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Small Batch: The Super Bowl, From Peyton vs. Cam To Twitter vs. Coldplay

Beyoncé, Coldplay singer Chris Martin and Bruno Mars perform during halftime of the NFL Super Bowl 50 football game Sunday, Feb. 7, 2016, in Santa Clara, Calif.
Julio Cortez
/
AP
Beyoncé, Coldplay singer Chris Martin and Bruno Mars perform during halftime of the NFL Super Bowl 50 football game Sunday, Feb. 7, 2016, in Santa Clara, Calif.

Sunday night's Super Bowl landed a huge TV audience for its battle between the Denver Broncos and the Carolina Panthers, which the Broncos took 24-10. While a football game is a football game, the Super Bowl is also a huge pop culture event, from the halftime show to the buildup and the barrage of advertising. We sat down the Monday morning after to take apart the highs, the lows, and the Beyonce of it all.

As we talk about a little, the halftime show was partially upstaged and made irrelevant by the release of Beyonce's fascinating, gorgeous video "Formation," and there's already lots of interesting writing about it: NPR rounded some of it up here, plus there's this and this and undoubtedly more by the hour. Dig in.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Linda Holmes is a pop culture correspondent for NPR and the host of Pop Culture Happy Hour. She began her professional life as an attorney. In time, however, her affection for writing, popular culture, and the online universe eclipsed her legal ambitions. She shoved her law degree in the back of the closet, gave its living room space to DVD sets of The Wire, and never looked back.