The sports world is excited for Tom Brady to reach the 10th Super Bowl this Sunday against Patrick Mahomes. But when Brady, looking for his seventh ring in an infallible Hall of Fame race, leaves the field at the break, he will give way to a decision-maker for the 12th consecutive Super Bowl and whose decisions are challenged. even mocked.
Regardless of the action on the field in the game, for many, this weekend is all about The Weeknd. And the man who helped bring the pop megastar’s Super Bowl LV break show to life is a British television director named Hamish Hamilton.
Since the show titled The Who in 2010, Hamilton, now 54, has been involved in presenting musicians so famous that we only know them by one name: Madonna! Beyoncé! Gagá !, or bands that made the soundtrack of a generation, such as Coldplay, Maroon 5 and Black Eyes Peas.
The global interest in the break show is nothing new, although 2021 marks the 30th anniversary of the NFL’s transformation from traditional bands to contemporary music acts and what a change it has been.
Super Bowl XXV, which also took place in Tampa, began with a sublime rendition of the Star Spangled Banner by none other than Whitney Houston.
The break was called “A little world greeting at 25 years of special bowl” with New Kids on the Block.
Operation Desert Storm led to the postponement of the show until after the match, with a news report about the Gulf War.
It was an important moment and the league never looked back, reserving family names such as Michael Jackson, Diana Ross and Boyz II Men in the 1990s.
The Aughties witnessed U2’s cathartic show after 9/11, the infamous Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake incident, known as “Nipplegate” in 2004 and Prince in 2007, often cited as the best half of the season.
All of these shows were key moments before Hamilton took over in 2010.
The audience even made it smaller than the audience for the game itself sometimes: in 2015, Katy Perry and her black teammates attracted 118.5 million viewers, compared to the game’s average audience of 114.4 million.
For Hamilton, who grew up in the north of England in the 1970s, the very notion of the Super Bowl was literally a very strange concept.
“I grew up in Blackpool,” Hamilton told CNN in a rare interview. “These are the days before the internet, mobile phones and global media sharing. My only knowledge of the sport was really my local football team, Blackpool, and a few miles away in the big city, Liverpool, which at the time dominated European football. “
Hamilton has attracted American attention after directing numerous BRIT Awards, the British equivalent of the Grammy Awards, and while he has in his resume the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics and Oscars, directing the Super Bowl break show is, well, Your Super Bowl career when it comes to cultural influence.
“We are always looking across the Atlantic to this unknown land of opportunity and excellence,” he says. “Now, creating these huge shows right in the epicenter of American culture fills me with enormous pride.”