No One Wants to Play With Maroon 5 At the Super Bowl

Maroon 5 will play during halftime of Super Bowl LIII. And that’s fine. They have some pretty good jams. The dirty little secret about the gig is that you can’t please everyone, so the NFL tries to please a majority of people. That’s how you get relatively uninspired choices like Coldplay, who was also fine.

One would think that playing on one of the world’s biggest stages would be intensely appealing, but that’s not the case this year. Apparently Maroon 5 is having trouble lining up guests to jam with them, per a US Weekly report. But it’s not really because of anything Adam Levine-related.

“No one wants to associate themselves with the NFL” in light of its response to Colin Kaepernick’s protest against police brutality,” a source told the magazine.

Maroon 5 reportedly tried to get Cardi B to guest, but failed. Whichever artist or group ends up accepting will now be scrutinized because the Kaepernick issue has been introduced. It will be interesting to see which act, if any, wants to take that on.

Meanwhile, poor Maroon 5 has to keep reminding itself not to take it personally.