Why Did Coldplay Become a Punchline at the Super Bowl?
The Super Bowl 50 halftime show had a common theme aside from “peace” and “love”: hating Coldplay. In between millions of viewers praising Beyoncé and being generally okay with Bruno Mars, Coldplay—the headliner of the spectacle—was either treated as an afterthought or dragged through the mud.
Critics were brutal to the British rock band: the New York Times described them as more “a stagehand than an actual performer,” SPIN declared that Beyoncé and Mars “undeniably won” the halftime show, and Buzzfeed went with a sub-headline of “Chris Martin who?” in their recap. The viewers were less focused on the headliners, too. According to Twitter, Beyoncé generated 1.3 million tweets during the halftime show, while Coldplay mustered 774,000 tweets despite performing the longest. At least no one mistook them for another popular pop-rock group! Oh, wait, Taraji P. Henson did. Woof.
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