An Open Letter Originally to My Aunt, Who Asked Me the Day After Bad Bunny's Halftime Show, "I Know You Studied Spanish, Jenn, So Could You Explain What His Lyrics Said?"

Here is a video of the halftime performance, from the NFL's YouTube channel, so you can follow along if you'd like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6FuWd4wNd8 Unfortunately, there are a few ads from YouTube that interrupt the video; just click "skip" as soon as that option is available and it will return you to the video. I've added timestamps to my guide so you can keep track of what part of the performance I'm talking about.

Since there is a lot of information here, you may want to watch through the performance once (if you haven't already seen it) just to get a sense of what it feels like to watch the show without knowing any of the lyrics or contextual information. What are the themes, emotions, and impressions that come across just by listening to the music and watching the different scenes that make up the show? This is not unlike the experience of going to the opera when you don't understand Italian or German (although opera has an overall plot whereas this show is just a montage of different scenes; there is an arc, but not a plot per se).

I recommend having the video open on a different screen as you read the rest of this email, or at least in a different browser tab so you can switch back and forth without losing your place. The pause button is your friend here.

Before we start the video, here is some general info to get you oriented:

Bad Bunny is a performer from Puerto Rico, a US territory in the Caribbean, and he comes out of the reggaeton world, though he draws on and samples from a wide variety of musical styles. (Super loosely, reggaeton is a style of music that has roots in reggae and hip-hop.) His most recent album, Debí Tirar Más Fotos (in English: I Should Have Taken More Pictures) was released in 2025 and just won the Grammy for Album of the Year a few weeks ago.

The songs in the halftime show are mostly fun, sometimes sexy music to dance to, but also music that draws on a wide variety of Puerto Rican music and dance styles, history, and cultural references.

Beyond the songs themselves, this halftime performance is also notable for the intricacy of the production given the constraints they were working with. For example, they had just a few minutes to set up and remove what you will see is a fairly complicated set. Also, to protect the turf, there were limits to how many wheeled vehicles could be used to bring things out onto the field—which is why they wound up using hundreds of human "extras" dressed up as sugarcane bushes, whose only job was to stand still for the entire performance—because that was the quickest and lightest-weight way to create the setting he wanted without ruining the turf.

Halftime Show!

OK, let's press play on the video.

[00:16] Intro video: We start with a guitarist in a sugarcane field saying, "How wonderful it is to be Latino." Then the text says, "Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio presents the Super Bowl Halftime Show." (That's Bad Bunny's real name.)

The sugarcane fields and the particular style of straw hats they are wearing are references to Puerto Rico's history as a colony, first of Spain and then of the United States, where much of the economy at one point was dedicated to producing sugar and related products like rum for export.

[00:37] This song is "Tití me preguntó" (in English: "Auntie Asked Me"), from the 2022 album Un Verano Sin Ti (in English: A Summer Without You). Here is an English version of the lyrics, which I did just for basic content, not caring about artistry, sound, rhythm, or anything like that. You can find something similar for most of these songs if you look at the lyrics on a service like Spotify, where there is an option to get an automated English translation.

Auntie asked me if I have a lot of girlfriends.
Today I have one, tomorrow a different one,
but there's never a wedding.
Auntie asked me if I have a lot of girlfriends.
Today I have one, tomorrow a different one.
I'm going to take them all to a VIP: say hi to auntie.
Let's take a selfie. Say 'cheese.'
Let the ones I've already been with smile.
A VIP, a VIP: say hi to auntie.
Let's take a selfie. Say 'cheese.'
Let the ones who've already forgotten about me smile.
I really like the Gabrielas, the Patricias,
the Nicoles, the Sofias,
my first girlfriend in kindergarten, Maria,
and my first love was named Thalia.
I've got a Colombian who writes to me every day,
and a Mexican girl I didn't even know about,
another one in San Antonio that still loves me,
and the ones from PR (Note: that's Puerto Rico) that are all mine.
A Dominican who's a fresh hottie.
The one from Barcelona who came by plane
and said my dick was hot. (Note: he actually mumbles through that line during the halftime show instead of saying it out loud.)
I let them play with my heart.
I'd like to move into a mansion with all of them.
The day I get married, I'll send you an invitation.
Boy, stop that.

