Adam Levine actually did it: He took a knee during his controversial halftime performance at Super Bowl LIII.
Onstage Sunday night at Atlanta's Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the Maroon 5 frontman _ whose band's controversial acceptance of a gig reportedly turned down as a matter of principle by the likes of Rihanna and Cardi B _ defied expectations to assume a pose that inevitably called to mind Colin Kaepernick and his signature protest of racial injustice.
Only wait: Levine wasn't throwing in his lot with a proudly outspoken NFL player whom the league has seemed eager to silence.
No, the singer was crouching down near the end of Maroon 5's show _ as he sang about wanting a woman's "red velvet" _ to be closer to the fans in the front row reaching hungrily toward his shirtless body.
"Sugar," the song was called, which tells you all you need to know about the appetite Levine and his bandmates demonstrated here for presenting anything more than a harmless confection.
The long-running Los Angeles group played muscular versions of some of its biggest hits, including "Harder to Breathe," "Moves Like Jagger" and "Girls Like You," the last of which conspicuously lacked the guest verse from Cardi B that's helped make it a radio smash.
And Maroon 5 brought out rappers Travis Scott (who did "Sicko Mode") and Big Boi (who did "The Way You Move") for haphazard cameos that felt like attempts to ward off criticism that a Super Bowl set in hip-hop's capital booked a pop-rock group for the halftime entertainment. (Scott entered the fray as part of an inside joke about "SpongeBob SquarePants.")
But if Maroon 5 was aiming to please fans _ and corporate overlords _ eager for a show that put politics aside for a few blissful moments, it ended up putting across something less sweet, and that was the taste of fear.
