The NFL Edited Out One Super Bowl 2024 Halftime Show Mishap - But Twitter Noticed
In an NFL game, screwups small and large live forever in infamy, destined for years of scrutiny, handwringing, and hysterical Super Bowl memes. Halftime shows are more, shall we say, malleable.
On February 11, Usher graced the stage for the Apple Music Halftime Show in Las Vegas, and he brought out an equally impressive roster of guests to further stoke elder millennial nostalgia. Ludacris and Lil Jon briefly turned the field into a nightclub, and will.i.am appeared in his best Daft Punk cosplay. But the singer who induced the most "awws" from the peanut gallery was Alicia Keys, whose voice promptly cracked as she played the opening bars of her 2003 song "If I Ain't Got You."
However, it appears that NFL HQ would like for you to believe that the vocal flub never happened at all. In the video of the performance on the NFL's official YouTube page, the voice crack appears to have been scrubbed from existence and replaced with footage that's been smoothed over, presumably with autotune or AI.
Fans on X (formerly known as Twitter) were quick to notice the difference. User @Komaniecki_R posted side-by-side videos, noting, "Last night Alicia Keys's voice cracked (first video) and fascinatingly, the official NFL YouTube channel appears to be attempting to erase that little moment, having edited it out in their upload (second video)."
Is Keys' performance a Mandela effect in the making?
It would appear that the NFL wasn't interested in embracing the imperfections of Alicia Keys' voice, which has disappointed fans of live music. "Personally this kinda grinds my gears," @Komaniecki_R continued, "because part of what makes live singing commendable is that mistakes may happen, and you're vulnerable."
The last part of that sentiment was shared by user @dj3motional, who wrote, "Btw I live for Alicia keys voice crack. it's a live vocal. It's not the recording. It's authentic and real , and she filled a short performance with emotion and charisma. She killed that. That's why she's Alicia keys. Super star."
Others suggested that removing the vocal imperfections has larger implications when it comes to the way that news and information are disseminated. If outlets are trigger-happy when it comes to correcting perceived errors, it could result in mass cultural Mandela effects (a term for the widescale belief in incorrect historical memories). "In 5-10 years, we'll all be fighting over whether Keyes actually flubbed the opening notes of her Superbowl performance," wrote @BecketAdams, adding, "How are we ever supposed to return to something approximating a consensual reality when even the trivial things we experience as a nation undergo stealth edits?"
The performance of a 2003 pop ballad doesn't have the same implications as, say, releasing a deepfake video of a politician, but it does point to an online sanitizing in the same vein as an X "edit" button. It's entirely possible that Apple Music was behind the vocal smoothing, wanting to showcase good audio quality, though that was the subject of the halftime show's biggest complaint. In any case, the San Francisco 49ers probably wish they had some editing technology right about now.