On the album, the song continues with the auntie urging him to find a serious woman and get married already, and the main character says he wants to fall in love but he can't, he doesn't trust himself yet, etc.

For the halftime show, the song stops here as Bad Bunny hands a jewelry box with an engagement ring to another couple, and the guy proposes.

You might think of this song as comparable in some ways to "Mambo Number 5" ("A little bit of Monica in my life, a little bit of Erica by my side," etc), except that here there is also an undertone of regret, of feeling like, "I want to be able to commit but I don't think I'm ready yet," of having a carefree mask that you wear in public while privately you feel a little differently.

Also, notably here because it's a song about having a lot of girlfriends and not committing to anyone: the "VIP" in the song is the character's auntie, signaling a deep respect for family (including extended family and community, because "auntie" isn't necessarily literally someone's aunt, just a person who has that role in your life) even though the character isn't at a point where he is settling down and starting a family of his own.

Performance note: I think this sequence is an impressive tracking shot to perform live. It follows Bad Bunny walking through what is essentially a sugarcane-field maze, passing and interacting with little vignettes that reference aspects of Puerto Rican life along the way. At least some of the businesses you see represented here are actual, specific real-life small businesses from Puerto Rico. The taco place for sure, maybe others.

[01:48] Next up is a mashup of "Yo perreo sola" (English: "I Perreo Alone") and "Safaera" (Wikipedia says "safaera" is a Puerto Rican expression for "promiscuity, debauchery, or substance abuse") from the 2020 album YHLQMDLG (short for Yo Hago Lo Que Me Da La Gana, or in English: I Do Whatever I Want). Perreo is a sexually suggestive style of dance similar to twerking, grinding, etc. This is the "shaking their butts" portion of the show, which will last for about 3 minutes total across portions of several songs.

As a point of comparison: What we're going to see here isn't Puerto Rican culture writ large, but music and dance coming from a specific subculture. It's kind of like the scene in Dirty Dancing where the younger staff members are having a party just for themselves in the employees-only area. (We can just glance around and take it in like we're Jennifer Grey walking in carrying a watermelon.)

Performance note: This song is set on the porch and front yard of a casita, a particular style of Puerto Rican house.

Lyrics from "Yo perreo sola" (these are from Spotify's auto-translate, because I don't have the time to do them all on my own):

Before you ignored me,
Now I ignore you.
Before you didn't want...
Now I don't want...
I perreo alone

The full song on the album is about club/dance party life. It focuses on a main character who is a single woman getting drunk, getting high, dancing perreo (which is a really dirty style) with lots of people ("let's perreo, life is short") and then by herself. And the male singer is just keeping his distance ("I perreo alone"). The idea is that he's letting loose and dancing dirty there in the club, but he's gonna do it alone and not cross boundaries. He's going to wait to be invited before he dances with her, and if he's never invited, so be it.

In the halftime performance, while Bad Bunny is on the roof he says over the song, "Women of the whole world, dancing perreo without fear" (timestamp: 02:00). As in, women should be able to dance perreo if they want without fear of being harrassed, groped, or assaulted. Dancing perreo doesn't mean you're asking for it or you had it coming.

Then he transitions into part of a verse from the middle of "Safaera" (timestamp: 02:17). This verse is full of slang, so I'm mostly just going to copy from Spotify's auto-generated English translation of the lyrics from the album and note where the halftime performance differs from the album:

My dick is on the loose and I want you to hide it for me (Note: in the live performance it sounds like he says something other than "dick" here, he may have cleaned up the lyric a bit for the halftime show, but I can't catch what he said)
Grab it like a bong
She took a pill that makes her horny (Note: in the live performance he just pauses instead of saying "pill")
Fuck in Audis, not in Hondas (Note: again here, in the live performance he doesn't say "fuck" but I'm not 100% sure what he does say. It sounds like maybe "get freaky." I assume it was something cleaner just based on the other changes he makes throughout the performance.)
If I stick it in you, don't call me
'Cause this isn't for you to love me
If your boyfriend doesn't eat your ass (Note: in the live performance he doesn't sing "eat your ass" at all, he just pauses, leans back, keeps his mouth shut, and they play bleeps instead. The screen showing lyrics in the background just says "&#%!" here.)
Because he doesn't eat... (Note: live performance, he doesn't say "eat" and they use bleeps instead)

On the album, Bad Bunny's verse continues, basically saying "call me and I'll lick you all over." In the halftime show, this song stops at the end of the above lyrics. Explicit sexual language aside, to me the broader sentiment of those last few lines is along the lines of, if your guy won't do the things that give you pleasure, because he's too macho or selfish, call me and I'll do it.

