SUPER BOWL SUNDAY 2013: WHAT’S BEYONCE’S VERSION OF THE JANET JACKSON ‘ACCIDENTAL’ NIP SLIP GOING TO BE?

Beyoncé works hard, yo. She’s so busy rehearsing for her half-time performance during Super Bowl Sunday in New Orleans this weekend that the poor lamb’s forced to take breaks on the floor while her dancers soldier on valiantly in the background.

I was thinking today that often Super Bowl performers do some form of accidentally-on-purpose trick to get extra press inches after the event.

Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction nip slip when she sang with Justin Timberlake was one, and another was MIA giving the finger in the middle of the Madge’s show, leaving the always publicity-hungry Madonna to act all outraged and appalled afterwards – getting extra mileage and free promotion for her new album MDNA out of it in to the bargain.

Few things happen by accident in the world of Superstar performances – they’re very carefully planned and rehearsed smoke and mirrors with fabulous showmanship from start to finish.

But, I wonder if Beyoncé’s headline-grabbing trick could simply be the not-too taxing feat of singing live on Sunday?

After the inauguration lip-synching scandale! all eyes (and ears) will be on Bey this weekend- which is exactly what she wants, especially with 2013 being ‘her’ year now Jay-Z has had a few years to shine in his own right (he used to be v-ery touchy about her being the bigger star).

And, she’ll ‘wow’ many viewers drunk off their noggins on beer at home (and get them all talking about how great she is on Monday when they’re too hungover to focus on work) by actually just doing what she’s paid millions to do – which is singing and dancing to a high professional standard.

Clever eh? With no official denial (that I can find) from Beyoncé’s camp about the Inauguration lip-synching debacle, of course the Super Bowl will be Beyowulf’s response to all the miles of nay-saying and debate in the press, on television and online.

Can she give all her critics a poke in the eye with a killer ‘live’ (probably her singing over a backing track) performance?

Yes, of course she can. But what’s interesting is that with one carefully lip-synched National Anthem, everyone’s talking about Beyoncé again and, she’s gone from being a bit of a shrug and boring ‘whatever’, to riding that zeitgeist as a topic of debate without even changing up her act one bit.

The point is not what her fans think, it is that everyone – from politicians to Joe Bloggs in the street – was talking about Beyoncé the week after the American Presidential Inauguration. Arguably more so it seemed than they were about the man who actually got elected to power to run the United States – whilst it’s in the grip of the worst financial recession since the 1930′s – for another four years.

I’m even wondering if the lip sync thing was actually part of a very clever plan to get everyone talking about her and then to show them all what she’s made of this weekend (sources in Bey-land have been saying things like she was saving herself for the Super Bowl).

Even if it wasn’t done on purpose and Beyoncé had hoped everyone would be tricked into thinking that she had sung live, I’ll bet the media-savvy Carters (as Gwyneth Paltrow calls them in her Goop newsletters) are now rubbing their hands with glee that she’s been given the chance to prove herself to the world when before last week no-one was ever even doubting her.

"And for my next trick, I'm actually going to turn this microphone on"

And, it’ll be Beyoncé at her booty-shaking, high note-reaching, singing-as-if-her-life- depended-on-it best during Sunday’s performance (she’s even throwing in a few numbers with Destiny’s Child for good measure) that will be fresh in everyones’ minds when she sets to work on her post-Super Bowl mission – which is bouncing back to the top of the charts and being everywhere in 2013, adding yet more millions to her and Jay-Z’s retirement fund.

‘Well played, Beowulf, well-played.