Unfortunately Metallica is never going to play the Super Bowl, but hey – at least we got their latest single "Lux Æterna" in a Daytona 500 commercial, right? Because look, it's never gonna actually happen, but metal does seem to be creeping into the event at a glacial pace. And at this point, the whole "Metallica in the Super Bowl" thing is a fun running joke. Special shout out to Extreme guitarist Nuno Bettencourt for being featured in this year's Super Bowl halftime show with Rihanna. That totally counts.
The closest we actually got to a real Metallica performance at the Super Bowl was in 2021 when the band played on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert special A Late Show: Super Bowl Edition. Though in a 2016 interview, Metallica frontman James Hetfield squashed any hope of it happening as he said he wouldn't want to play the sporting event even if they was asked.
"I can't dance, I can't jump around, I'm not an acrobat, I'm not a variety show, you know?" said Hetfield. "We are artists. We're a band. We love playing songs. We're not gonna fly through the air on a sparkly star with a unicorn.
"It's become less about music unfortunately and more about just the spectacle. When we played for the fiftieth anniversary of the NFL… right here in our hometown and they didn't have us do it… that would have been the time. Maybe that time has passed?"
And it seems that metal is generally in commercials throughout the Super Bowl now anyway. Which I'm sure is great news for anyone involved with gaining royalties or licensing fees for those songs. Judas Priest and Liquid Death teamed up for a pretty funny one last year, while Wayne's World absolutely didn't sell out in 2021. Even Kiss and Ozzy Osbourne got featured in a solid "corporate rock star" joke via Workday this year as well.
I mean look – if Mastodon can get featured for a hot second in a Pixar movie, anything's possible.
