I Watched Turning Point USA’s Kid Rock Halftime Show So You Don’t Have To
Rock and fellow performers Brantley Gilbert, Lee Brice and Gabby Barrett looked to give conservatives an alternative to actual Super Bowl halftime performer Bad Bunny.
Kid Rock headlined Turning Point USA’s MAGA-friendly “All American” Halftime Show alternative on Sunday, with the right-wing organization airing the concert in tandem withBad Bunny’s official performance in protest over the Puerto Rican superstar’s show.
With about as much subtlety as one would expect from a TPUSA-promoted Kid Rock show, Rock and fellow performers Brantley Gilbert, Lee Brice and Gabby Barrett delivered nearly half an hour of religiously charged, star-spangled country music veering on jingoism and cringe. The show opened at just past 8 p.m. ET with a Jimi Hendrix-style electric guitar-led “Star Spangled Banner” before Gilbert, wearing a “God Family Country” T-shirt, took the stage declaring“thisis real America” as he started with the song “Real American.”
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Lee Brice, meanwhile, paid tribute to assassinated TPUSA co-founder Charlie Kirk, saying that the right-wing figure “gave people microphones so they could say what’s on their mind, this is what’s on mine,” before he started his song “Country Nowadays,” which includes lyrics like “little boys ain’t little girls” and further details the difficulties of having “small-town views” in today’s America.
Barrett played multiplatinum hits “I Hope” and “The Good Ones” and to her credit was one of the strongest performances of the evening.
Rock finally came out in the last few minutes, sporting a black shirt and shorts, starting a two-song set with “Bawitdaba.” He didn’t sing much of the song himself, though, as the recording played in the background. After an extended performance from a string duo, Rock, introduced again as Robert Ritchie and now wearing slacks, came out again, performing a cover of Cody Johnson’s “Til You Can’t.”
The show ended with another commemoration for Kirk, with some of his previous quotes playing alongside videos of him with his family and before crowds at his events.
Before the show, TPUSA had promised the show would have “no agenda other than to celebrate faith, family and freedom.”
“We’re approaching this show like David and Goliath,” Kid Rock said in a statement earlier this week of the show. “Competing with the pro football machine and a global pop superstar is almost impossible … or is it?”
TheSuper Bowl is the most watched TV event of the year, andBad Bunny has 90.5 million Spotify listeners to Kid Rock’s 5.3 million, making the notion that this event would be any viable competitor to the Super Bowl dubious at best. The live stream peaked at nearly 5 million viewers. Hours before the show, TPUSA encouraged viewers to tune in on YouTube as they couldn’t get licensing secured to livestream on X.
TPUSA first announced plans for analternative halftime show in October, not long after the NFL had revealed Bad Bunny as this year’s performer to significant right-wing backlash from the likes of President Donald Trump and Mike Johnson, who’d criticized the booking, which marked the first Spanish-language performance in the Super Bowl’s history.
Bad Bunny, himself an American citizen as a native of Puerto Rico, is arguably thebiggest artist on the planet, and his selection reflects the NFL’s desire to reach audiences around the globe. Along with many other pop stars, he’s been a vocal critic of the Trump administration’s immigration policies, calling for “ICE out” during a Grammy acceptance speech last week. He’d also said in an interview that he avoided touring in the States, citing fears of ICE raids.
“We’re not savages, we’re not animals, we’re not aliens, we are humans and we are Americans,” the performer said last week. “The hate gets more powerful with more hate. The only thing that is more powerful than hate is love. So we need to be different. If we fight, we have to do it with love. We don’t hate them. We love our people. We love our family, and that’s the way to do it with love. Don’t forget that, please. Thank you.”
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