Elizabeth Merrill
Close
- Elizabeth Merrill is a senior author for ESPN. She beforehand wrote for The Kansas City Star and The Omaha World-Herald.
Multiple Authors
THE LAST SUPER BOWL halftime present for Up with People featured a dizzying array of pastel garments, tinsel tambourines and perpetual smiles. The group reduce free with a daring Bruce Springsteen/Huey Lewis/Stevie Wonder/Kenny Loggins cowl medley.
Jill Johnson has no regrets. She was younger and much away from her dwelling in Mallard, Iowa, and its signal that reads “We’re Friendly Ducks.” It was the Nineteen Eighties.
Collar stretched excessive and blazer sleeves rolled up, Johnson tickled the synthesizer keys with one hand and danced to the high-octane techno track “Talkin’ With My Feet.” Her impossibly massive (and doubtlessly hazardous) earrings bounced alongside to the beat.
“I’ve got a tingle down in my shoes.
A crazy itch that I just can’t lose …”
OK, so it wasn’t Beyoncé, or Prince doing “Purple Rain” in a downpour.
Up with People by no means claimed to be rock stars. Or professionals. It was a song-and-dance ensemble made up largely of school college students that traveled the world selling multiculturalism and positivity. There had been about 600 of them within the Superdome in New Orleans that evening at Super Bowl XX.
The NFL spent $1 million for the primary time on the 1986 present, known as “Beat of the Future,” which included a futuristic floating metropolis and planets hovering overhead. A planet caught hearth the evening earlier than and the town by no means actually materialized due to technical difficulties. Still, the group managed an enthusiastic 12-minute pitch for love, acceptance and worldwide concord.
Jim Steeg, a longtime NFL exec who was in command of halftime leisure from 1979 to 2005, remembers making his method as much as commissioner Pete Rozelle’s field after the efficiency.
“He turned to me,” Steeg says of Rozelle, “and said, ‘Never f—ing again.”
Up with People headlined 4 Super Bowl halftime reveals, together with “A Salute to the 1960s and Motown” in 1982. AP Photo/Al Messerschmidt
NEXT SUNDAY, 40 halftimes after Up with People’s final stand, Puerto Rican celebrity rapper-singer Bad Bunny will carry out at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, at Super Bowl LX between the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots.
Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio — recognized professionally as Bad Bunny — has been crucial of President Donald Trump’s immigration insurance policies. Spotify’s prime artist for the fourth time in 2025, Bad Bunny advised i-D Magazine in an interview revealed in September that he was fearful ICE would goal his reveals if he carried out within the United States. Green Day, which can carry out previous to kickoff, and its entrance man, Billie Joe Armstrong, even have overtly criticized Trump. The president hasn’t hidden his distaste for the acts, lately telling the New York Post, “I’m anti-them. I think it’s a terrible choice. All it does is sow hatred. Terrible.”
Turning Point USA, a conservative group based by the late Charlie Kirk, guarantees a counterprogramming possibility known as “The All-American Halftime Show.”
All of this comes on the heels of a federal immigration crackdown and the Department of Homeland Security’s Jan. 24 lethal taking pictures of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.
The tense backdrop is a stark distinction to the 1986 Super Bowl, which showcased the lovable Bears, recent off their hit rap “Super Bowl Shuffle.” “We’re not here to start no trouble,” the refrain thumped. “We’re just here to do the Super Bowl Shuffle.” Arguably the largest controversy heading into the sport centered on quarterback Jim McMahon’s rebellious headbands.
Up with People match the vibe.
A wide range of big-time acts, and controversies, fill the hole between Up with People and Bad Bunny. Fredy Builes/Getty Images
The ensemble act headlined 4 Super Bowl halftime reveals within the Nineteen Seventies and ’80s and was the supporting act to the Southeast Missouri State Marching Band in one other.
Back then, Super Bowl halftimes had been for snack runs and toilet breaks. Steeg says the primary twenty years of the present had been geared extra towards the group within the stands than the folks watching at dwelling, and school marching bands or ensemble teams that would unfold and fill the sphere had been early go-tos. Grambling State’s band has appeared in a file six halftime reveals, together with the primary two.
Jumbotrons within the Nineteen Eighties allowed the league to think about shrunken-down acts. A 1988 present featured 88 grand pianos and Chubby Checker. The subsequent yr, hundreds of thousands of viewers donned 3D glasses for the present, which featured the “World’s Largest Card Trick” carried out by Elvis Presto.
