Country singer Eric Church had a clear message in mind when he was tasked with performing the national anthem at the 2021 Super Bowl.
“That was a weird time,” Church, 49, said on the Wednesday, May 6, episode of the “Hometown Titans” podcast, recalling his headlining moment in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and a turbulent political landscape.
He continued, “It was also a good time, at least for doing that, because the Super Bowl was still the thing the country was going to watch when we did not know what was happening anywhere else, and I knew that. The way we crafted the performance and the way we tried to do it was make it a unifying thing of, ‘I don’t know where we’re going to go, but we’re going to go there together and it’s going to be OK.’”
Church teamed up with Jazmine Sullivan for a rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the Super Bowl LV, where the Tampa Bay Buccaneers ultimately beat the Kansas City Chiefs. He believed the performance would be a “powerful” statement given the NFL championship took place one month after the January 2021 insurrection in Washington, D.C.
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(Then-outgoing president Donald Trump’s followers stormed the U.S. Capitol while Congress was tasked with certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election win.)
“With what’s going on in America, it feels like an important time for a patriotic moment,” Church told the Los Angeles Times in February 2021. “An important time for unity. The fact that I’m a Caucasian country singer and she’s an African American R&B singer — I think the country needs that.”
Biden, 83, served as U.S. president from 2021 to 2025. Trump, 79, began his second term in the White House in January 2025, overlapping with both the 2025 and 2026 Super Bowls.
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During the February 2026 big game, Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny headlined the Apple Music Halftime Show that Trump vocally criticized.
“The Super Bowl Halftime Show is absolutely terrible, one of the worst, EVER!” Trump wrote via his Truth Social platform at the time. “It makes no sense, is an affront to the Greatness of America, and doesn’t represent our standards of Success, Creativity or Excellence. Nobody understands a word this guy is saying, and the dancing is disgusting, especially for young children that are watching from throughout the U.S.A., and all over the World.”
Turning Point USA, the right-wing organization founded by the late Charlie Kirk, also hosted their own halftime show at the same time where Trump supporter Kid Rock served as the headliner.