"Safaera" is a complicated song with multiple artists each performing different verses. I'm not familiar with the overall arc of it, don't know how much should be taken at face value versus as a critique of the things the lyrics are saying, etc. It's a song that's well known among Bad Bunny fans, but I only have a passing familiarity with some of his stuff... and musically, "Safaera" isn't a song that really grabs me, so delving deeper here feels like a chore. But I've written down here what was and was not said during the show.

Then he transitions back into another bit of "Yo perreo sola" (timestamp: 02:37):

In the perreo, she doesn't take off (Note: this is the auto-translate from Spotify, it seems weird but I don't have the time to really think about a better choice here)
She smokes and she gets horny (Note: in the live performance he trails off in the middle of "horny" (Spanish: "bellaquita") so it sounds like he says "beautiful" (Spanish: "bella") instead.)
She calls me if she needs me
But for now she's alone
She dances perreo...

[02:46] Next he transitions into a bit of "Party" from Un Verano Sin Ti. It's just the part of the song that says "party" over and over. Over the song, in the live performance, Bad Bunny says, "Welcome to the biggest party in the whole world!"

[02:55] Now we're moving right into the beginning of "Voy a Llevarte Pa' PR" (English: "I'm Going to Take You to Puerto Rico"), which is another song from his most recent album. Lyrics:

I met her in Miami, in Brickell
She knows there's a ticket here
She wants me to give it to her
To take her home
I'm gonna take you to PR,
Girl, so you can learn how to dance perreo
Bring your friend if you like the idea
Tell her that we're going to hang out tonight
What a great time we're going to have
Nobody's getting married here
But you're going to want to stay
Take advantage that I'm single

Then he crosses his arms and says "single" again, this time in English.

[03:27] Time for a big transition! Bad Bunny falls through the roof of the casita. Experts could tell you way more about this interior setting, what things have cultural importance, etc. For me as a non-expert, what I see is a brief scene in which this party-boy character is being literally disruptive of family life. And even though I don't understand everything in that scene, I know that it is a detailed and specific and intentional depiction of Puerto Rican family life that is being included into the show because it's important to Bad Bunny's overall artistic project. (I "know" that because I know Bad Bunny is detailed and intentional in his performances generally as a way of showing what's important, and there is a lot of detail in that interior that didn't otherwise need to be there.)

[03:36] Still leading up to the next Bad Bunny song. Bad Bunny kicks open the front door of the casita and we move out to the porch and front yard. This part is a series of samples from various songs as a nod to other artists who came before him. First is a sample from the beginning of Tego Calderón's "Pa Que Se Lo Gozen" (2012). It just says "This is for you to enjoy." And then there's another sample of something else layered in there, but it's taking me forever to track it down. Then it moves into a sample from "Gasolina" by Daddy Yankee (2004). The lyrics in English are, "She likes gasoline. Give me more gasoline." This builds on an underlying metaphor elsewhere in the song that's along the lines of, what turns you on, what gets your motor running.

[03:51] Next Bad Bunny song is "EoO" from his most recent album. I don't know that the title of the song means anything more than the sound of a yell, kind of like "Ey-oh."

Before the lyrics start, Bad Bunny says, "You're listening to the music of Puerto Rico, from the barrios and the villages."

Lyrics (from Spotify's auto-translate):

She comes around and never arrives alone
She never arrives alone
All the bandits let go of their pistols (Note: in the live performance he self-censors by just saying the "pi" in "pistols")
Whatever happens tonight
Perreo, baby
Rubbing, baby
Tra-tra, baby (Note: it literally says "tra-tra" in the Spanish, I have no idea what that means)
All the way down, baby
Don't get away, baby

Then there's a line I can't catch, and then part of the song (from "Perreo, baby" onward) repeats. Sorry, this is a compressed version of the full song, and it may have been adapted a bit for the Super Bowl performance, so I don't have album lyrics to refer to easily here.