Nobody thought to achieve for the Rolling Stones. Most big-time entertainers could not see themselves performing in the midst of a soccer subject, Steeg says.
All that modified in 1992.
Fox aired counterprogramming in the course of the CBS broadcast of Super Bowl XXVI in Minneapolis with a largely stay episode of the favored comedy “In Living Color.” While Jim Carrey exploded in his “Fire Marshal Bill” skit, again in Minneapolis, Olympians skated on plastic ice and Gloria Estefan and the University of Minnesota’s marching band carried out in a present known as “Winter Magic.”
Fox took away a chunk of the NFL’s viewership, prompting seismic modifications the next yr. The NFL responded with a halftime dubbed “An Unprecedented Super Bowl Spectacular Starring Michael Jackson.”
Steeg says it took about 4 months to land the megastar. They’d by no means held a information convention about Super Bowl halftime expertise earlier than, after which there they had been, within the grand ballroom on the Century Plaza Hotel in Beverly Hills, the room “packed to the gills.”
Jackson’s folks, who weren’t notably versed in soccer or the Super Bowl, requested if they may transfer the sport three hours again so he may carry out in the dead of night. That clearly didn’t occur.
The halftime rankings wound up being larger than the precise sport’s, Steeg says, and it modified the magnitude of the present and its individuals. But it did not cease the critiques.
The larger the acts, the extra controversy. There was the Justin Timberlake-Janet Jackson “wardrobe malfunction” in 2004 and the M.I.A. center finger in 2012. Last yr, complaints centered on a backup dancer who displayed a Palestinian/Sudanese flag, and claims that Kendrick Lamar projected anti-Americanism. Still, his efficiency garnered larger rankings than the precise sport. Ten of the previous 15 Super Bowl halftime reveals have drawn at the least 110 million viewers.
“You’re always going to get letters and complaints about whatever,” Steeg says. “Back when Michael [Jackson] did his, I can’t tell you the number of letters we got [from] people complaining about the number of times he grabbed his crotch.”
The 600-deep ensemble rehearsed in a warehouse within the days main as much as the 12-minute Super Bowl XX efficiency. Getty Images, Courtesy of Bruce Saad
CHRIS CONNELLY REMEMBERS watching an hourlong Up with People particular on TV when he was a grade schooler within the mid-Sixties.
His household purchased the file.
All these years later, the previous MTV reporter who at present works as a journalist for ABC and ESPN can nonetheless recite the lyrics that served as a form of ethical compass for younger America.
“You can’t live crooked and think straight. …
Clean up the nation before it’s too late.”
“And that tells you what Up with People was at that juncture,” Connelly says. “They were this heavily corporate-backed singing group that was terrified of rock and roll, that was terrified of the counterculture, the burgeoning counterculture of the Beatles and Bob Dylan.
“So they tried to make use of what seemed like folks music within the method of the Kingston Trio or one thing like that to ship very completely different messages into common tradition.”
Up with People was an offshoot of Moral Re-Armament, an international ideology focused on the tenets of honesty, purity, unselfishness and love. In the 1940s, MRA and its followers were believed to be effective in fighting off communism, and later were considered a counter to the hippies, offering a squeaky-clean, Christian conservative view that was perceived by some as fascism.
J. Blanton Belk founded Up with People in 1965. His daughter, Jenny Belk, was part of the 1986 halftime show. She acknowledges that the earlier iteration carried a cultlike stigma. But she says Up with People actually was formed by something very Dylanesque: a hootenanny.
Editor’s Picks
2 Related
In the summer of 1965, college students throughout the country were concerned about the Vietnam War and what was happening throughout the world.
“So that they had a convention in Michigan they usually stated, ‘Come with your concepts. What do you wish to say?'” Belk says. “You know, non-violence is the easiest way to protest.
“They came together, they sang songs, one of which was ‘Up with People.’ And there were songs about peace and racial equality and all that stuff that is so important today.”
Belk says her father, who turns 101 this month, felt as if Moral Re-Armament had turn into caught in its methods, and was judgmental and “stuffy.” J. Blanton Belk wished a youthful and extra constructive view of the world. In 1968, Up with People turned a 501(c) nonprofit group.
