl: Kendrick Lamar, the ads, Taylor Swift and everything but the football – as it happened

So Taylor’s boyfriend didn’t win this year, that much we know (Taylor, on the receiving end of some pretty juvenile boos, didn’t seem to have the greatest of nights this time around) but he wasn’t the night’s biggest loser – that would be Drake.

The Canadian rapper has been on the receiving end of Kendrick Lamar’s ridicule for months now, and tonight we got to see the perfect finale, the Grammy-winning diss track Not Like Us performed for America’s biggest TV audience of the year. It was the most obvious crowd-pleasing moment of a mostly unconventional set, avoiding bigger songs and relying on social commentary, via Samuel L Jackson, that challenged an audience accustomed to an easy ride.

The ads of the night were starrier than usual, as was the stadium itself, but there was also an unpleasant amount of both AI spots and those that were not exactly political but were patriotic in an old-fashioned way that felt prioritised at the expense of anything more progressive (No gays! No trans! Just one mention of climate change!). It tracked that it was the year that Trump turned up. At least he got to see Kendrick Lamar perform.

F1

The big Super Bowl spot for Brad Pitt’s F1, one of the summer’s biggest question marks, continues the good work done by last year’s first trailer, focusing on multi-sense immersion. It’s set to be the most authentic racing film we’ve ever seen, made in collaboration with the governing body behind Formula One and filmed during actual events over the last couple of years, and the stripped-back new ad highlights such authenticity. Hopes are high with a giant budget and backers Apple still waiting for their first genuine box office hit but if anyone can make this kind of unlikely magic happen, it’s Joseph Kosinski, who also steered Top Gun: Maverick from curio to blockbuster.

Smurfs

In year that’s lazily bringing back more franchises than ever before from Jurassic World to Final Destination to 28 Days Later to How to Train Your Dragon, why not try once again to make Smurfs work? The characters have moved from Sony to Paramount after two connected films and one reboot and all bets have now been placed on Rihanna as Smurfette, following in the footsteps of Katy Perry and Demi Lovato. After all that wait, is the new Rihanna album going to be a Smurfs soundtrack?

The next chapter in the story of soda

A wildly ambitious ad here from Poppi, that slightly more expensive and substantially less tasty alternative to regular soda. According to the voiceover, Poppi is what what your kids will think of when they think of soda! Poppi is the next chapter in the story of soda! It’s enough to scare one into actually drinking Poppi.

Super Bowl ads always lean patriotic – Budweiser Clydesdales, etc – but this year had an especially awkward edge. The current political divide is stark, and the president who is currently attempting to dismantle much of the government was in attendance tonight. And yet many of the ads and game promos, starring A-list celebrities such as Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt, blithely championed American iconography: freedom, flags, the open range and, of course, football. That’s the job, but especially absent any topics considered “woke” (Kendrick’s half-time show notwithstanding), the disconnect was striking.

Carl’s Jr brings back bikinis

Eight years after ditching the strategy of using models in bikinis to sell their burgers, Carl’s Jr returns with TikTok influencer Alix Earle doing just that.

Well, tonight was not the romcom sequel for Taylor Swift. You do not need to understand football to know that Travis Kelce’s team didn’t play well. No shots of Taylor cheering during a pivotal moment. The Chiefs, and TNT, were never underdogs, but didn’t even have the semblance of being underdogs this year, and popular sentiment was solidly in favor of the other team. Taylor even got some boos when she appeared on the jumbotron:

She did get some support from Serena Williams, though. And she will be fine, of course.

Andy Reid’s side hustle

Andy Reid, leader of the Kansas City Chiefs, is making a play to fill the void of America’s favorite NFL coach left by … no one … with this riff on the side hustle. First it was Zoolander-esque hand-modeling – the better to show off what three Super Bowl rings you have – and now it is Skechers no hands slide-ons.

Here’s Sam Wolfson’s great four-star review of tonight’s half-time show:

Novocaine

As audiences prefer to stick with known quantities like Keanu Reeves, Gerard Butler and Jason Statham, Hollywood continues to try out new action stars with mostly middling results. Aaron Taylor-Johnson couldn’t get anyone craving some Kraven the Hunter, Henry Cavill scored two flops back-to-back with Argylle and The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, and this weekend, Ke Huy Quan’s first leading vehicle Love Hurts went nowhere for nobody all at once (it opened to a pitiful $7m). Will they warm to Ana de Armas in John Wick summer spinoff Ballerina or maybe Jack Quaid, best known for Amazon’s The Boys and last month’s Companion, in gimmicky caper Novocaine? He plays a man incapable of feeling pain whose girlfriend is kidnapped. Given the pricey placement of this new tease, it’s clear that Paramount is hoping for big things from a film that looks like it has a very small budget.