Whew. This is the end of the dirty dancing part of the show.

[04:29] The next song is the beginning of "Mónaco," from the 2023 album Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana (in English: No One Knows What's Going to Happen Tomorrow).

Over the violins at the beginning of the song, Bad Bunny says, "Good afternoon, California. My name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio. And if today I'm here at Super Bowl LX it's because I never, never stopped believing in myself. You should also... You should also believe in yourself. You're worth more than you think. Believe me."

The lyric he sings is:

Tell me, tell me, tell me,
Is this what you wanted?

[05:09] Now we pan away to a scene of a couple getting married. The priest says, "By the power vested in me, I pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride." We are seeing an actual wedding here—two people actually getting married in the middle of the halftime show. The backstory here (as reported afterward) is that Bad Bunny gets lots of invitations to come to people's weddings. He chose one couple and asked if they would like to have their wedding as part of the halftime show. So the bride and groom here aren't actors. They are real newlyweds. The smiles you see on their faces throughout this scene are real.

After this glimpse of the vows, we transition to the wedding reception for the rest of this scene.

[05:20] This is Lady Gaga singing a salsa version of "Die With a Smile," which she originally recorded along with Bruno Mars and released on her 2025 album Mayhem. It's in English. You can just listen along here.

[06:40] I'm not sure what Bad Bunny says here, sorry. It's hard for me to hear clearly some of the things he speaks into the mic between the songs, because they're quicker and sometimes my brain isn't fast enough to keep up with the differences in pronunciation in Puerto Rican Spanish.

[06:43] Next song is an adaptation of "Baile Inolvidable" (in English: "Unforgettable Dance") from his most recent album. Lyrics:

No, I can't forget you
No, I can't erase you
You taught me to love
You taught me to dance
And I've had a lot of girlfriends
But none like you
I don't have my sun anymore
I'm up on the moon
If I think of you
????? (Note: I can't decide how I'd want to translate this line so I've left it blank for now, but it's something sad)
My devil, my angel, my crazy girl
My devil, my angel, my crazy girl

[07:28] The song keeps playing and they show the newlyweds dancing together. Bad Bunny says, "Dance, dance, dance without fear. Love without fear."

[07:37] Another big transition. Bad Bunny leans back and falls off the roof, and we transition to a new scene. This song is "Nuevayol" (in English: "New York") from his most recent album.

Performance note: the setting here is meant to represent Puerto Rican neighborhoods in New York City. There's a bodega (a type of corner store), a social club, and a barbershop in the background.

Lyrics (from Spotify's auto-translation for this song):

If you want to have some fun
With charm and beauty
You just have to live (Where?)
A summer in New York

Then the lyrics repeat and Bad Bunny speaks over them, saying, "San Francisco," and then something I can't catch.

More auto-translated lyrics:

Fourth of July, Fourth of July,
I'm with my cousin, drunk and high
My people in the Bronx, they know what there is
With a high note for Washington Heights
Willie Colón, they call me the bad guy
Because the years go by and I keep hitting
Selling records like they're Frida Kahlo paintings
The cocaine is white, yeah yeah
The tusi is pink (Note: tusi is a mixture of drugs, unpredictable and dangerous)
Don't get confused, no no
Better to avoid it
A shot of moonshine at Toñita's
PR feels so close
I have the championship, no one's taking it away from me
How is Bad Bunny going to be the king of pop?
With reggaeton and dembow (Note: dembow is style of music that originated in the Dominican Republic, very close to Puerto Rico geographically)

Performance note (timestamp: 08:56): As he sings "a shot of moonshine at Toñita's," Bad Bunny goes over to the social club in the background and takes a little plastic cup from an older woman. That woman is the actual Toñita mentioned in the song. She owns an iconic Puerto Rican social club in Brooklyn.

Performance note (timestamp: 09:06): After the line about the championship, there's a little scene that shows a family watching a TV playing footage of Bad Bunny winning a Grammy. The music pauses as he hands the Grammy to the young boy in the scene, meant to represent his younger self. I can't quite tell what he says here (the audio isn't clear enough for me to catch the entire sentence) but it's something positive.

