The Super Bowl XXXVI Halftime Show, known through corporate sponsorship as the E-Trade Super Bowl XXXVI Halftime Show, was the halftime entertainment of Super Bowl XXXVI, which took place on February 3, 2002, at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana. It featured Irish rock band U2 as the performer. Using a heart-shaped stage replicated from their 2001 Elevation Tour, the group played three songs and paid tribute to the victims of the September 11 attacks, which had occurred in the United States five months earlier. The show was produced by Clear Channel Entertainment, which also produced the band's Elevation Tour. The Super Bowl and its halftime show were televised nationally in the US by Fox.
Singer Janet Jackson was originally booked as the halftime performer, but after the September 11 attacks, it was decided that a different artist would be needed to set the tone required. U2 were selected as the replacement after several executives from the National Football League (NFL) attended one of their October 2001 concerts in New York City and were emotionally impacted by the band's tribute to the attack victims, whose names were projected across the ceiling of Madison Square Garden. During their halftime performance, the band played their 2000 hit single "Beautiful Day", the 1984 song "MLK", and their 1987 hit single "Where the Streets Have No Name". During the latter two songs, U2's tribute to the September 11 victims was reprised, as their names were projected onto a vertical scrim behind the stage and across the interior of the Superdome. At the end of the performance, lead singer Bono opened his jacket to reveal an American flag in the lining.
The halftime show drew a 38.3 Nielsen rating and 82.9 million viewers in the US. It received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised the band's performance and the poignancy of the 9/11 tribute. In the week following U2's performance, sales of their 2000 album All That You Can't Leave Behind increased in the US by 142 percent. In 2006, U2 returned to the Superdome as the entertainment for another NFL game, performing with Green Day for the New Orleans Saints' first home game since Hurricane Katrina. Many critics have ranked U2's performance at Super Bowl XXXVI among the top Super Bowl halftime shows.
Background
U2's 2000 studio album All That You Can't Leave Behind was commercially and critically successful. It debuted at number one in 32 countries and sold 10 million copies by December 2001. The record's lead single, "Beautiful Day", was a worldwide hit, and in February 2001 it won Grammy Awards for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, Song of the Year, and Record of the Year. The band embarked on a concert tour, the Elevation Tour, in March 2001. The first two legs sold out all 83 concerts across North America and Europe and grossed US$105 million.
On September 10, 2001, Clear Channel Entertainment (CCE) and SFX Entertainment announced a third leg of U2's Elevation Tour, consisting of a return trip to North America. Tickets for the shows were scheduled to go on sale on September 15, but the day after the announcement, the September 11 attacks occurred in the United States; four passenger airliners were hijacked by al-Qaeda terrorists and crashed in New York City and near Washington, D.C., killing nearly 3,000 people. CCE and SFX postponed ticket sales out of respect for the tragedy. Many artists cancelled tours of North America altogether in the wake of the attacks, but on September 17, CCE and SFX announced that the Elevation Tour would continue as planned and that tickets would go on sale for various shows starting September 21.
Following the attacks, All That You Can't Leave Behind found added resonance with American audiences, as the album climbed on the Billboard 200 chart and songs such as "Walk On" and "Peace on Earth" garnered radio airplay. Both tracks were performed during U2's appearance on the America: A Tribute to Heroes telethon to benefit the attack victims. The Elevation Tour was the top-earning North American tour of 2001 with a gross of US$109.7 million, the second-highest ever at the time for a North American tour. Globally, it grossed US$143.5 million from 2.18 million tickets sold, making it the year's highest-grossing tour overall. U2 was named "Band of the Year" by the magazines Rolling Stone and Spin.
As a result of the September 11 attacks, the National Football League (NFL) postponed its games scheduled for that week until the end of the 2001 regular season. To allow the playoffs to be held in their entirety, in October the NFL rescheduled Super Bowl XXXVI at the Louisiana Superdome from January 27, 2002, to February 3.