On the evening of February 12 this year, anyone enquiring as to the whereabouts of Nuno Bettencourt would have been directed towards the security-ringed stage erected at centre-field at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. There, as ex-NFL legends-turned-pundits in the stadium’s media suites paused their analysis of the first two quarters of Super Bowl LVII, the 56-year-old guitarist was calmly orchestrating the game’s musical intermission, as white-clad dancers glided through synchronised dance routines around, above and below a pregnant, radiant Rihanna. An estimated 118.7 million viewers worldwide tuned in, making Rihanna’s first live appearance in seven years the third-most watched TV show ever: 5.7 million more viewers tuned in to see Rihanna sing than to watch the game itself.
Despite the fact that he was on camera for, by his own estimation, approximately “one-point-five milliseconds” of the global broadcast of the 2023 Super Bowl half-time show – “I get it, they wanted to focus on the dancing sperm” he shrugs, his smile betraying the fact that he’s aware of how ridiculous these words sound – Bettencourt acknowledges his participation in the 35-year-old pop star’s comeback gig as a ‘bucket list’ moment. The guitarist also confesses that, as focused as he was in steering the set’s dynamic flow, from opener Bitch Better Have My Money through to the climactic combo of global mega-hits Umbrella and Diamonds, at one point he did allow himself to think: “Man, this is cool. But it’d be even cooler if I was up here with Extreme.”
Shorn of context, Bettencourt’s declaration today that
