Chris Stapleton will sing the National Anthem at the Super Bowl this Sunday. He's following in some very big footsteps . . . but not that many of them when it comes to country stars. He'll be the NINTH country artist to do it.
What's surprising is how the Super Bowl has almost ignored country stars when it comes to performing at the big game. Here's a quick list of stars who've performed over the past 50-plus years.
1. National Anthems: Charley Pride was the first country singer to do it in 1974, and also the first PERSON to do it on their own. Before that, it was always instrumental, or done by a choir.
The other seven are: Garth Brooks in 1993 . . . Faith Hill in 2000 . . . The Chicks in 2003 . . . Carrie Underwood in 2010 . . . Luke Bryan in 2017 . . . Mickey Guyton last year . . . and Eric Church was on guitar when R&B singer Jazmine Sullivan sang it in 2021.
2. Halftime Shows: A country star hasn't been featured in one for 20 YEARS. The last time was Shania Twain in 2003. Even then, she shared the stage with Sting and No Doubt.
Before that, Clint Black, Tanya Tucker, Travis Tritt, and The Judds did the halftime show in 1994 . . . fiddle playerDoug Kershaw was part of it in 1990 . . . and if you think of Kid Rock as "country," he was involved in 2004.
3. "America the Beautiful": Faith Hill sang it in 2009, and Miranda Lambert did it with Blake Shelton in 2012.
As you can see, NOT a lot of country stars have performed at the Super Bowl. It's almost shocking how little we've been represented at the halftime shows. We're way overdue.
Dierks Bentley agrees. Here's what he had to say..."Personally, I’d be very happy watching Chris doing the half-time show. He would be amazing, and I think people would really love it. I’m a big Rihanna fan too. I’d like to sit down with Rihanna and figure out how she made 1.7 billion dollars. That’d be an interesting conversation. But I think in 2024, we need country as the half-time show. I’m just gonna say the Hot Country Knights are available.”
(The Boot, Wikipedia, Wikipedia, Wikipedia)
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