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Jay-Z has denied reports that he and Beyoncé were staging a protest by refusing to stand during the US national anthem at the 2020 Super Bowl.
After footage emerged of the couple staying seated for Demi Levato’s rendition of the song, it was suggest that they were protesting in solidarity with former NFL player Colin Kaepernick , who famously kneeled during the anthem in 2016 to protest racial inequality and oppression.
The rapper, who produced all the musical performances at the Super Bowl, has now said he and Beyoncé didn’t stand because they were in "artist mode".
During a Columbia University lecture on Tuesday (4 February), he said: "We were talking about how beautiful [Lovato] looks and how she sounds and what she's gone through in her life for her to be on the stage and we're so proud of her.”
When asked whether their decision to sit down was “meant to convey a signal”, Jay-Z said: “It actually wasn’t – sorry.”
Show all 25 1 /25The 25 worst album titles of all time The 25 worst album titles of all time Gorillaz – Humanz Humanz, a painfully obvious title geared towards unity, actually digs into why the album landed flat in the first place; expanding past their animated origins and incorporating more “humans” into the formula, the original magic is spread too thin and lost.
The 25 worst album titles of all time The Beatles – With the Beatles Titles with such a distinct lack of effort were commonplace in the Sixties, so this almost gets a pass – but is it too much to ask from the greatest band of all time to do a little better?
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The 25 worst album titles of all time David Bowie – Black Tie White Noise Before launching into his more experimental mid-Nineties era with 1. Outside and Earthling, Bowie released Black Tie White Noise. Much like the music itself, the tantalising promise of white noise is there, but is weighed down by tame formalities. It’s also just not that funny.
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The 25 worst album titles of all time James Brown – Take a Look at Those Cakes James Brown was never one for subtlety, but this title takes it to another level. Such inappropriateness makes sense when lyrics about Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles looking out for “cakes” crop up on the album. The whole thing hasn’t aged all that well.
The 25 worst album titles of all time Cher – not.com.mercial Recorded in 1994 and postponed to a 2000 release by Cher’s record label, this title actually rings true. Far less cutting edge is its stylisation into a website domain, which comes off as an artist desperate to stay current.
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The 25 worst album titles of all time Mariah Carey – Me. I Am Mariah… The Elusive Chanteuse An absolute abomination of an album title. I can’t even begin to imagine what the idea was behind this jumbled, baffling mess of pronouns and punctuation. Probably the worst offender on this whole list.
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The 25 worst album titles of all time 50 Cent – Animal Ambition: An Untamed Desire to Win Animal Ambition: An Untamed Desire to Win is just a convoluted, roundabout way of restating Get Rich Or Die Tryin’, a pretty apt summary of 50 Cent’s failed attempts to recapture his initial acclaim throughout his career.
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The 25 worst album titles of all time Ghostface Killah – More Fish In context, this is great. A continuation of Ghostface Killah’s critically appraised Fishscale, the album is everything a Wu-Tang Clan fan could have wanted. But without that context, the title is just strange and confusing.
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The 25 worst album titles of all time Guns N’ Roses – The Spaghetti Incident? Named after a fight between Guns N’ Roses members Steven Adler and Ian McKagan over “spaghetti”, their codename for drugs, Guns N’ Roses’ found this joke, one that should have stayed private, funny enough to dedicate an album title to.
The 25 worst album titles of all time Ja Rule – Pain is Love The simplicity of this statement is absolutely hilarious, both profound and not-thought-through at all. Is pain really love? All of it? What a beautiful insight.
The 25 worst album titles of all time Kelis – Kelis Was Here You can almost see it spray painted on a brick wall. Kelis succumbs to the mid-Noughties image of what’s trendy with this title after doing such a stellar job of transcending it with her music up to that point.
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The 25 worst album titles of all time Led Zeppelin – In Through the Out Door They really should’ve just stuck to numbering their albums. In Through the Out Door, Led Zeppelin’s final album, actually offers a fairly profound statement on retirement with the title, but does it with one of the tamest, funniest brags going.
