Idina Menzel To Perform at the Super Bowl
Broadway star behind Frozen hit ‘Let it Go’ will sing the national anthem
January 16, 2015
Idina Menzel on April 30, 2014 in New York City. (Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for Tony Awards Productions)
Last year’s Super Bowl had a fair amount of Jewish highlights, what with the Seinfeld reunion, quarter-Jewish halftime performer Bruno Mars, the Mandy Patinkin-narrated commercial, plus that whole SodaStream thing. But this year promises something even more exciting: Idina Menzel singing the national anthem.
The Tony Award-winning Broadway star and powerhouse soprano behind the catchiest song of the year, Frozen’s smash hit “Let It Go,” is perhaps best-known as Adele Dazeem, which is how John Travolta pronounced her name while introducing her performance of the song at the Grammy Awards (it won; Travolta didn’t). The bizarre incident put Menzel, long a revered theater world staple, on the pop culture map. Plus, the wild success of Frozen, and “Let it Go” in particular, means that every child and teenager across America, and their parents, know exactly who Menzel is.
It’s a smart choice, and an exciting one. As Rachel Shukert pointed out after Travolta-gate, “For nearly 20 years, Idina Menzel has been poised to become the next big-haired, big-faced, gutsy, Midler-esque star,” but for some reason it never really happened. (“Always a Dazeem, never a Streisand,” Shukert lamented.) If the uber mainstream, high-profile Super Bowl gig is any indication, that’s already changed.
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Related: Why Didn’t John Travolta Know Who Idina Menzel Is?
Stephanie Butnick is the founder of GOLDA, a Jewish lifestyle newsletter. She hosted the Tablet podcast Unorthodox, co-authored The Newish Jewish Encyclopedia: From Abraham to Zabar’s and Everything in Between, and worked as a writer and editor at Tablet.
