The Super Bowl halftime show is often described as the biggest stage in music, watched by well over one hundred million people in a single night. Yet not every artist who gets the call says yes. Some have passed on the offer for reasons ranging from personal politics to simple scheduling headaches, and their explanations reveal a lot about how complicated that dazzling twelve minutes of stage time really is behind the scenes.
Adele
Adele has publicly declined the halftime show more than once, and she has never been shy about why. In 2016, Adele revealed to fans that she turned down an offer to perform at the Super Bowl because the iconic stage is not aligned with her talents, saying the show is not about music and that she cannot dance. The NFL pushed back on the framing at the time, though the sentiment stuck around long after the headlines faded.
The NFL and then-sponsor Pepsi later denied that she was offered a formal contract. Even so, the story resurfaced years later. In 2025, she reportedly turned down the opportunity again. For an artist known for ballads and quiet intensity rather than choreography and pyrotechnics, the halftime format has simply never felt like the right fit.
Rihanna
Long before she finally took the stage, Rihanna said no for reasons that had nothing to do with music. Following months of speculation, Rihanna confirmed she did indeed turn down an offer from the National Football League to headline the Super Bowl LIII halftime show, and her reason was Colin Kaepernick. She made the decision in solidarity with the former San Francisco 49er, whose peaceful protesting of police brutality went largely unsupported by the league.
Her words at the time were direct and left little room for interpretation. “I couldn’t dare do that,” she told Vogue. “For what? Who gains from that? Not my people. I just couldn’t be a sellout. I couldn’t be an enabler. There’s things within that organization that I do not agree with at all, and I was not about to go and be of service to them in any way.” It took years of rebuilding trust before she finally headlined Super Bowl LVII in 2023, a performance that became one of the most talked-about in the show’s history.
Taylor Swift
Swift’s halftime saga stretches back further than most fans realize, and it has nothing to do with tabloid timing. According to Business Insider, she turned down the opportunity multiple times, including the last three years in a row, and multiple reports shared that the NFL hadn’t met her demands. The details of those demands have never been fully spelled out publicly, but the pattern of repeated refusals is well documented.
More recently, she offered a different and more personal explanation. In an October 2025 appearance on The Tonight Show, Swift denied turning down an offer to perform in the show in 2023, but explained that her team regularly talks to Jay-Z’s company Roc Nation, which produces the Super Bowl halftime show, and noted that she is sometimes asked if she’s interested in the gig. She went on to connect her hesitation to her relationship with Kansas City Chiefs player Travis Kelce, suggesting that sharing the spotlight with football during his season felt like the wrong move.
Pink
Pink’s refusal traces back to the same wave of NFL controversy that shaped several other artists’ decisions. Pop star Pink told Billboard in 2019 that she turned down the halftime show because of its treatment of Kaepernick, saying “I’d probably take a knee and get carried out,” and that fear of being criticized for agreeing to it was also a factor, adding “Everyone who does it gets so persecuted.” Her comments captured a broader anxiety among artists who worried that accepting the gig meant inheriting a political minefield.
Politics was not the only sticking point, though. ET also reported the NFL approached Pink about the show, but she decided to move on as negotiations took too long. Between the drawn-out talks and the cultural backlash swirling around the league, she ultimately walked away from what would have been one of the biggest bookings of her career.
Cardi B
Cardi B’s decision came from the same moment of reckoning that shaped Rihanna’s and Pink’s choices, though her feelings about it were noticeably more conflicted. Grammy-winning rapper Cardi B said she also declined the show in support of Kaepernick, but said she had “mixed feelings” about it. Unlike some of her peers, she was candid that the decision carried a personal cost inside her own household.
Her husband’s love of the sport made the stance harder to hold firm on. “My husband [rapper Offset], he loves football. His kids play football. It’s really hard for him… He really wants to go to the Super Bowl, but he can’t go to the Super Bowl, because he’s got to stand for something,” Cardi told the Associated Press. It was a rare moment of an artist admitting that principle and personal life do not always sit comfortably side by side.
Taken together, these five stories show that turning down the Super Bowl rarely comes down to a single simple reason. Some artists walked away over politics, others over creative fit, and at least one over a relationship that made the timing feel wrong. What they share is a willingness to say no to one of the most visible stages in entertainment, even when saying yes would have been the easier and more lucrative choice.
