With 2016 halfway over, many across the United States are already marking down the days remaining on their calendar before February 5 of next year, the day of the 51st annual Super Bowl.

Football, among all other things America represents, stands at the pinnacle of cultural preference in the United States. For Americans, their love for the sport is shown every year through none other than the Super Bowl. Though over the course of the last five decades, football has not been the only part of the Super Bowl that rallies people every year for the nation’s largest sporting event. The key to the Super Bowl’s ever-increasing popularity with the general public begins not with the initial kickoff or the final touchdown, but at halftime. For the last 50 years, spectators have been wowed by the energy and entertainment of the annual halftime show that unites sports fans non-sports fans alike. Big-name performers from the classic legends such as Aerosmith, ZZ Top, and Phil Collins to contemporary icons such as Michael Jackson, the Black-Eyed Peas, and Bruno Mars have all rocked the stage. Their names, as a result, have and shall forever leave their mark on the pages of Super Bowl history.

But there’s one new shining star in the music industry that has not yet sealed their legacy at the center of the largest sporting event in America – a Scottish cover band from the streets of Glasgow, they are the Red Hot Chilli Pipers!

Many will know them – more often than not, very mistakenly – as the popular ‘80s-born American rock band. To their true, diehard fans, however, this talented group of Scots is best referred to as “the most famous bagpipe band on the planet”. Two years after their inception in 2002, the Chilli Pipers began their path towards fame when they first appeared on television as a contestant on the BBC talent show, “When Will I Become Famous?” As time clearly told, the talent show’s name was a clear foreshadowing of what the future had in store for this new, thriving generation of bagpipers.

With their groundbreaking victory, the Chilli Pipers won over the hearts of many throughout the UK. History was soon to be made as people from around the globe began to take notice of the band and their trending mix of the bagpipes with guitarists, drummers, and keyboardists – an awesome combination which gave rise to its famous birth name, “Bagrock.” Their first giant steps into the hall of world fame not only started their career with a bang but marked the beginning of their inspiration of an entirely new and unprecedented genre of music. Every year since their rise to stardom in 2004, their popularity has grown to an extent that went far beyond the comfort of their homes in ‘Bonnie Scotland’. By the year 2010, after six years of perfecting the art of Bagrock, the Chilli Pipers had taken the world by storm through a series of international tours to hotspots from the Western Hemisphere to the Far East. Outside the UK, the Chilli Pipers have earned the respect and recognition of every country they performed for in their travels, particularly in much of Germany and the United States. In the six years from 2010 to now, their fan base has grown by the thousands with every new song that escapes the holes of their chanters. What is it about their music that keeps the Chilli Pipers on the fast road to becoming the icons of the new Scottish generation?

To most of those who have never heard of them, the general impression that the Chilli Pipers may rub off would be the sound of the band which, as their name implies, is dominated by the bagpipes. It is no secret, of course, that the bagpipes hold a solid yet stereotypical reputation for their notorious cry which, as someone once famously put it, “completely unnerves the haters but soothes the lovers”. The melody of their songs, however, speak an entirely different tune. Combined with the upbeat vibes of the guitars and the drums, the Chilli Pipers unleash a sound which has proven effective at maintaining the eyes, ears, and energy of the crowd and, more consequentially, has brought newcomer fans flocking in droves. 2006 marked the release year of their first-ever album, which was given the namesake of the band. While most of their tracks were based off traditional Scottish songs, the Chilli Pipers later revealed that they were not total strangers to the musical trends of modern popular culture. By the time their fourth album was released in 2010, entitled “Music for the Kilted Generation”, the Chilli Pipers had experimented their revolutionary model of Bagrock – with wild success – on some of the greatest lyrical works from the later years of the last century to the current day, including classics by AC/DC such as Thunderstruck and Long Way to the Top, Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing, Queen’s We Will Rock You, and Survivor’s Eye of the Tiger.Their worldwide celebrity status, however, finally reached its peak in January 2014 when they released their cover of the previous year’s hit “summer anthem”, Wake Me Up by Avicii, which has already exceeded three million views on YouTube.

All of the notable mentions I have just listed, of course, make up only a small percentage of the world sensation that the Chilli Pipers have become. The talent and reputation they have carried with them from one live stage to the next have evidently given a whole new meaning of greatness to the initials, “RHCP”. I have been a fan of their music for two years now, and to this day cannot resist listening to that intoxicating Scottish vibe. Their unprecedented collision of a traditional instrument with modern music has even inspired me to take up the bagpipes as a personal hobby and likely side-career. As a blood-born son of Scotland, they are a big part of what makes me proud of my heritage. Many others, whether they are Scottish or not, will agree that the Red Hot Chilli Pipers are a unique embodiment of entertainment which the Super Bowl would be foolish to pass up for their halftime show.

With such a catchy name as well as a kilted crew of bagpipers, who else in this day and age could be more deserving to take part in one of the most extraordinary opportunities of a lifetime?