The Turning Point USA All-American Halftime Show promises to celebrate “faith, family and freedom” via performances by Kid Rock, Brantley Gilbert, Lee Brice and Gabby Barrett.
The TPUSA website doesn’t feature information about the show until fairly far down on its homepage. Instead, it’s soliciting donations through promoting the late founder Charlie Kirk’s last book, Stop, in the Name of God, and his vision, which includes recruiting high school and college students to raise the next generation to support his movement “rooted in faith, freedom and love of country.”
The TPUSA quartet is counterprogramming to the Super Bowl LX halftime, featuring another famous American, Bad Bunny. Kid Rock, promoting the show on Fox (which, interestingly, is not streaming the TPUSA halftime show) on Friday (Feb. 6) promised a “classic rock, in your face” opener, but then pledged to perform “one of the best written songs in a long time.” He didn’t give away the title, but elaborated that it’s a “pretty current, last few years country song. It’s one of the greatest written songs I’ve heard in a long time.”
Not one to miss an opportunity and being the good capitalist he is, Kid Rock will then release that song at midnight. (He does not mention whether he’s donating the proceeds to TPUSA). His hints eliminate the song being “Cool Daddy Cool,” his 2001 collaboration with Joe-C that has resurfaced for its the notable lyrics about “hoes” and the couplet, “Young ladies, young ladies, I like ’em underage/ Some say that’s statutory (But I say it’s mandatory)” — lyrics that are much more in line with the Epstein files than supposed family values.
Rock declared the TPUSA halftime is for people “who love America, love football, love Jesus.” He also stressed that neither he nor any of the other performers are “approaching this with any hate in our hearts.” (A sentiment that Gilbert also stressed in a social media post he made on Friday, though President Trump went out of his way to add that he felt both Bad Bunny and Green Day, who played a rousing opening slot, were not his cup of tea. “I’m anti-them. I think it’s a terrible choice,” Trump told Page Six. “All it does is sow hatred. Terrible.”
Rock also said that if the NFL wanted to take care of its fanbase, it would have picked local performers from the Bay Area such as Metallica (he’s not alone in that thought), given the game is taking place in Santa Clara, Calif. (But Green Day — who is from the Bay Area — did perform during the pre-show opening ceremony.)
Below, Billboard recaps TPUSA’s halftime show in real time.
4:49 p.m. PT: The seven-minute countdown to the halftime starts with a salute to Charlie Kirk, which is also a promo for conservative Christian Hillsdale College in Michigan, before returning to a countdown and a scroll to text for TPUSA merch and to text “freedom” to the same number to get “involved in the movement.”
4:53 p.m. PT: A commercial plugging adoption as an option, a key conservative pro-life message, is abruptly cut off for a commercial for tickets to the Olympics in Los Angeles and AI transcription service Otter. That seems like a missed opportunity to spread that message.
4:55 p.m. PT: With less than a minute left, Dept. of Defense head Pete Hegseth comes on to say “God bless our warriors and God bless our republic,” before tossing a football toward the camera.
5:04 p.m. Nearly 10 minutes after the countdown clock ended, I and more than 1.9 million people are waiting on TPUSA’s YouTube channel. (The halftime was also supposed to air on TPUSA’s X channel, but due to licensing restrictions, it could not stream there, the organization announced earlier in the day.) The live chat is very active, with people posting American flags memes and hailing where they’re watching from. Maybe they are officially waiting until the first half ends to start.The actual Super Bowl performance is around 12-13 minutes because it takes about six minutes to load on and six minute to load off, but, obviously, TPUSA’s half-time show has no such concerns.
5:11: p.m. PT What seems to be Brantley Gilbert’s backing band comes out and his lead guitarist is shredding on an instrumental version of “The Star Spangled Banner.”
5:12 p.m. PT: Gilbert comes out and welcomes the audience and says, “This is real America” before launching into “Real American,” singing into a microphone that has brass knuckles on the top. He’s playing before a small but ardent live audience in an undisclosed location. The song praises everything “USA,” as pyro goes off behind him.
