Dee Snider Makes the Case for a Metallica Super Bowl Halftime Show

Dee Snider’s case for a Metallica Super Bowl halftime show starts with a familiar sound: a heavy riff coming through the stadium speakers between plays. On The Ball Podcast, the Twisted Sister frontman argued that football already knows what metal can do for a crowd. He wants the halftime booking to reflect that.

Snider brought up songs such as Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train,” his own band’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It” and Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.” To him, those songs are evidence that the audience already responds to this music in a football setting. He thinks Metallica has the catalog to make a halftime set work.

His most personal example was his teenage granddaughter. Snider said she found Metallica through Stranger Things, where Eddie Munson plays “Master of Puppets” in the fourth-season finale. A record from 1986 became part of a TV moment she and other younger listeners could discover on their own.

The connection went back the other way, too. At Lollapalooza in Chicago in July 2022, Metallica performed “Master of Puppets” with footage of Eddie on the screens. In the band’s concert video, the crowd hears the song live as the images that introduced it to some of those listeners play above the stage.

A halftime show needs to make an impression in a tight window. The clips help explain why Snider thinks Metallica could do it. One audience may know the first few notes from the record, another from the series, and another from hearing the band in a stadium. They can all recognize the same riff.

For now, the idea is Snider’s pitch. The closest thing to a demonstration is what Metallica did in Chicago, when a song released in 1986 landed with a festival crowd and a new audience had its own reason to sing along.

Hear Snider’s case in his own words

On the podcast, Snider explains why the familiar songs heard during games matter to his argument and why he singles out Metallica for the main stage.