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The current top and bottom
Sheffield’s current ranking is not a consensus survey or an objective scorecard. It is a deliberately personal, comic argument about which artists turned roughly 12 to 15 minutes of television into a memorable event. On that basis, Prince’s 2007 performance is No. 1, Bad Bunny’s 2026 show is No. 2, and The Black Eyed Peas’ 2011 performance sits at the bottom of the displayed ranking, at No. 38.
| Sheffield’s placement | Performer and year | Why it matters in the ranking |
|---|---|---|
| No. 1 | Prince, 2007 | A rain-soaked, musically adventurous performance that felt like a complete Prince concert. |
| No. 2 | Bad Bunny, 2026 | A culturally specific, Spanish-language event built around Puerto Rican identity and belonging. |
| No. 6 | Aerosmith, Britney Spears, ’NSync, Nelly and Mary J. Blige, 2001 | A chaotic but revealing snapshot of early-2000s pop, rock, hip-hop and celebrity culture. |
| No. 7 | Shakira and Jennifer Lopez, 2020 | Athletic choreography, Latin American and Caribbean representation, and a dense succession of guests and set pieces. |
| No. 8 | Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, 2009 | A compressed Springsteen concert with unusually direct crowd energy. |
| Lower than its earlier position | U2, 2002 | A historically important September 11 memorial performance that Sheffield once ranked No. 1. |
| No. 38 in the displayed list | The Black Eyed Peas, 2011 | Expensive-looking production that Sheffield regards as strained, incoherent and lacking live authority. |
The No. 38 label should not be read as proof that there were exactly 38 distinct halftime performances. The historical list groups or compresses some early shows, so its numbering is an editorial ranking system rather than a one-show-per-year chronology.
1. Prince, 2007: why Sheffield puts him first
Prince wins because he made the halftime slot feel larger than the event that hired him. His performance at Super Bowl XLI in Miami had the scale of a major television spectacle, but its authority came from the fact that he never seemed to be chasing spectacle. He looked entirely in command of the songs, the band, the camera and the conditions.
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The rain became the perfect final production element. Prince closed with Purple Rain, turning an already strong set into an image that has become inseparable from Super Bowl history: the artist playing through a downpour while the stage and stadium appear to dissolve around him. Sheffield’s case is not simply that Prince sang and played well. It is that the weather, the song and the performer’s control combined into a moment that could not have been manufactured in quite the same way.
The set also avoided the safest possible greatest-hits strategy. Prince incorporated unexpected material, including a Foo Fighters cover, All Along the Watchtower and We Will Rock You. Those choices gave the performance the feeling of a live musician making decisions in real time rather than a celebrity checking off familiar titles.
That is the central reason Prince occupies the top spot: he converted a television obligation into a self-contained performance statement. The show worked for viewers who knew every reference and for viewers who simply understood that they were watching someone take possession of the stage.
2. Bad Bunny, 2026: a new kind of Super Bowl statement
Putting Bad Bunny at No. 2 is the most consequential change in the current version of Sheffield’s list. Bad Bunny headlined Super Bowl LX at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, on February 8, 2026. His placement shows that Sheffield’s idea of a great halftime show is not limited to classic-rock virtuosity or the traditional English-language pop spectacle.
The performance’s defining quality was cultural specificity. Bad Bunny made Puerto Rican identity central rather than decorative, performed in Spanish and treated the halftime stage as a platform for a community whose relationship with American popular culture is both intimate and politically complicated. Guest appearances by Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin expanded the show’s reach without displacing its central point of view.
The closing message framed America as a collection of homelands rather than a single cultural default. That helps explain why the show ranks so highly in Sheffield’s current assessment: it created an occasion around the occasion. Like U2’s memorial in 2002 and Prince’s rain-soaked finale in 2007, Bad Bunny’s performance was tied to a particular historical and cultural moment.
The comparison with Prince is useful. Prince’s show is a near-perfect example of individual musical command. Bad Bunny’s is an example of representation, identity and historical immediacy operating at the center of the spectacle. Sheffield’s No. 2 placement says both approaches can produce a great halftime show.
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The other performances Sheffield rewards
No. 6: the 2001 all-star collision
The 2001 halftime show brought together Aerosmith, Britney Spears, ’NSync, Nelly and Mary J. Blige. It is not presented as a model of restraint or elegant musical architecture. Its appeal is almost the opposite: it captures the crowded, maximalist logic of early-2000s entertainment, when rock credibility, teen-pop celebrity, hip-hop crossover and blockbuster collaboration were all competing for the same screen.
That chaos has historical value. The show documents what mainstream music culture looked like at that precise moment, and Sheffield treats the cultural snapshot as more interesting than a technically tidier performance that might have left no impression.
No. 7: Shakira and Jennifer Lopez, 2020
Shakira and Jennifer Lopez’s co-headlining performance at Super Bowl LIV is ranked highly for its movement, visual confidence and cultural presence. The set combined Latin American and Caribbean influences with the physical intensity expected from a modern stadium production. Shakira’s instrumental moments gave the show additional musical texture, while Lopez’s pole-dance segment became one of its most discussed visual elements.
