Justin, Janet, Britney, and the Flat Circle of Time
A look back at the 2004 Super Bowl "wardrobe malfunction" and what's going on now
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This year’s alliterative Super Bowl duo du jour is Taylor and Travis. Twenty years ago, it was Janet and Justin.
But unlike Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce—a pairing that has captivated a weary nation since last fall and will quite possibly reach its zenith at Sunday’s big game—Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake weren’t “Janet and Justin” until the final seconds of the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show cemented their names together in infamy.
The two singers had already collaborated on a track for Justin’s 2003 album Justified, and NSYNC had previously opened on one of Janet’s tours. But Super Bowl XXXVIII wasn’t centered around a “Janet and Justin” halftime show. Janet was the headliner and Justin was a supplemental performer who popped out at the end of the nearly six-minute set to perform his song “Rock Your Body” alongside the veteran star.
And that’s when Justin exposed Janet’s breast to 89-million CBS viewers.
The “wardrobe malfunction” (a term coined by Justin’s camp in his apology statement) led to a devastating career turn for Janet, a PR headache for Justin, and the abject implosion of American sensibilities.
A quick recap: As Justin sang his final line, “Better have you naked by the end of this song,” he reached across Janet and yanked off the top of her costume, exposing her right breast and nipple jewelry for nine-sixteenths of a second on live TV.
During the planning of the show, there had been a discussion about having Justin rip off Janet’s skirt to expose a jumpsuit underneath, but that schtick was scrapped by the network brass for being too explicit. A 2021 New York Times documentary revealed that Janet’s team made additional, last-minute alterations to her costume and that she and Justin chatted privately just before taking the stage. Janet’s team has said Justin was only meant to rip off the top layer, leaving the red bra on underneath.
After the halftime show aired, the FCC received more than 540,000 complaints from viewers scandalized by the incident, and CBS faced a years-long investigation and the threat of millions of dollars in fines. (A fine of $550,000 was eventually levied and later thrown out.)
Collateral TV damage that week went so far as a cut scene in an E.R. episode that featured a brief shot of an 80-year-old woman’s breast “in the context of a medical trauma.”
One week after the 2004 Super Bowl, CBS had to air another live event: the Grammys. The network suits were quaking at the thought of accidentally televising additional indecencies, so CBS aired the entire Grammys ceremony on a five-minute delay. (A standard live broadcast delay is under 10 seconds.)
Janet—already a 5-time Grammy winner and 23-time nominee—had been scheduled to participate in a tribute to Luther Vandross, but because of the Super Bowl debacle, CBS boss Les Moonves uninvited her from the show altogether.
Justin was still allowed to perform, present, and generally be the toast of the town at the event, on the condition that he use his time on stage to apologize, which he did.
"Listen, I know it's been a rough week on everybody," he said during the broadcast. "What occurred was unintentional and completely regrettable, and I apologize if you guys were offended."
Janet had been offered a similar deal, CBS said in a statement at the time, but she declined to agree to an on-air apology and, thus, saw her Grammys invitation rescinded. (She had already apologized via video and written statement.)
That night, Justin ended up winning the Grammy for Pop Vocal Album for Justified, and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for “Cry Me a River”—a track whose accompanying music video featured a lookalike of his ex Britney Spears, and which Britney felt portrayed her as a “harlot who’d broken the heart of America’s golden boy.”
In the weeks and years that followed, the blame for the Super Bowl “nipplegate,” as it was dubbed, rested largely on Janet in the court of public opinion.
Fourteen years later, Justin was invited back to headline the Super Bowl halftime show in 2018, and he included “Rock Your Body” in his set. But times had begun to change. #JanetJacksonAppreciationDay and #JusticeForJanet quickly trended on Twitter in response.
Fast forward to 2024, and Justin is attempting a new solo musical era. In a move that is definitely ~a choice~, his latest single is titled “Selfish.” He doubled down on the sentiment at a concert in New York last week, where he proclaimed, “I’d like to take this opportunity to apologize to absolutely f—ing nobody.”
The on-stage dig was seemingly at Britney, whose fans had sent her own 2011 song called “Selfish” to the top of the iTunes chart, in an effort to troll Justin’s new single.
Britney had also shared an Instagram post, writing, “I wanna apologize for some of the things I wrote about in my book. If I offended any of the people I genuinely care about I am deeply sorry,” she posted. "I also wanted to say I am in love with Justin Timberlake's new song 'Selfish' it is soo good."
Justin’s non-apology is a 180 from the statement he put out in 2021, after a New York Times documentary about Britney ignited a fresh wave of backlash against him and his past actions.
“I specifically want to apologize to Britney Spears and Janet Jackson both individually, because I care for and respect these women and I know I failed,” he wrote in that since-deleted Instagram post. “Because of my ignorance, I didn’t recognize it for all that it was while it was happening in my own life but I do not want to ever benefit from others being pulled down again.”
Now, Justin appears to be reverting to the rules of an archaic pop-culture game that existed pre-Free Britney, #MeToo, and a pair of Janet-centric documentaries that re-litigated the events of February 2004. How that will work out for him is unclear.
At last Sunday’s Grammys, Justin was a nonentity. Grammy nominee Ice Spice was 4 years old when the Super Bowl incident occurred. Olivia Rodrigo was a baby. The music industry and public sentiment has evolved, and the nostalgic goodwill built by the perfection of the 1998 NSYNC Christmas album can only carry one so far. (An NSYNC reunion tour, however…)
But Justin’s “Selfish” still debuted at No. 19 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart this week—his highest charting single since a Chris Stapleton collaboration in 2018. He was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live, where he also revived a sketch he first performed with Jimmy Fallon more than 20 years ago. There are rumors he’s angling for a tell-all interview with Oprah.
As for Janet, the ripples of February 2004 continue to this day.
Last year, the Grammys planned to honor her with a Global Impact award, but talks reportedly broke down when Janet suggested that CBS publicly make amends for their treatment of her in 2004, and they refused. She hasn’t attended the ceremony in years.
None of this is completely shocking. The music industry (and the Grammys specifically) has long faced allegations of sexism and racism. No Black woman has won a Grammy for Album of the Year since Lauryn Hill in 1999.
Still, maybe the man who once sang, “What goes around, goes around, goes around, comes all the way back around” is experiencing a touch of that karmic sentiment at this very moment. Maybe.