Adam Levine Talks Maroon 5’s Big Game Halftime Gig
After Maroon 5 canceled a pre-Super Bowl press conference planned for Thursday — no doubt because the band’s appearance has been so controversial — lead singer Adam Levine sat down with Entertainment Tonight to discuss the gig.
The full interview will air at 7:30 p.m. ET/PT tonight, but a sneak preview clip doesn’t give any insight into how Adam feels about the controversy. Instead, he discusses his approach to what he calls “the biggest gig in the game.”
When interviewer Kevin Frazier asks how Adam is preparing to “make this a spectacle,” the singer answers, “The spectacle is the music. We just kinda wanted to bring it back to a time when it was a little more simple, when…the highlight, the focus, was the connection to the songs.”
It’s not clear what time Adam is referring to, since the Super Bowl halftime show has been a spectacle for years — specifically, since 1991, when the NFL began booking big-name pop and rock stars to perform. Prior to that, it was a bunch of marching bands, dancers, the occasional actor or actress, and the squeaky-clean vocal group Up with People, leading critics to denounce it as being woefully out of step with popular culture.
In the clip, Frazier also asks Adam, “There’s been controversy around you guys playing this performance…” to which Adam responds, snarkily, “Has there?”
“Just a little,” Frazier responds, before continuing, “What went into your decision?”
The clip ends there, so you’ll have to wait until 7:30 p.m. to hear Adam’s response.
As previously reported, Maroon 5 has been criticized by those who feel the band should not perform in order to stand in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who started the #TakeAKnee movement to protest police brutality.
Copyright © 2019, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