All said and done, Kendrick’s “Hey Drake” impish grin is definitely the meme of the night. Some highlights from what remains of the site formerly known as Twitter:

Cher turns back time for Uber Eats

Uber would like you to know that they too know the memes on Cher not aging – in another budget-flex ad clearly inspired by one of the greatest ever Twitter (never X) threads, Cher uses her powers of timelessness/Uber Eats to turn back time … to the era of witch trials.

Walton Goggins’s AI goggle glasses

Walton Goggins is the latest celebrity to hop on the AI endorsement train, for GoDaddy’s Airo, a generative AI service for small businesses. Lol that the ad compares AI’s ability to produce things you don’t know how to make – like a logo for Walton Goggins’s goggle glasses – to the skills of … a human actor.

I think you should eat

The internet’s favorite IYKYK comedians Tim Robinson and Sam Richardson bring their signature absurd comedy of manners to this Totino’s Pizza Rolls spot that is basically an IYKYK ad for Robinson’s Netflix series I Think You Should Leave. I am personally delighted to see what deranged platitudes they can deliver in under 10 seconds.

There’s also some footage of the guy who was tackled and removed during the performance after he rushed onto the field with a Palestine flag:

Here’s the full half-time performance if you missed it:

Muppets on vacation

No one has quite figured out what to do with the Muppets ever since they returned in 2010’s rather wonderful movie. There was a middling sequel, a one-season ABC series and a one-season Disney+ series, the characters currently stuck in Disney’a vault until someone else reboots them. They’ve been let out for a brief appearance in this Booking.com ad, their umpteenth Super Bowl ad that, as has become standard, doesn’t really know what to do with them.

Dove goes for body positivity

In a spot aiming for serious and sentimental, Dove makes another case for changing the way we talk to girls about their bodies, comparing the joy a three-year-old finds in running to the self-hatred a 14-year-old feels about her legs. No product, just a call to treat girls better, becauseone in two who quit sports are criticized for their bodies. Oof.

David Beckham’s long-lost brother?

In an ad clearly going for the “most cinematic” award of the night, David Beckham learns he has a long-lost brother, whom his parents named “Other David”. Enter Matt Damon, playing Other David, and the pair bond over a pint, “soccer” (meaning “football”) and requisite Ben Affleck ribbing.

In surround sound:

Harrison Ford waxes poetic for Jeep

Wow, Harrison Ford is really feeling his Yellowstone era (he stars in 1923). The actor appears, mug in hand, in a lodge by the mountains, in stoic main character mode for a video essay on the importance of writing your own story, life’s owner’s manuals and freedom, etc. Some shots of American soldiers and the beautiful Rockies gives an extra layer of weird patriotism to this rambling Jeep ad, one of several weirdly patriotic spots tonight.

A serious note for climate change

A break from things to buy with a spot on something more pressing: climate change. The ad, from a group from Science Moms and the Potential Energy Coalition, is blunt on the point that we’re running out of time to make necessary changes for the climate, and to give our children the world we promised. The ad apparently only aired in LA and on streaming, but will still presumably reach millions, along with all that AI promo.

Is there any celebrity who isn’t there tonight? Apart from Drake ofc:

One of the best SNL Super Bowl skits imagined a world where the half-time guest cancelled at the last minute and was replaced by Broadway musical theatre actors. Cue horror:

Stop enjoying those mozzarella sticks

It’s time to back away from the snacks thanks to a rollercoaster ad here from telehealth company Hims and Hers. First we’re scared – obesity is a deadly epidemic that kills millions - then we’re angry – there’s a $160bn industry that profits from urging us to lose weight – then we’re relieved – the answer lies with, you got this, Hims and Hers and a range of effective but, wait, still not exactly free medications. Now we’re hungry again.

Still hung up on Not Like Us over here, the second of two Drake diss tracks (the other being Euphoria) that Kendrick performed to the largest audience of his career. Interestingly, Kendrick made some adjustments to the lyrics for the broadcast – he notably skipped over the word “pedophile” (the center of Drake’s defamation lawsuit against UMG), but did get the whole crowd in for “tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A minor”.

