Does the Super Bowl halftime show move the Hot 100?

On Oct. 26, the NFL, Apple Music and Roc Nation announced that Jay-Z will headline the Super Bowl LXI halftime show on Feb. 14, 2027, at SoFi Stadium. Roc Nation has produced the show since its 2019 deal with the league, which means Jay-Z has spent seven shows helping pick other people for the job. It was reported a week before the announcement that this time he picked himself.

It also gave us an excuse to answer something we’ve wondered about for a while: does playing halftime actually do anything for an artist’s songs?

To find out, we went through every Billboard Hot 100 chart since 1958 and pulled the 27 halftime headliners from Michael Jackson in 1993 to Bad Bunny in 2026. For each one, we counted how many of their songs were on the Hot 100 the week before the game and how many were there the week the show counted.

Before streaming, nothing happened on the Hot 100

From 2005 to 2010 the NFL booked classic rock acts. Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Prince, Tom Petty and The Who each had zero songs on the Hot 100 before their show and zero after. Bruce Springsteen, who played in 2009, got one song onto the chart, and it was the title track of the album he had released the week before. It debuted at No. 95.

Sales still went up. According to Billboard, Prince’s album sales more than doubled the week after his 2007 set, and Tom Petty’s Greatest Hits sold 196% more. Outside the holidays, that was the biggest sales week for any catalog album since 2004. It just didn’t show up on the charts. None of their old songs sold or got played enough to return to the Hot 100, and until December 2009 catalog albums weren’t allowed on the Billboard 200 at all.

Add up every headliner’s before-and-after count and the change is hard to miss. The 13 shows from 1993 to 2012 added two Hot 100 songs between them, and those were mostly new singles released around the game. The seven shows from 2013 to 2019 added four. The seven shows from 2020 to 2026 added 27.

The likely reason is streaming. When millions of viewers go looking for a song the morning after the game, those plays now count toward the Hot 100.

Bad Bunny got the biggest bump of all 27 headliners. He had five songs on the Hot 100 the week before his February 2026 show and 18 the week after. Kendrick Lamar went from seven to 13 in 2025, and “Not Like Us” climbed from No. 15 back to No. 1. Billboard reports his U.S. on-demand streams rose 91% the week of the game.

Two of these jumps come with an asterisk. Justin Timberlake released Man of the Woods two days before his 2018 show, and Mary J. Blige released Good Morning Gorgeous two days before the 2022 show she played with Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar and 50 Cent. Some of those gains belong to the album release.

The biggest jump for a single song is Lady Gaga’s “Million Reasons” in 2017. It sat at No. 97 before the game, dropped off the chart for a week, then came back at No. 4. It was the song’s first time in the top 10.

The halftime show is mostly a greatest-hits set, so the more interesting question is what happens to old songs. Usher’s “Yeah!”, a 2004 hit, came back at No. 20 and lasted two weeks. Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg’s “Still D.R.E.” returned at No. 23, 23 years after it first charted, and stayed three weeks. Rihanna got three old hits back, “Umbrella,” “Diamonds” and “We Found Love,” all for a single week.

None of them stayed long. Of the old hits brought back by the last three headliners without a current single, only “Yeah!” and “Still D.R.E.” lasted past one week.

Albums got a lift too. Usher’s Confessions jumped from No. 92 to No. 15 after his 2024 show, and Rihanna’s ANTI went from No. 50 to No. 8 in 2023. Her U.S. on-demand streams rose 155% the week of the game, and Usher’s rose 211%.

The biggest bumps went to artists with recent music. Bad Bunny’s 13 returning songs came mostly from Debí Tirar Más Fotos, which was barely a year old at the time. Only two of Kendrick Lamar’s 13 songs were older catalog tracks, “All the Stars” and “Humble.”

Jay-Z has more than 100 Hot 100 credits going back to April 1996, including 22 top 10s and four No. 1s. Only one of those No. 1s was his own: “Empire State of Mind” with Alicia Keys in 2009. The other three were features, on Mariah Carey’s “Heartbreaker,” Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love” and Rihanna’s “Umbrella.”

He hasn’t had a song on the Hot 100 since February 2023. That last one was “Umbrella,” pulled back onto the chart by Rihanna’s halftime show.

Without new music, he’s closest to Dr. Dre’s crew, Rihanna and Usher, the last three headliners who played without a current hit. They brought back three, three and one old hits, respectively, all landing between No. 20 and No. 50. Based on that, our forecast for Jay-Z is one to three old hits back on the Hot 100, somewhere between No. 20 and No. 50, for a week or two.

A new single would change that. The headliners with the biggest bumps, Bad Bunny and Kendrick Lamar, both had current albums still on the chart when they played.