Last night, Queen B–the flawless face that launched a thousand gifs–took to the stage at Super Bowl XLVII and confirmed once and for all that she is not, in fact, a human being. The goddess/incarnation of pure energy known as Beyoncé Knowles proceeded to black-out the Superdome (electrical engineers suspect it was the move at 10:49 that did it) and then overflow the Internet with an incapacitating shockwave of Tweets, blog posts, and Facebook updates. (My personal favorite response came from Oprah, who simply tweeted “BEYONCE!!!!!!!!!!!!” It remains unclear whether she was so stupefied that she couldn’t form a complete sentence or if she just doesn’t really get how the Twitter works.)
Anyway, since talking about Beyoncé’s halftime show now seems to be a prerequisite for being on the Internet, here’s my takeaway: last night was without a doubt the defining live performance of our generation, the 2010s equivalent of the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. The precision, the spectacle, the undeniable soul–as well as the clamorous, real-time social media reaction–all cemented Halftime XLVII as a pop cultural touchstone we’ll be coming back to for years.
