2015 Super Bowl halftime show preview: Katy Perry plus Lenny Kravitz, Missy Elliott makes for odd setlist

As musical marriages go, the one between Super Bowl halftime show headliner Katy Perry and special guest Lenny Kravitz alone promised to be a fairly strange one.

Perry -- who is a long way from her Christian contemporary days as Katy Hudson -- has a mostly bubblegum-pop oeuvre that has only recently trended more toward R&B stylings (“Dark Horse”), and has never really been in the rock/R&B vein that Kravitz mostly occupies.

Bringing on Missy Elliott, too? That’s just weird. In theory, at least.

Perry’s most obvious collaboration with Kravitz would be some medley of her “California Gurls” and his version of “American Woman,” and if Kravitz performs anything of his own discography, rather than just accompanying Perry, it’s unlikely to be anything but that, “Are You Gonna Go My Way,” or “Fly Away.”

Kravitz could obviously lend riff-heavy guitaring to the background of any of Perry’s big arena hits, but there’s precedent for him getting a medley spot: The Red Hot Chili Peppers joined Bruno Mars last year, and played (well, “played”) their “Give It Away” in the midst of his set, and headliner Beyoncé was joined by her old Destiny’s Child bandmates to perform a brief medley of old hits in 2013.

Missy, though, probably has just one job: She would most logically rap her verse (or the barely-there bridge) from the official remix to Perry’s “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)“ and depart, depriving the national audience of a chance to hear something awesome like “Gossip Folks.” We’re not going to get to see her be “weird as hell,“ and that’s a bummer.

“Last Friday Night” is one of the three songs that is a mortal lock to be part of Perry’s setlist. It, the arena-ready “Roar,” and the booming “Firework” are probably Perry’s most recognizable songs, and both “Roar” and “Firework” have been used in advertising for the halftime show. (“Firework,” specifically, would be an excellent closer.) Adding the excellent “Teenage Dream” would make some sense, but there’s no great way to fit that into a setlist to be performed for billions; the same goes for the less-good “Hot n Cold.”

And while “Dark Horse” was Perry’s biggest 2014 hit, there’s no way the NFL is letting a song featuring Juicy J rapping “She eat your heart out like Jeffery Dahmer” hit the stage. (But the league did pick a performer who rose to fame on the back of the wretched “Ur So Gay” and a song about performative lesbianism, so who knows?)

So “California Gurls” (less sapphic than “I Kissed A Girl,” but still sexy) would be my pick for her fourth song, likely accompanied by Kravitz. And given that Mars only did five songs last year, four or five would seem to be Perry’s limit, so I’ll bet that if a fifth gets performed, she works “Wide Awake” into the mix.

Regardless of the setlist, though, Perry’s stage shows have grown more elaborate and weird since her early days, and this Pepsi-released teaser has a unicorn, kittens and a lot of pastel colors. This will be an audiovisual assault, no matter what Perry ends up playing.

“Wide Awake”
“American Woman”/“California Gurls” (featuring Lenny Kravitz)
“Roar”
“Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.) (Remix)” (featuring Missy Elliott)
“Firework”