Bad Bunny and J Balvin appeared as guests, reinforcing the show’s wider Latin-pop context. Sheffield’s praise is not just about how many recognizable performers appeared. It is about the way the choreography, guest appearances and cultural references made the performance feel like a deliberate statement rather than a random parade of cameos.
No. 8: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, 2009
Springsteen’s 2009 set succeeds by refusing to behave like a small intermission. Sheffield sees it as a concentrated version of a full E Street Band concert: direct, physical and designed to pull the audience into the performance immediately.
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U2, 2002: historical meaning over simple ranking
U2’s Super Bowl XXXVI performance directly addressed the September 11 attacks. A scrolling display of victims’ names and a large suspended screen transformed the halftime slot into a memorial. It was a striking decision for a program usually associated with celebration, advertising and broad entertainment.
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Sheffield once ranked U2’s performance first. Later versions moved it lower, which illustrates an important feature of the project: the ranking changes as Sheffield reassesses older shows and as new performances alter the standard of comparison. U2’s current numerical position matters less than the fact that it remains one of the list’s essential reference points. Its power comes from occasion and meaning, not from the usual criteria of choreography, guest count or visual excess.
Why The Black Eyed Peas finish last
Sheffield’s bottom choice is The Black Eyed Peas at Super Bowl XLV in 2011. The show had the resources of a major modern production: illuminated costumes, elaborate staging, guest appearances and a large visual footprint. Sheffield’s objection is that the parts never formed a convincing whole.
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- The light-up robot costumes made the performers look more like production effects than commanding live artists.
- The staging was busy without consistently creating a clear dramatic or musical arc.
- The I’ve Had the Time of My Life segment struck Sheffield as an awkward detour rather than a natural escalation.
- Usher appeared uncomfortable within the staging instead of strengthening it.
- Slash’s appearance on Sweet Child o’ Mine with Fergie was treated as an uncomfortable mismatch rather than a triumphant collaboration.
Independent retrospective coverage has also frequently cited this performance as one of the most criticized modern halftime shows. But the point is not that every individual element was irredeemable. The problem is the lack of live authority. The show looked as if it had been assembled from expensive components without deciding what the audience should feel by the end.
That makes The Black Eyed Peas a useful counterexample to Prince. Both performances were built for an enormous television audience. Prince’s production served a strong artistic personality; The Black Eyed Peas’ production sometimes seemed to substitute machinery and movement for one.
What Sheffield’s ranking is really measuring
Sheffield is not ranking vocal technique, record sales or audience size in isolation. His list treats a halftime performance as a miniature pop epic. The artist has to introduce a world, establish stakes and deliver a satisfying ending within a severe time limit.
- Artistic personality. The best performers impose their own identity on the Super Bowl instead of disappearing into a generic variety show. Prince, Springsteen, U2 and Bad Bunny all make the event feel like an extension of their artistic worlds.
- A sense of occasion. Rain, national tragedy, cultural representation and the pressure of a live global broadcast can give a show meaning that goes beyond its song list.
- Compression without timidity. A great set feels complete even though it is brief. It has a beginning, escalation and payoff rather than a sequence of disconnected promotional appearances.
- Staging that serves the performer. Spectacle is valuable when it amplifies charisma. It becomes a liability when costumes, props and special effects make the artist seem less present.
- Camera-friendly command. A halftime show is not the same as a club or arena concert. Performers must understand the television frame, the cuts between camera angles and the attention span of an audience divided between music, football and advertising.
This framework also explains why a crowded show can rank well or badly. The 2001 ensemble succeeds partly because its excess is an honest expression of its era. The 2011 production fails because its excess does not resolve into a coherent point of view.
How the halftime show became a pop-culture event
The earliest Super Bowl halftime programs were not celebrity concerts in the modern sense. They featured marching bands, drill teams, theme-based pageantry and variety acts. The first Super Bowl halftime included the University of Arizona and Grambling State marching bands, trumpeter Al Hirt and a jet-pack performer.
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That history matters when critics compare every halftime program on one list. A 1960s marching-band pageant was produced for a different television culture, with different technology, commercial expectations and assumptions about what halftime entertainment was supposed to accomplish. Calling an early pageant the worst modern pop concert would be a category error.
The format shifted decisively toward major pop stars in the early 1990s. Michael Jackson’s 1993 appearance is commonly treated as the turning point: it helped establish halftime as a must-see television event rather than disposable filler between football halves. From that point forward, the stage became a place where the NFL, the recording industry and mass culture could stage a highly compressed cultural moment.
A short chronology of the changing format
- 1993 — Michael Jackson: the performance helped redefine the halftime slot as a major pop-culture broadcast.
- 2001 — the crossover revue: Aerosmith, Britney Spears, ’NSync, Nelly and Mary J. Blige embodied the era’s appetite for maximum collaboration.
- 2002 — U2: the September 11 memorial showed that halftime could carry solemn historical meaning.
- 2007 — Prince: the Miami performance demonstrated how a singular artist could turn the broadcast into a personal live-performance statement.
- 2009 — Springsteen: the E Street Band showed how a short set could retain the force and directness of a full rock concert.
