The 9 Patriots Super Bowl halftime shows, ranked

Super Bowl 52 will be the 10th Super Bowl featuring the New England Patriots. That’s an NFL record, and means nearly 20 percent of the Super Bowls in league history have involved the Pats. Although it’s seemed like all of them have come under Bill Belichick, there were a couple preceding his era in Foxborough.

This year, the Pats are back in the big game, and that means they’ll again be in the locker room while one of our biggest annual musical spectacles takes place: the Super Bowl halftime show. Super Bowl halftimes are twice as long as regular NFL halftimes, clocking in at 30 minutes these days. A lot of that time involves setting up and breaking down the incredibly intricate stages. For the players and coaches, this can be frustrating.

“It really gets into a whole restarting mentality,” Belichick said then. “It’s not like taking a break and coming out in the second half. It’s like starting the game all over again. It’s like playing a game, stopping, and then playing a second game.”

But for us, it’s time for a show.

We’ve got nine New England Super Bowls to choose from, so for posterity and future generations, here are all the shows, ranked:

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As the Patriots were being pummeled by the historically good Chicago Bears, the halftime show at the Superdome was themed “Beat Of The Future.”

It was dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr. and produced by the educational organization that had been around since the mid-1960s. It takes kids across the globe to experience other cultures.

UWP was actually in its fifth Super Bowl. The whole thing was emceed by the late Dick Enberg and was wonderfully 80s-themed. To be honest, it’s not that bad.

Basically it was a melody of 80s jams, and it was a pretty enjoyable look back at that era of music.

The MLK connection makes sense as this Super Bowl was played six days after the first national MLK Day was observed as a holiday. The show wrapped up with a feel-good moment of unity featuring a parade of flags from around the world.

Petty, who passed away last fall, delivered a cool performance of his hits during the first Super Bowl at University of Phoenix Stadium. Petty is the type of artist who has the interesting effect of making you feel like you know all his songs despite only having heard them a few times. It’s the osmosis of his music that creates a staying power for the casual listener.

While McCartney and his former band, The Beatles, don’t hold a candle — in my opinion — to contemporary music ensembles such as Migos, I will contend that “Hey Jude” absolutely slaps lives.

The “Nah nah nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah, hey Jude” lyric with 70,000 people is awesome.

A hill I’m willing to die on is that Lady Gaga is one of the most vocally talented performers in the game today. But the run up to this performance made the actual performance fall flat.

It had nothing to do with her talent, but Gaga made you think some kind of shock and awe was in store, or at least some political commentary we’d all be talking about the next morning.

Don’t get me wrong, her performance was electric, but a middle finger to the NFL by doing her own thing would have been hilarious. It also probably would have gotten her sued six ways from Sunday, so I get it.

About a week after the game, the sequel to the popular 1980 movie The Blues Brothers would be released. Blues Brother 2000 didn’t include John Belushi, who had passed away years prior, but Dan Aykroyd was part of the sequel and part of the halftime show.

I’ll ignore the shameless promotion because, dammit, Brown did the show.

If the Godfather Of Soul is doing his thing it’s a good show in my book. He was raised in a scissor lift, for some reason. Who cares, it works.

Add a dash of ZZ Top, and it was a solid show which by the end featured the new Blues Brothers, Brown, and the members of ZZ Top on stage at the same time. Also, John Goodman did this move a couple times (left-hand side of the GIF).

Have fun unseeing that.

The third time the Pats played in a New Orleans Super Bowl, U2 performed this straight-up rock concert including Bono having to basically fight his way through screaming fans to get to the stage.

But one shot that may have been a mistake in production shows the way the presentation used movie magic to make the thing look and feel more like a rock show than it actually was.

The pit is packed with people, but the rest of the field is not. They quickly zoom in on that, but it’s kinda funny.

The show also got very heartfelt by pulling up a giant screen to the top of the Superdome to display the names of those who lost their lives in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Madonna delivered a pretty good set, and the visuals were great, including being wheeled onto the field by dozens of dudes.

Also, the field melting graphic later on was pretty awesome.

The rest of the performance was an odd look into what was hot in 2012 with an eclectic mix of artists. Madonna was joined by Nicki Minaj — obviously still popular — and CeeLo Green, who is also great, but probably better known at this point in his career for his work on The Voice. He danced with Madonna in a choir robe though.

Those two guys who did “Sexy and I Know It,” showed up. M.I.A. did too.

She stole the show’s aftermath when she flicked the camera off very briefly.

The FCC actually didn’t fine NBC for this, although 222 complaints were made by viewers who were aghast. The NFL filed an arbitration claim against M.I.A. for $16.6 million. The claim was settled confidentially.

This show was a lot. Timberlake and Jackson are the only people you remember because of that moment, but there were other performances. Jessica Simpson briefly appeared to open things up before ceding to the University of Houston and Texas Southern University marching bands, who played an Outkast song.

Diddy and Nelly then performed — that was back when Diddy actually made music. We also got some possible foreshadowing. He’s on record wanting to buy the Panthers, and, well:

Nelly performed “Hot in Here,” which is enough to make this performance No. 1 on any list. Kid Rock then showed up and rocked the house.

But of course, there was Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” showing 9/16 of her exposed breast, which resulted in 1.4 million complaints with the FCC and a protracted legal battle over the $550,000 fine levied on CBS. It also resulted in Timberlake’s career continuing to take off while Jackson unfairly shouldered the brunt of the blame for the gaffe.

Timberlake will be back to do the Patriots’ 10th Super Bowl halftime performance in Minnesota. We’ll see where it ends up ranking among this list of sets.