They booked the biggest star in the world, and I was one of the lucky few who snagged a ticket to Super Bowl XXVII. Michael Jackson headlined the halftime show at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Twelve-year-old me, wedged between my dad and a man reeking of cigars in a Cowboys jersey, had no idea I was about to see the whole idea of a halftime show get reinvented.
My dad had won the tickets in an office raffle, which was a dream come true for a Bills superfans like us. Fun aside, when I was a baby, I came home in a Bills Jersey. Taped to the underside of every seat in our section was a colored card, with its use TBD. I spent most of the first half guarding mine like a crazed Charlie Bucket.
Halftime arrived, and figures in identical outfits suddenly appeared on top of the giant video screens, as I tried to pinpoint which one was him.
He launched out of the stage trapdoor and froze. Producer Don Mischer told Rolling Stone that Jackson wanted no music until he moved, and the wait stretched on: “It finally came down to a minute and 35 seconds – that’s like $15 million worth of advertising time.”
His lead guitarist, Jennifer Batten, saw nerves under the stillness. “That’s the only time I ever felt that Michael was nervous – because that’s a hell of a lot of pressure,” she told the magazine. “If something goes wrong, that’s forever.”
The set consisted of “Jam,” “Billie Jean,” “Black or White,” and “Heal the World.” Every spin and kick I had practiced in my bedroom rather poorly was performed smoother than I ever could have imagined.
He opened with “Jam,” the track that kicks off Dangerous, rather than anything from the Thriller era, which, to the layman, seems like an odd choice, but it didn’t matter one bit. “Billie Jean,” “Black or White” with Batten’s guitar solo, a choir of more than 3,000 Los Angeles kids on “We Are the World,” and “Heal the World” under an inflatable globe followed.
There were 133+ million U.S. viewers, and for the first time, ratings rose between halves. Dangerous sales jumped 83%, and halftime shows were never the same again.
If you want to learn more about this story, Spectacle: Michael Jackson at the Super Bowl comes out in February 2027.