Sometimes when I watch the Super Bowl halftime show I find that I am so mesmerized by pretty lights and distracted while looking for the next celebrity guest appearance that I don’t pick up on the slip ups and overall bad performances that I later read about by critics. This year however, that was not the case.

From the very moment Madonna came out with the cast of 300 carrying her on their backs like she was some Greek-Egyptian-Roman (?) goddess, I knew something was off. Right when Madonna stood up from her throne, she looked like she was going to topple over – which could be attributed to either the six-inch knee-high heals or the 250 lb. gold headpiece. Then, she actually did fall over.

The rest of the show then consisted of awkward cautious movements by Madonna including a half-handstand where LMFAO had to uncomfortably grab her leg and minimal dance moves to control her butter feet. At one point on the bleachers she did some moves accompanied by men in white tracksuits, which looked an awful amount like me in first grade being spotted by my gymnastics coach.

Despite Madonna’s uninspiring performance, the show was quite impressive and entertaining. Unfortunately, for the first time in her career, it seemed that Madonna actually stepped out of the spotlight and let the gimmicks and Cirque du Soleil performers take over the whole show; that, and M.I.A. throwing up her middle finger.

However, even after all these rather obvious errors, most the articles in the media so far are praising Madonna for her performance and some have even deemed it one of the best halftime shows in quite some time, claiming she deserved the largest crowd of any musical performance with a record breaking 104 million viewers. The few sources that have actually shed any light on Madonna’s disastrous performance blamed her restraint on a strained hamstring. For this I would like to say, “seriously?!” Contrary to what these previous paragraphs might suggest, I love Madonna. But she simply did not have a stellar performance, and I wish we could all just accept that. If anything, it is rather refreshing to learn that the 53-year-old superstar with a flawless body who has blown us away all these years with her voice and overall swag is actually human.

(Photo by Beacon Radio under a Creative Commons license)