Jennifer Lopez Reveals the Major Problem She Had With Her Super Bowl Halftime Show

Jennifer Lopez and Shakira had everyone talking about their Super Bowl halftime show in Feb. 2020. In fact, the show was so strong that it won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lighting Design/Lighting Direction for a Variety Show. But as good as the show was, Lopez did have one major issue with the event, which she talked about in the upcoming Netflix documentary Halftime, which recently premiered at the Tribeca Festival in New York City. 

“We have six f—ing minutes. We have 30 seconds of a song, and if we take a minute, that’s it, we’ve got five left. But, there’s got to be certain songs that we sing, though. We have to have our singing moments. It’s not going to be a dance f—ing revue. We have to sing our message,” Lopez tells her music director Kim Burse in the documentary, per Entertainment Weekly. “This is the worst idea in the world to have two people do the Super Bowl. It was the worst idea in the world.”  

Lopez had an issue with two performers because of limited time. Normally, the Super Bowl halftime show features a solo performer, and that person has 15 minutes to perform. But with Lopez and Shakira performing together, the two had to gameplan about how they were going to attack the show. 

“I know that the Super Bowl people want us to be weaved throughout the show. I haven’t had a confirmation about how many minutes I’m going to have,” Shakira tells Lopez, who responds: “Let me address that really quick. They said 12 minutes. I got kind of a good confirmation that we could have an extra minute or two, so now we’re at, like, 13, 14 minutes. I think, Shakira, what we should have is you should have half the time and I should [have half].” 

The halftime show with Lopez and Shakira was significant since they were two women of Latina decent headlining the show at the same time. There have been multiple performers during the Super Bowl Halftime show, with the latest example being earlier this year with Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, Eminem and Kendrick Lamar. Another example is Aerosmith performing with NSYNC in 2001, and Shania Twain performing with No Doubt in 2003.