When Bruce Springsteen plays the Super Bowl halftime show on Feburary 1st, it will be for the biggest audience of his career: Last year, 148.3 million Americans watched Superbowl XLII, more than the Beijing Olympics opening ceremoy and the Academy Awards combined. Which should mean good things for Springsteen's new Working on a Dream and 2009 tour. In the week after last year's Tom Petty performance, "Free Fallin'" sold 63,000 digital copies — and his tour, which kicked off that spring, went on to become one of the year's biggest. In 2006, sales of the Rolling Stones' A Bigger Bang album shot up 34 percent the week after the Bowl. So why Bruce? "We have a lot of fans in common," says NFL exec Charles Coplin. "And he performs so well on a large scale that we always felt that it was a good fit." One thing neither party will discuss is what songs Springsteen will play. Prince performed a medley of hits (including a Foo Fighters cover) in 2007, and the Stones played a new song plus two classic cuts. "The goal of the Super Bowl thing," says a source in Springsteen's camp, "is to see how much fun he can get into those 12 minutes."

[From Issue 1070 — January 22, 2009]