In what has become a bit of a ritual a group of friends and I catch up every year for Super Bowl Sunday as we habitually fall asleep before the game ends at 4am London time.
This year was no different and as we crammed into a South London flat to watch the Pittsburgh Steelers take on the Green Bay Packers it became clear that this was to become a bizarre tribute to Americana . Cue Sam Adams beers, Tex-Mex and much posturing.
It is my understanding that jobs in marketing are made on the back of these Super Bowl commercials and some of the ones we caught were pretty special. Which is more than can be said for the Black Eyed Peas whose performance was truly shocking.
Growing up in Italy I was frequently subjected to some dodgy techno version of a popular charting track so that it was not uncommon to hear Joan Osborne’s ‘One Of Us’ augmented by a symphony of tuts-tuts.
However, I was astonished to hear BEP rape and pillage ‘(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life’ from the 1987 film Dirty Dancing. What happened to the vaguely social conscious effort of ‘Where Is The Love?’. I’m not even snobbish so give me the smooth pop of ‘Shut Up’. Fuck it, I’d even rather listen to the upbeat exuberance of ‘Let’s Get Retarded’.
I thought the band succeeded in releasing the worst song ever committed to record back with ‘My Humps’ but my god does ‘The Time’ give it a run for its money…
TRACKS:
