Super Bowl halftime songs by Dr. Dre, Eminem, Mary J. Blige top iTunes chart
Mornings after the Super Bowl tend to have a few things in common: indigestion, dishes piled up in the sink, empty ones in the recycling, maybe a mild hangover — and the iTunes chart full of songs that have been performed during the halftime show.
the Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show – aka Dr. Dre’s Love Letter to Los Angeleswhere he was joined by Eminem, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, Kendrick Lamar and 50 Cent – offered a more diverse range of charting songs than most previous shows, which usually feature one or two headliners. In typical X-large fashion, Dre had a total of seven billed stars, including himself and guest drummer Anderson .Paak, and all of them have long histories with — and discographies featuring — the good Doctor.
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While BTS’s Jung Kook’s “Stay Alive” continues to hold the top spot on iTunes, much of the rest of the Top 10 is made up of Super Bowl LVI songs that are in royalty shock for Dr.Dre: His own “The Next Episode”, “Still DRE” and “Nuthin’ But a G Thang” (all featuring Snoop) are at numbers 2, 4 and 9 respectively; “Forgot About Dre” with Eminem is at No. 7; “California Love,” Dre’s classic Golden State tag team with Tupac, is at No. 6; Mary J. Blige’s “Family Affair,” produced and co-written by Dre, is at No. 3; and “Lose Yourself,” one of the few songs performed during the show that Dre didn’t co-write, is at No. 5.
Along with Jung Kook, the only non-Super Bowl LVI songs in the Top 10 are “The Joker and the Queen” by Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift and “On My Way (Marry Me)” by Jennifer Lopez, which ironically headlined the Super Bowl halftime show with Shakira two years ago.
Looking further down the Top 20, we see 50 Cent’s Dre’s “In Da Club” at #11, Snoop’s Dre’s “Gin and Juice” at #14; and Mary J.’s other halftime song, “No More Drama” – and apparently Eminem got people nostalgic, because his “Real Slim Shady,” which didn’t even play at the Super Bowl, is at No. 18 (Curiously, “Lose Yourself” and “The Next Episode” also at No. 13 and No. 19 respectively, iTunes charts are often confusing.)
Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 anthem “Alright”, also performed during the show, is at No. 54, but it speaks to a different generation of the demo who grew up on Dre’s jams of the 90s and early 2000s. – which is apparently a generation that still buys downloads from iTunes.
There were a lot of “Dre Day” signs during the halftime show – today is more like payday…
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