Black Eyed Peas: A flashy letdown

A cornerstone of every Super Bowl Sunday is the entertainment provided during the breaks in play. In years such as this, when I do not particularly care who wins, I tend to watch the Super Bowl more for the commercials and halftime shows.

This year, the entertainment was rather lackluster. After Lea Michele's simple, clean and straightforward rendition of "America the Beautiful," Christina Aguilera absolutely butchered our national anthem, mangling the fourth line. At that point, I thought things could only get better.

Then I was struck by just how boring most of the commercials were. By the end of the second commercial break, I muted my television, and began to catch up on the recent shows that I had missed on Hulu, and decided to wait for the halftime show.

While I personally was disappointed by many of the commercials before I muted my television, I was able to accept that most of them were better than what the Black Eyed Peas had to offer during the halftime show.

Don't get me wrong, when the Peas descended from the top of Cowboys Stadium's dome, I got excited that the show would be something spectacular. Then they surprised no one with their decision to open with "I Gotta Feeling."

Given the fact the show was the Peas, I expected their performance to be heavily auto-tuned, but I hoped the fact that the group would be performing unencumbered by instruments would allow them more freedom to make the most of the venue. Instead, they seemed just as static, if not more than, many of the elderly bands who came before them.

I am inclined to think the Peas fell victim to the nature of the venue: football stadiums are full of loud fans who may or may not actually care about the performance on the field, and I doubt they were able to hear themselves singing without the aid of earpieces to feed their voices back to them.

The Peas also were hurt by whomever happened to be working their audio, when Fergie's microphone failed to kick in until midway through her first verse. I hate to suggest it, but it almost might have been better for the Peas if their show was pre-recorded and they had lip-synced the performance.

In the end, it came down to the cameos by Slash and Usher to liven the show up. Slash could have been animatronic, as he just stood there, playing his part of "Sweet Child o' Mine" while Fergie continued to disappoint. Usher's dance moves were a breath of life for the performance.

While the mass choreography was unique from recent years and made me think back to Beijing Olympics, the Peas left much to be desired with their performance.

Brenden Higashi is a junior political-science major from Spokane County, Wash. He can be reached brenden.higashi@student.shu.edu