The Chicks took the stage at the final night of the Democratic National Convention to sing the National Anthem, joining a slate of country artists who performed at the Chicago event, including Jason Isbell and Mickey Guyton on Monday and John Legend and Sheila E. on Wednesday.
Natalie Maines, Martie Maguire, and Emily Strayer delivered the “The Star-Spangled Banner” against the backdrop of the American flag on Thursday. Their performance opened the big night ahead of speeches from Vice President Kamala Harris, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, and former Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords.
The Chicks’ performance is particularly noteworthy given the band’s own political history. Then known as The Dixie Chicks, the group garnered significant backlash from the country music world in 2003 at the height of their fame after expressing disapproval with then-president George W. Bush over the impending invasion in Iraq. “We do not want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas,” Maines said.
The response was swift, with country stations taking the band’s songs off the radio, and the band’s tour sponsor Lipton pulling its support for the group. The Chicks virtually performed the Star Spangled Banner at the 2020 DNC during the height of the pandemic.
Also slated to appear Thursday night is Pink, who was seen earlier Thursday at a soundcheck with her daughter. Thursday will close out an exciting set of DNC performers that also included Stevie Wonder, Maren Morris, Patti Labelle, Common, and a raucous roll call featuring Lil Jon.
Harris has garnered support from a slew of members in Hollywood and the music industry including Cardi B, Barbara Streisand and Charli XCX, whose declaration that the candidate is “brat” kickstarted a meme campaign.
Jay-Z performing at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis in Paris.
Jay-Z Deserves the Super Bowl Halftime Gig
Where’s the love? Jay-Z asked that question 25 years ago, in the chorus of one of many songs in his catalog that still move audiences today. If he performs “Heart of the City” as part of his Super Bowl halftime show next February, those indignant bars are sure to be a highlight: “First the Fat Boys break up, now every day I wake up, somebody got a problem with Hov…” It would be an appropriate choice, too — because then as now, any time Jay-Z notches a new achievement, people find a way to complain.
The jokes and nonsense started almost as soon as the first rumors trickled out that Jay, whose company Roc Nation has executive-produced the Super Bowl halftime show since 2019, might be choosing himself to headline next year’s show. “Jay-Z just Dick Cheney’d himself for the Super Bowl,” Puck‘s Matthew Belloni quipped on X last week, alluding to the time that the late prince of darkness, who’d been asked to run the vice-presidential search committee for George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign, put himself on the ticket. (Super hip and current reference, and not at all apples-and-oranges.) Others pointed to TMZ reports that pop stars like Harry Styles and Justin Bieber had been asked first. “How are they the frontrunners, and he end up in the front?” Cam’Ron, who’s delighted in trolling Jay for many years, wondered aloud on his podcast. “Out of all the people on the roster, they couldn’t pick nobody else?” asked Cam’Ron‘s co-host, Ma$e.
These critiques miss the point, which is that Jay-Z is one of the best choices for a high-profile gig like this. He’s a superstar with a comparable level of name recognition to any other A-lister in music. He has a deep stack of classic songs going back decades. And he’s a highly skillful live performer who knows his way around a stadium stage, as he’s spent this year reminding people on his Jay-Z 30 tour. He tore down Yankee Stadium three nights in a row this summer; just last week, he rocked SoFi Stadium, which happens to be the same place where the 2027 Super Bowl is being held. He held the crowd’s attention with ease at all of those shows, and though there were plenty of glittery guests — that’s a given at a Jay show, and it will surely be true at the Super Bowl, too — he did it mostly through the force of his own magnetic energy. Let’s state the obvious here: Jay-Z is really, really good at rapping. We’re talking about one of the slickest, sharpest talkers in the history of words, someone who made it to the top through a sustained act of myth-making, then kept going. Are we seriously asking whether he can handle a 15-minute televised performance?
And yeah, there’s a touch of self-congratulation in the way he appointed himself. So what? Praising his own gifts is arguably Jay-Z’s greatest talent of all. He made a fine art out of self-applause. He told his story again and again, retracing the steps from Marcy Projects to the corner suite, and he made us believe. It would almost be insulting to the audience if he didn’t give himself the gig at some point.
Pop culture observers in recent years surely remember the backlash to Super Bowl headliners like Kendrick Lamar and Bad Bunny — all of it at least culturally conservative, and much of it frankly just racist. The blowback to Jay’s announcement is mostly coming from other quarters, at least for now (let’s just wait to see what the right-wing swamps make of this one). But it’s disappointing in a different way. Jay-Z has spent his career expounding hip-hop as a mainstream commercial force. He’s not a businessman, he’s a business, man. But he’s also an artist. He’s made huge amounts of money, and gotten himself into the rarefied rooms where he even has the ability to give himself a gig like this, by spinning his experiences into compelling narrative art, one verse at a time. Let’s not lose sight of how impressive his life’s work really is. Jay-Z is not some random C-suite bro, and he’s definitely not Dick Cheney. He’s one of the greatest rappers of all time, by any measure. He’s earned that Super Bowl spot.