5:15: p.m. PT Gilbert introduces “Dirt Road Anthem,” the song he co-write with Colt Ford that became a monster hit for Jason Aldean in 2011. Gilbert starts singing accompanied only by an acoustic guitar before going into the song’s rap… one of the first songs that incorporated rap and country. It’s a slowed down, lovely version that has the crowd swaying its arms.
5:20 p.m. PT: Gilbert quickly ends and it switches to Gabby Barrett singing her massive hit, 2020’s “I Hope.” It looks like the same set and there is an audience, but there was no visible switchover, so my hunch is it’s not live and each act taped separately or TPUSA didn’t want to waste time by showing the handoff.
5:23 p.m. PT: Barrett switches to “The Good Ones,” her follow up about a good guy, as opposed to the louse in “I Hope.” The American Idol alum sounds great.
5:27 p.m. PT: Lee Brice suddenly appears on stage and breaks into his 2014 hit, “Drinking Class,” and the crowd cheers when he sings “When you knock us down we’ll get up again and again.”
5:29 p.m. PT In the first comments to the audience so far and the only performer to mention Charlie Kirk, Brice says. “Charlie gave people microphones so they could say what’s on their minds. This is what’s on mind,” before launching into “Country Nowadays,” a song that will be on his next album about how hard it is to be “country in this country these days.” He talks about just wanting to shoot deer and mow his lawn, but he also doesn’t think it’s ok for a little boy to dress like a little girl (which gets a rousing cheer) and he resents that “I’m some right wing devil… because I was Jesus raised….because I have my morals and a small-town point of view.” It’s the night’s only outwardly political song.
5:33 p.m. PT: Now Brice is out of political territory and back to the more familiar “Hard to Love” from 2012’s album, Hard 2 Love. Like all the performers, he sounds good and the production is strong. He leaves his tribute to Charlie Kirk, “When the Kingdom Comes,” left undone, perhaps because he didn’t want to do a sad ballad.
5:34 p.m. PT: Kid Rock is introduced and the light show is amped up 1000% as he comes out in denim shorts, a fur jacket that he quickly sheds and a fedora before going hard into “Bawitdaba,” his breakthrough 1998 song. Unlike the other artists who seemed to be singing live, he appears to be lipsyncing and focused more on dancing than singing, but it’s high energy and infectious.
5:37 p.m. PT: In a 180-degree shift, the song ends and a cellist and violinist appear at the edge of the stage in front of a black backdrop, and Kid Rock is reintroduced as his real name, Robert Richie. It becomes very clear this is the recent country song he said he was going to remake— and he’s right– it is one of the best country songs to come out in recent years– it’s Cody Johnson’s poignant, “Til You Can’t,” which Kid Rock covered in November and which won single of the year at the 2022 CMA Awards. Kid Rock is playing acoustic guitar in front of his drummer whose drum head has the Preamble to the Constitution on it. It’s a sweet, emotional version.
5:42 p.m. PT: Kid Rock says he woke up recently and felt the song needed a new verse, which he debuts, “there’s a book that is sitting in your house somewhere that could use some dusting off/there’s a man that died for all our sins on the cross,” he speaks before giving a shout-out to Jesus. (We thought it might be Charlie Kirk for a minute). “In remembrance of Charlie Kirk” and photos of Kirk with Erika splash on the sides of the venue.
5:44 p.m. PT: There is now a taped video with photos of Kirk and his family as he speaks about getting involved and his mission.
5:45 p.m. PT: And with that, it’s over. It was a respectful, enjoyable presentation that, as Kid Rock had promised, appealed to the conservative base. No flame-throwing rhetoric, few speeches, just music. Brice’s song was as pointedly political as it got. For the MAGA crowd (and likely Trump), it undoubtedly didn’t go far right enough (other than Brice’s song). For the far left, there aren’t really any moments to ridicule except for generally not liking the talent involved. It was a solid 15-minute presentation. They played it safe and sometimes that’s ok.
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