While football is the main course at every Super Bowl, each year the event manages to serve up sides of commercials and musical performances. Increasingly, these are also becoming must-watch television.

This year the national anthem will be sung by opera singer Renee Fleming, who has performed at the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, the 2008 Olympic Games and President Obama's inauguration. She will sing accompanied by the New Jersey Symphony and the top singers from all four of the U.S. military choirs. "I wanted to do something reverent and exultant that speaks to what the anthem is," she said.

"It's an enormous risk because of the spotlight," said Fleming, who has practiced the anthem 800 times in the past three weeks. "I've been completely overwhelmed. People are taking bets on my gloves and the length of my song. The interest coming from worlds I didn't know existed has been really exciting and fascinating."

The halftime show is headlined by 28-year-old Bruno Mars, the youngest performer since Justin Timberlake in 2004. Some critics say he is not as accomplished as previous halftime performers, such as last year's Beyoncé, or Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen of years prior. Still, Mars is a popular artist, especially among young people, and he should be able to produce a good lineup from his two albums. He will be joined on stage by the Red Hot Chili Peppers in a duo performance which brings the experience he might need. Very few details about the performance have been revealed.

Bruno Mars had this to say about the opportunity: "When we got that phone call, again, what do you say? 'Nah.' What do you say? 'Absolutely. Let's rock.' It was something exciting for me and my (band). It wasn't too long ago when we were performing in clubs and bars and pubs, and even when I put (my first) album out, (we were) opening acts for a bunch of different artists, living in a van and traveling around and kind of putting in the work and time. It might seem fast to the outsider looking in, but you know, it's just another thing we can celebrate and I feel like as a group we all achieved it together. You know, performing on TV and stuff, whatever the NFL saw they dug it and that's why we got the call."