- 2011 — The Black Eyed Peas: the much-criticized production exposed the risk of confusing visual scale with performance cohesion.
- 2013 — Beyoncé: a solo headline set and Destiny’s Child reunion reflected the continuing importance of both individual star power and carefully timed nostalgia.
- 2015 — Katy Perry: appearances by Lenny Kravitz and Missy Elliott added musical contrast, while Left Shark became a lasting example of how an accidental or eccentric visual detail can outlive the planned spectacle.
- 2020 — Shakira and Jennifer Lopez: the co-headlined performance placed Latin American and Caribbean cultural presence at the center of the show.
- 2022 — Dr. Dre and collaborators: Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, Kendrick Lamar and 50 Cent delivered the first halftime performance centered entirely on hip-hop.
- 2023 — Rihanna: Rihanna performed while pregnant and used a floating-stage design, creating an image that appears in the upper portion of many retrospective rankings even though critics disagree about its precise placement.
- 2024 — Usher: Alicia Keys, will.i.am, Lil Jon, Ludacris and H.E.R. joined the headliner in a performance built around his R&B catalog and collaborative history.
- 2025 — Kendrick Lamar: the performance set the then-record for the most-watched Super Bowl halftime show according to NFL reporting.
- 2026 — Bad Bunny: the Super Bowl LX headliner entered Sheffield’s current list at No. 2.
Best does not mean most watched
Kendrick Lamar’s 2025 audience record and Sheffield’s placement of Bad Bunny in 2026 measure different things. A ratings or viewership record tells us how many people watched. It does not, by itself, establish artistic quality, emotional impact or historical importance.
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Random freezes, missing sound and display glitches usually trace back to one bad driver. Find and replace yours safely.Free scan · under a minuteLikewise, a performance can be culturally important without being every critic’s favorite. U2’s 2002 show remains significant because of what it memorialized, even though Sheffield later moved it from the top of his list. Rihanna’s 2023 performance has a strong retrospective reputation, but exact placements vary. A ranking is an argument about value, not a permanent measurement of fact.
How to read the changing Rolling Stone list
The safest way to use Sheffield’s ranking is to treat it as a critical lens rather than a definitive historical table. Different versions have different endpoints. The 2020 original could not include Bad Bunny’s 2026 show, and the current syndicated version retains some boilerplate from an earlier update. Readers may also encounter different access depending on geography: the official U.S. Rolling Stone page can be paywalled or technically restricted, while licensed regional editions and syndication may be easier to read.
The list’s intentionally comic voice is part of its design. Sheffield describes the exercise as subjective and indefensible, which is a warning not to mistake a critic’s personality for public consensus. The exaggeration makes the ranking entertaining, but the underlying criteria are consistent enough to analyze: command, occasion, compression, cultural meaning and whether the spectacle has a coherent center.
The verdict
Prince remains Sheffield’s best because he made the halftime show feel effortless, dangerous and fully his own. Bad Bunny’s No. 2 placement updates that idea for a newer era: cultural representation and historical immediacy can be as powerful as virtuoso musicianship when an artist understands the size of the stage.
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The Black Eyed Peas occupy the opposite pole. Their show had scale, technology and recognizable guests, but Sheffield finds no persuasive artistic center holding those elements together. That contrast is the ranking’s most useful lesson. The best halftime performances are not necessarily the busiest, most expensive or most watched. They are the ones that make a short television break feel like an event that could only have happened at that moment, with that performer.
And because every new halftime show changes the comparison, the ranking is never entirely finished.
Source note: The ranking discussion follows Rob Sheffield’s Rolling Stone list in its original February 2, 2020 Rolling Stone Australia/New Zealand form and its current 2026 syndicated version, along with the historical context and NFL-era reference points summarized above. Numerical placements can change when the list is revised.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Prince universally considered the best Super Bowl halftime performer?
No. Prince is Rob Sheffield’s No. 1 choice in the current version of the list, and his 2007 performance is also frequently praised by other critics. But Sheffield’s ranking is explicitly subjective, so Prince is not universally or objectively established as the best halftime performer.
Was Bad Bunny included in the original Rob Sheffield ranking?
No. The original Rolling Stone Australia/New Zealand article was published on February 2, 2020, before Bad Bunny’s appearance. The current syndicated version was updated to include Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl LX performance in 2026.
Why does the ranking end at No. 38?
The displayed ranking uses grouped or compressed entries for some early halftime programs. No. 38 is therefore a position in the editorial ranking, not proof that there were exactly 38 distinct halftime shows being compared one by one.
Does the most-watched halftime show count as the best?
No. Viewership measures how many people watched, while Sheffield’s ranking evaluates artistic personality, cultural meaning, staging, live charisma and the ability to create a coherent event in a short time. Kendrick Lamar’s 2025 audience record and a critic’s preferred performance answer different questions.
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The Bottom Line
Bottom line: Rob Sheffield ranks Prince’s 2007 performance first and Bad Bunny’s 2026 show second because both artists turned a short halftime slot into a culturally specific, memorable event. The Black Eyed Peas rank last among the displayed entries because elaborate production could not compensate for a lack of cohesion and live authority.
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