REVIEW: Shakira, JLo make Super Bowl halftime show overtly Sєxy … without a wardrobe malfunction
Singer Jennifer Lopez and her daughter Emme Maribel Muñiz perform while a Puerto Rican flag is displayed on stage during the Pepsi Super Bowl LIV Halftime Show at Hard Rock Stadium on February 2, 2020 in Miami, Florida.
No, there weren’t any wardrobe malfunctions when Shakira and Jennifer Lopez starred in the Super Bowl 54 halftime show on Sunday.
But there didn’t have to be. Skimpy outfits, sensual dancing and overtly Sєxual moves made it the Sєxiest halftime show in memory.
It was two women, at 43 and 50, flaunting their Sєxuality as they sang songs that were all nearly 20 years old.
But packed with those hits, it also was the most consistent — if clearly not the edgiest or most contemporary halftime show in recent years.
With the game between the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers taking place in Miami, the halftime show very much had an appropriate Latin feel.
The 14-minute show opened with Shakira in a fringy red outfit to sing her 2009 platinum hit “She Wolf,” dancing with a huge troupe of similarly red-clad women.
She quickly switched — playing guitar — to a slow, intense version of her platinum 2014 hit “Empire,” which segued into Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir.”
Singers Shakira and Jennifer Lopez perform during the halftime show at Super Bowl 54 on Sunday.
The 43-year-old Shakira ceded nothing to age: After doing a Sєxy rope dance, she broke into an energetic — and good — but too short version off her 2001 breakthrough hit “Whenever, Wherever.”
She was joined by Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny — in silver overcoat and skullcap — for the most contemporary song of the show: a cover of Cardi B.’s “I Like It.” But it also seemed that Shakira was, for the first time, lip synching.
Shakira’s seven-minute segment finished with a very good version of her 2001 double-platinum hit “Hips Don’t Lie,” crowd-surfing at the end.
Lopez’s five-minute turn opened with her atop a flagpole (a la her role as a stripper in the 2019 film “Hustlers”) singing her 2001 hit “I’m Real.”
While Shakira was sensual, the 50-year-old Lopez was Sєxual.
On “Ain’t it Funny,” she thrust her barely covered ʙuтт into the camera. Later, there was an overt crotch sH๏τ.
Lopez also seemed to have more moments in which she was lip-synching.
After a brief disappearance, she reappeared — this time climbing a pole, on which she then did pole-dancing moves.
She moved into a medley of other big hits: 1999’s “Waiting for Tonight,” on which she was joined by Colombian rapper J Balvin, her 2000 hit “Love Don’t Cost a Thing” and a clearly lip-synched “On the Floor” to close her triple-platinum 2011 hit “On the Floor.”
Oddly, after all that Sєxuality, the performance then brought in a children’s choir — led by Lopez’s daughter, Emme — to sing Lopez’s “Let’s Get Loud” with a snippet of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA.”
Was that supposed to convey a message? Whatever the meaning — children of immigrants born here? — it was lost as the song devolved into an escapade of dancing.
It ended with both Shakira and Lopez prominently flashing their ʙuттs, which was probably the closest thing to Janet Jackson’s 2004 wardrobe malfunction in a Super Bowl halftime show since.