Large teams of younger folks between age 18 and 25 traveled the world performing musical reveals and doing neighborhood service. Up with People members met with world leaders and popes and traveled to China and Berlin. They paid tuition for the yearlong expertise and stayed with host households.
They headlined their first Super Bowl halftime in 1976, celebrating America’s bicentennial.
The group, which additionally carried out on the White House and the Olympics over time, turned half of popular culture. Remember the “The Carlton” dance? Up with People alums imagine their signature swing clap impressed it. The act was parodied twice on “The Simpsons” with a freshly scrubbed band known as “Hooray for Everything.” In one scene, Homer Simpson comes upon one in all their songs whereas driving and says, “D’oh, I love those kids. They’ve got such a great attitude.”
The clock expired on Up with People’s Super Bowl halftime run after the 1986 efficiency. Courtesy of Shannon Curfman, Gerry Fallon
PAT MURPHY STOOD in entrance of the toilet mirror the evening earlier than Super Bowl XX and questioned his life decisions.
“Who do you think you are?” he requested himself.
Murphy did not inform most of his mates again dwelling within the Philadelphia space that he was performing as a result of he did not need them to chortle at him if he tousled. The audio for the complete present was prerecorded — lip-synching was frequent in these days throughout Super Bowl halftimes due to the dearth of expertise, and the way may you mike up a whole lot of individuals? — however that did not alleviate Murphy’s fears.
He was set to carry out a track known as “Jammin’,” his face flashing on and off the display screen for 2 minutes and 10 seconds.
“I just had to say to myself, ‘Look, I can’t get out of it now,'” Murphy says. “Suck it up.”
He stayed up late, till almost midnight.
In the months main as much as the sport, 4 casts situated in several components of the world — some as far-off as China — rehearsed in teams. There was no FaceTime to carry them collectively throughout their practices.
On Jan. 2, three weeks earlier than the sport, they gathered in New Orleans for last preparations. Jenny Belk was a part of the present. Her lineage didn’t, nonetheless, earn her a spot on the stage with the singers and dancers.
“My sister and I both were not talented in the performing arts,” she says. “I have rhythm. I can follow the steps, and I can sing like someone who sings in the shower, but no … So I was very much in the back, and I loved that.”
To today, Belk has a laborious time taking a look at crimson beans and rice — or Pizza Hut — because it’s just about what they subsisted on. They rehearsed in a warehouse from 9 to five. Reebok gave every of the roughly 600 forged members a little swag for their efforts — one pair of white sneakers — that they wore on the halftime present, which was a tribute to Martin Luther King Jr.
During the primary half of the sport, Up with People waited on folding chairs, stunningly near the sphere.
The clock ran down, the Bears went into the locker room up 23-3 — not precisely the most effective situation for halftime-show watchers. But Up with People was undeterred.
Cast members shaped 4 big toes on the Superdome subject to accompany the track “Talkin’ With My Feet.” Courtesy of Shannon Curfman, Cast B 85/86
The lights dimmed, the stage illuminated, and a gradual, majestic instrumental stuffed the Superdome, adopted by a guitar riff. Then a swarm of individuals — tiny white dots on the TV display screen — ran off the stage in strains. The digicam zoomed in, and about three dozen performers stood on stage.
“Hey, somebody turn it up,” a younger man in a multicolored fluorescent sweater sang on the highest tier of the stage. “Yeah, something in the sound is changin’.”
What adopted was an explosion of skinny ties, feathered hair, and youthful power set to lip synch — all with perpetual smiles. Saxophones swayed, electrical guitars jammed, and backup singers spun in circles. A man with a tambourine was so amped he jumped up and down.
The public deal with announcer launched the subsequent track.
The beat of the longer term is throughout us. It’s the gamers on the sphere, the child within the stands dreaming of being on the market himself sometime. It’s a feeling that is laborious to explain, and when you may’t say it with phrases you may all the time say it with your toes.
“Talkin’ With My Feet” was thought-about a filler track, one you get by means of to maneuver on to extra significant songs. Years later, descriptions of the track from varied forged members vary from “silly” to “it sucked.” But the group apparently discovered it catchy.
It was a pressure level for Jenny Belk, one of many folks on the sphere tasked with marching in formation to make 4 big toes. Months had been spent engaged on this formation, however then the foot got here in tight, almost crashing into a digicam man, and Belk’s foot seemed like a popsicle.
