5 Worst Super Bowl Halftime Shows, Ranked

It's that time of year again ... the time of the big game. Super Bowl LX kicks off on February 8 at 6:30 p.m. ET, with a halftime show headlined by Bad Bunny. The global superstar is primed for a huge performance, continuing a strong recent streak of Super Bowl halftimes that includes 2025's Kendrick Lamar set, Usher in 2024, Rihanna in 2023, and the hip-hop mega-cast anchored by Dr. Dre in 2022.

These last few years of great Super Bowl halftime shows might cause you to forget just how many stinkers the big game has delivered over the years. Don't worry, though: We didn't forget. We could let the recent hits bury the crummy shows, but where's the fun in that? Instead, let's take a look back at the absolute worst Super Bowl halftimes and what made them such clunkers.

First, a few ground rules. Yes, technically, there were halftime performances long before the modern era of celebrity headliners, but it's not really fair to discuss those earlier shows in the same breath, nor were they produced in the same spirit as the more recent shows. With that in mind, we're not considering any Super Bowl's prior to the 1990s, which is when the halftime spectacle as we know it today really began. Secondly, no, The Who are not on here. Roger Daltrey did his best. Sometimes, rock stars just get old.

With all that out of the way, here are the five worst Super Bowl halftime shows, ranked.

Many may be surprised that this infamous show isn't ranked higher on this list. When most people talk about the ugly side of Super Bowl halftime performances, the Black Eyed Peas get brought up almost instantly. Of course this show was basically a disaster, but it had just enough redeeming qualities for us to allow a little bit of mercy, here.

Let's start with the bad parts. From the jump, the Peas' set was plagued by audio issues — Fergie's mic wasn't even turned on for her first solo line. With no shade meant to will.i.am, he clearly phoned it in on this one, and apl.de.ap and Taboo brought even less energy. Fergie delivered on energy, but her karaoke night impression of Axl Rose ruined what could have otherwise been a lifeline appearance from Slash. Usher did what you expect Usher to do, and the set definitely ended stronger than it started, but overall, the big chunky costumes and complete absence of choreography from the actual headliners gave the whole thing a stilted, half-rehearsed vibe.

All that said, there were some cool ideas here in the tech department, which was clearly the focus. The LED light suits on the sea of background dancers across the field allowed for some fun macro visuals, and more importantly, they pointed in the direction future halftime shows would go — just as much techno-light spectacle as concert performance. Keep in mind that this show was how we broke free of the geriatric rock star trend of the previous few years, so all in all, we can write off at least some of the issues here as growing pains.

It's still pretty bad, though.

The "Blues Brothers" movie was nearly 20 years old in 1997. John Belushi, the heart and soul of the musical act that started on an episode of "Saturday Night Live" had been dead for about 15. So, why did the NFL choose the group to follow up a historic performance from Diana Ross in 1996? Well, see, there was a new movie coming out in 1998: "Blues Brothers 2000."

It bombed.

Obviously, Dan Aykroyd and John Goodman can be great performers in the right venue. The Super Bowl halftime show is unfortunately not one of them, and while you can't begrudge Jim Belushi for wanting to keep his late brother's act going, he dramatically lacked the star power to anchor a show of this scale. The entire "Blues Brothers Bash," as it was dubbed, felt messy, boring, and all-around perplexing, but it was saved from absolute catastrophe by the irrepressible force of charisma that is James Brown. To a lesser extent, ZZ Top did a fine job in their guest turn, but these acts had no real cohesion, and the production of the show felt more like a poorly planned flash mob than a national spectacle.

Saying that the most infamous Super Bowl halftime show of all time is one of the worst ever doesn't feel quite right. Janet Jackson brought tons of intensity and dynamism, but you can easily call this the worst show ever because of the way Jackson was blacklisted after the "wardrobe malfunction" where Justin Timberlake stripped off a piece of her outfit to reveal her breast on live television.

We don't have time to rehash all of the cultural implications of that moment, but the basics are that Timberlake got off essentially scot-free for his declared accident, while Jackson became a national pariah. The travesty of her treatment is enough to get this show mentioned here, but it's also not the only reason 2004 was a bad time.

Even before wrecking the career of a woman with 10 times his talent, Timberlake looked woefully out of place in their closing duet. The star power wasn't there, and his outfit made him look like Steve from "Blue's Clues" trying to buy weed. Then there's Kid Rock's American-flag-draped performance, which only served to emphasize further how much Jackson outclassed everyone else on stage. And all that's without even mentioning the Diddy of it all.

Between 1991 and 2000, Disney headlined three different Super Bowl halftime shows. They were all disasters, and all for similar reasons, so it would seem strange to break them up. Instead, we're giving them a combined silver raspberry.

The 1991 show was certainly the most excusable of the three. It was really the first halftime show with a notable celebrity musical guest — New Kids on the Block — and it was largely focused on actual children, so we're not going to knock off too many points for things being pitchy. The theme here was a generalized feel-good message about global community and how the children are the future, which is a nice enough theme. But was the show itself any good? Absolutely not.

The 1995 show was far more bizarre, with an overriding "Indiana Jones" theme timed to celebrate ... uh ... the opening of a ride at Disneyland. Yes, that was enough to determine the whole direction of a halftime show in the mid '90s. The whole thing was just so poorly conceived and tonally off that not even Tony Bennett and Patti LaBelle could anchor the weirdness.

Then there was the Super Bowl XXXIV halftime show: A celebration of the new millennium headlined by Phil Collins, Christina Aguilera, and Enrique Iglesias in the most '90s fashion you could possibly ask for. Collins' performed his song from the "Tarzan" soundtrack in a definite highlight. The guy gave it his all, but the rest of the show — which, bafflingly, included more original music than actual Disney classics — was a trainwreck.

"Can I play guitar for you right now?"

Actually, Adam Levine, we would really rather you didn't.

The Super Bowl LIII halftime show is the worst of all time for a number of reasons. Even before the game kicked off, this show was mired in controversy, as first-choice performers exited the show in solidarity with recently blackballed quarterback and social justice activist Colin Kaepernick. That left the NFL with a slowly disrobing Maroon 5, Travis Scott with no autotune, and just enough Big Boi to remind that the game was taking place in Atlanta.

Let's be clear: Travis Scott was not good here. His digitally untouched screeching may even make you look at his catalog differently. But Maroon 5 were the headliners, and boy or boy did they bear the brunt of the blame. From the jump, it was clear that Adam Levine had no idea what to do with his body. He cycled through a range of eighth-grader-at-his-first-formal moves, including a hilarious little arm-swing number in the middle of Big Boi's set, and he insisted on over-ad-libbing his own songs so aggressively that nearly every note ended worse than on the album version.

Then there was the shirtless portion — a nipple reveal that was actually worthy of career-ending backlash. For a self-proclaimed wife guy who'd face allegations of infidelity just a few years later, way too much of this show consisted simply of Levine walking through crowds of screaming women. The music video spinny cam for "Girls Like You" was just the cherry on top. By the time Levine started declaring he had moves like Jagger, it was painfully obvious that, in fact, he did not.