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The 25 worst album titles of all time Lil Pump – Harverd Dropout Naming your album after Kanye West’s eponymous The College Dropout is setting yourself up for failure, let alone misspelling the college that you claim to have dropped out from. It feels like an insult to even compare the albums.
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The 25 worst album titles of all time Limp Bizkit – Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavoured Water Perhaps the album title that’s most prestigious for all the wrong reasons, Limp Bizkit truly set the bar for terribleness with this one. The fact that they’re in on the joke doesn’t make it any less childish.
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The 25 worst album titles of all time Van Morrison – Back on Top Using your album title as a preemptive comment on your current status rarely fares well. You’re either going to fall short or look a bit arrogant. Unfortunately for Van Morrison, both proved true.
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The 25 worst album titles of all time Kacey Musgraves – Same Trailer Different Park Even country pop icon Kacey Musgraves has her blind spots. Same Trailer Different Park is knowingly cheesy, though perhaps a little too much, and is also lacking some crucial punctuation. We can forgive her, though.
The 25 worst album titles of all time Nas – Nastradamus It’s ironic that the album widely considered Nas’s weakest is the one that explicitly draws parallels to Michel de Nostradamus, an astrologer known for having visions of the future. I wonder if Nas foresaw this album bombing so hard.
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The 25 worst album titles of all time The 1975 – I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it Overly long album titles are a goldmine for pretentiousness, but what makes this so much worse than, say, a Fiona Apple album, is the unnecessary use of lower-case and the vaguely intimidating message behind it.
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The 25 worst album titles of all time Ted Nugent – If You Can’t Lick ‘Em... Lick ‘Em This straight-up creepy and bizarre album title from Ted Nugent turns out to be the most memorable thing about If You Can’t Lick ‘Em... Lick ‘Em, a run-of-the-mill hard rock effort from the Eighties.
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The 25 worst album titles of all time Oasis – Standing on the Shoulder of Giants How such an obvious grammatical error made it into the title is still priceless. Noel Gallagher claims it was intentional, having drunkenly written it on a pack of cigarettes after seeing it on a £2 coin. If anything, that makes it even worse.
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The 25 worst album titles of all time Prince – Rave In2 the Joy Fantastic Honestly, we could have gone with any number of Prince’s later albums here: ART OFFICIAL AGE, PLECTRUMELECTRUM, 20Ten, LOtUSFLOW3R. Instead, we went for the legend’s very first questionable title, as well as his most inscrutable.
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The 25 worst album titles of all time Public Enemy – How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul? Not to nitpick but I’m not sure this is actually a question, and “Soulless People who Sold Their Soul” is a redundant phrase. Public Enemy’s timeless wit and rousing command of language gets a bit lost here.
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The 25 worst album titles of all time Simple Minds – Big Music Art rock titans Simple Minds come through with one of the least descriptive and comically simple titles out there with Big Music. Even with such low aspirations set up in the title, the album somehow still managed to fall short.
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The 25 worst album titles of all time Sonic Youth – EVOL It pains me to include Sonic Youth here, especially one of their greatest albums, but working out that “LOVE” spelt backwards looks a bit like “EVIL” is a little primary school. Clearly not for rapper Future, though, who would also name his album EVOL in 2016.
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The 25 worst album titles of all time The Weeknd – My Dear Melancholy, Drowning in melodrama, The Weeknd’s 2018 album My Dear Melancholy, comes off as a desperate bid to be as profound as possible. Much like the title’s hanging comma, more is promised but never delivered.
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He added that if he had meant it as a political statement, “I’d tell you… I’d say, ‘Yes, that’s what I’ve done.’ I think people know that about me”.
Jay-Z said they would not have planned to protest the national anthem with their eight-year-old daughter, Blue Ivy, sitting next to them. “Blue was right next to us,” he said. “We wouldn’t do that to Blue and put her in that position.”
Kaepernick’s protest kick-started a wave of similar actions by predominantly African-American football players, but he was controversially dropped from San Francisco’s team and not drafted again, despite being well-regarded as a player.
Jay-Z and Beyoncé have both expressed support for Kaepernick in the past.
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