And, well, he said this. Not a good night for Drake:

The Bud Light boys are back

Bud Light smartly recruited the two most Bud Light-y of celebrities – longtime rep Post “Solo cup on stage” Malone and comedian Shane “hold my beer” Gillis – for this year’s spot, fittingly set in an archetypical suburban cul-de-sac. The message? Bud Light lets dudes be dudes. Somehow this successfully toes the line between “America, fuck yeah!” and “actually could be fun”.

Häagen-Dazs slows it down

Fast and Furious fam Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez and Ludacris slow down thanks to the smooth jams of Smokey Robinson and an ice-cream bar. There are shades of a 2000s-era Viagra commercial thanks to the mood music, Pacific Coast Highway locale and vintage car.

Kieran Culkin is baby beluga

Kieran Culkin, the former Succession star on the awards circuit this year for playing a very Kieran Culkin character, appears here as a very Kieran Culkin character who is also a financially savvy beluga whale. I think this counts as part of the Oscar campaign?

Go away, Doja Cat

In a year that’s more stuffed with celebrity ads than usual, a rather funny use here of a rather funny Doja Cat forcing her way into Taco Bell’s celebrity-free Super Bowl ad. Get her on SNL!

Jurassic World: Rebirth

While the Jurassic World movies might have failed to reach the lofty heights of Jurassic Park, I’d argue they were mostly more successful than the two films that followed it. That, some hard-to-shake nostalgia and the pairing of Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali make it difficult not to get just a bit excited about the still completely unnecessary Jurassic World: Rebirth. The new spot is essentially a remix of the recent trailer but then that was a remix of everything that came before anyway.

It appears that someone briefly crashed Kendrick’s performance with a Palestinian flag with the words Sudan and Gaza written on it, even getting on the set’s GNX car.

According to Guardian sports editor Bryan Graham, who is at the game, the person waved the flag for about 45 seconds before security guards tackled them.

Tipsy on sugar

Shaboozey might not have won any Grammy awards for his monster hit Tipsy but he did get the chance to sing It’s a Wonderful World in a Super Bowl ad for Nerds gummy clusters, so every cloud …

Kendrick really will not give Drake a break, even taking a fresh swipe at him during the show. “I want to perform their favorite song, but you know they love to sue,” he said during one tease of Not Like Us, referring to Drake’s defamation lawsuit over the track.

Even abridged and censored, the song was still an astonishing W for the rap beef. Even rumored former Drake paramour Serena Williams was on stage for the occasion. Naturally, it also lit up the internet.

Nate Bargatze balls out for DoorDash

Nate Bargatze is on a roll – after hosting Saturday Night Live for the second time this fall, and thus being one of the more famous standup comics in America, he’s now applying his dry humor to a Super Bowl ad in support of DoorDash’s rewards program. My main question is: where did he get this Met Gala-worthy robe?

Matthew McConaughey vouches for good AI

Another commercial break, another celebrity vouching for some version of AI – in this case, Matthew McConaughey gets stranded in the rain because his booking app doesn’t use Salesforce’s AI assistant Agentforce, while Woody Harrelson has a nice dry meal. An attempt to assuage fears with folksiness, as McConaughey assures it’s “what AI was meant to be”.

Also if Samuel L Jackson turning up wasn’t enough of a surprise…

And here are some closer looks at Kendrick’s show-stopping performance (with guests):

Was it just me, or did that show feel like it flew by? Kendrick ends on a high note with a shoutout to Compton and his collaborator, Mustard, for the GNX track tv off. Kendrick and was confident and in command throughout, SZA sounded amazing, the act was a political statement in its existence – a solid Super Bowl half-time show.

Here’s that moment:

Oh, he’s really teasing and dragging out the intro to Not Like Us, this must feel good. “They tried to rig the game but you can’t fake influence,” he says before launching into the hit of last year.

Well, it happened. We heard “hey Drake, I hear you like ’em young” at the Super Bowl, along with tens of thousands trilling “A minorrrrrr”.

Kendrick is bouncing between the eras – Damn, GNX (he teases Not Like Us, but not yet!), then slows it down with SZA for Luther and their Black Panther hit All the Stars. All smooth and mesmerizing so far.

Oh hell yeah, Jackson once again appears to mock so many criticisms of rap music – “too loud, too reckless, too ghetto” – before Kendrick goes into Humble, with his red, white and blue dancers forming an American flag of Black faces. That’s quite an image.

Alright, alright, Kendrick is here. Samuel “Uncle Sam” Jackson introduces the one and only Kendrick, who starts a cappella on a GNX before he brings out a team of coordinated dancers and a statement – “The revolution about to be televised, you picked the right time but the wrong guy” – before launching into Squabble UP. Let’s goooooo.