The present went on. Dressed in a yellow shirt, and flanked by two “backup singers,” Murphy strutted, sidestepped and sang with confidence. He held his arm within the air as he mouthed the final Jammin’, remembering one of many tips of their coaching.
“If you’re on a close-up,” he says, “just hold the mic over your lips so that nobody can really see.
The public address voice boomed over for one last song.
“As our small planet travels by means of the universe and people of us who stay right here attempt to think about the longer term, we share Dr. King’s dream that we’ll be there sometime in a world the place there’s room for each nation, each race, each creed.”
Then cast members walked across the stage waving flags from different countries for the song “Room for Everyone.” Jenny Belk says it gave her chills.
“At that second, I did not really feel like 10 million eyes had been on us,” she says. “I simply was form of caught up within the pleasure of it.”
Acts that could fill the field, like Up with People, eventually gave way to acts that could draw millions of viewers on TV. AP Photo/Al Messerschmidt
THEY DID NOT stop at Sardi’s for the rave reviews. Outside of the loving opinions from family and friends, there weren’t many of them.
Super Bowl XX was anticlimactic, as the Chicago Bears pummeled the New England Patriots 46-10. Reviews of the halftime show landed with a similar thud.
For years, various outlets have reported that Rozelle held an emergency meeting the next day and told everyone there were three words he never wanted to hear again: “Up with People.”
Steeg says that meeting never happened — no need after Rozelle made his feelings quite clear in his box right after halftime.
But Steeg recalls Rozelle’s decision wasn’t necessarily a commentary on cheesy lyrics or dance moves. He says it was more of a reflection on an “overly bold” show with expensive props that didn’t translate to television.
Steeg, himself, has nothing negative to say about Up with People’s performance.
Still, in the weeks leading up to every Super Bowl, all-time lists are abundant, and that 1986 crew is sometimes mentioned as one of the worst ever.
Decades after their last show, Entertainment Weekly said, “If you are too younger to recollect Up with People, let’s put it this fashion — they’re the music that will get performed in hell’s ready room.”
Belk shrugs most of it off.
A finite number of souls can say they’ve performed on the halftime stage of the Super Bowl, one of the biggest sporting events in the world, and Belk and thousands of other seemingly average citizens are among them.
“I feel most individuals that make enjoyable of it did not perceive it,” she says. “They did not know what we had been doing. They simply noticed these youngsters they usually’re like, ‘Oh, all people’s smiling.’ Well, all people’s additionally smiling on Broadway or, you already know, in case you’re a cheerleader or in case you’re a dancer.”
They don’t let it ruin their memories, or the enormity of what they did. They’re bound by that moment, and everything that led up to it. Every January, as the NFL season winds down, Jill Johnson, now a film and TV exec, inevitably plays a YouTube video of the Super Bowl XX halftime show, and she calls or texts old castmates and they laugh and lean into it.
She says Up with People led her to a life that most little girls growing up in rural Iowa couldn’t dream of having. It gave her the fearlessness to research whales in the Mediterranean Sea, and exposed her to different cultures and beliefs.
She believes that if Up with People is still being lambasted after all these years, it means it has relevance in a world that lacks an attention span.
“Do I feel it was a dangerous halftime present? Not for the time,” she says. “If you had been going to insert Up with People into a Super Bowl halftime present now, it might be like, ‘How may you probably come to that conclusion?’
“Because now they’re so big and the expectations are so high and there’s so much money on the line with advertisers.”
The world was on the precipice of change after that last present. Less than 36 hours after the Bears had been topped champions, the house shuttle Challenger broke aside 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven members on board. One of the astronauts — Christa McAuliffe — was a schoolteacher, and plenty of youngsters watched the tragedy stay.
Three months after that got here the Chernobyl nuclear energy plant disaster.
“It was not simpler times,” Johnson says. “That’s what makes me crazy.
“Tell me when it was a easier time,” she says, citing the Great Depression in the 1930s and wars in the decades that followed.
“Well, proper now, the final couple weeks had been form of f—ed up. You know what? I’ve a vivid North Star. We will work stuff out. You need to, as a result of individuals are innately good. I’m not going to cease believing in folks. I’m not going to cease believing within the stuff that I sang about for years.”