Performance note (timestamp: 09:17): As he sings "How is Bad Bunny going to be the king of pop?", he references a signature dance move of Michael Jackson, the original king of pop.

[09:23] Next song is a version of "Lo Que Le Pasó a Hawaii" (in English: "What Happened to Hawaii"), another song from Bad Bunny's most recent album, performed here by Ricky Martin. Lyrics:

They want to take the river from me, and the beach too
They want my neighborhood, and for grandma to leave
No, don't put down the flag or forget the lelolai (Note: lelolai is a musical style/characteristic of traditional Puerto Rican music—it's Puerto Rican but has nothing to do with club/dance music, it's much older)
Because I don't want them to do to you what happened to Hawaii
No, don't put down the flag or forget the lelolai
Because I don't want them to do to you...

[10:08] We see transformers exploding on utility poles in the background and pan over to a new scene. This song is "El Apagón" (in English: "The Blackout") from Un Verano Sin Ti.

Lyrics (mostly from Spotify's auto-translate):

With much love to all of you
Puerto Rico is fucking great
It's fucking great
From Carolina came reggaeton
And the sons-of-bitches from Bayamón (Note: in the performance he mumbles through "sons-of-bitches" rather than saying it clearly)
They want to ride the wave and haven't been out to Rincón
A little kiss for grandma on the balcony
Catching all the holes in the Rubicón
This is PR
Land of Maelo and Tego Calderón
And of Barea, he who was champion
Before LeBron
Damn it
Another blackout, let's go to the bleachers to light up a blunt
Before Pipo gets slapped in the face
Puerto Rico is fucking great
It's fucking great
Forget Maldiva, I'm staying in Palomino
If I don't go to the DR
Greetings to my neighbors
The heat is different here
The sun is Taíno
The capital of the perreo, now everyone wants to be Latino
No, but they don't have rhythm
Drums and reggaeton
Watch out for my crew, there's a lot of us
They don't have rhythm
Drums and reggaeton
Watch out for my crew, there's a lot of us
Welcome to the calentón (Note: I'd have to think for a while how to translate calentón here, options include heater, hot flash, brief burst of heat, hothead, someone who gets easily aroused, a "heat of the moment" situation...)

The context here is the persistent, recurring blackouts happening in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in 2017 and the difficulties surrounding the repair of the island's electricity infrastructure.

Performance note: The flag Bad Bunny is holding here is a version of the Puerto Rican flag that uses light blue rather than medium or dark blue. This is a whole topic I don't have expertise in, and I'm running out of steam for researching things. But it's possible to look it up and learn more if you have the interest and want to do a deep dive on that.

[11:46] Next is the refrain from "Café con Ron" (in English: "Coffee with Rum") from his most recent album. Lyrics:

In the morning, coffee
In the afternoon, rum
We're already on the street
Come down off your balcony

As the song continues, with those lyrics just repeating, we see people with flags running through the sugarcane fields and into the foreground (timestamp: 12:00). The person carrying the US flag is in the lead throughout, with flags from other countries and territories in the Americas following behind. The Puerto Rican flag here is just behind the US flag, and it uses medium blue (I think). When they get out into the foreground where it's more broad, the US and Puerto Rican flags are in the center right behind Bad Bunny.

[12:09] We're coming to the end of the show now. Bad Bunny says, in English, "God bless America." Continuing in Spanish, he says, "That's Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Haiti, the Antilles, United States (which he says in English), Canada." This list moves generally from the southern tip of the hemisphere up to the north. There are a few places missing (Belize, Suriname, etc). I don't know why. Possibly just because it's a long list and things happen. But it's generally the entire Western Hemisphere.

For context here, it's a point of contention that the United States of America uses the word "American" to mean people from the US. Everywhere else in North and South America has a specific word for people from their own country, and can also consider themselves "American" in the sense of being from the Americas, broadly. In the same way that people from Europe are Europeans and also more specifically, e.g., Italians, Germans, Austrians, etc. In Spanish, there are different words to indicate that someone is from the US (formally "estadounidense," which would be something like "US-ian" in English; informally "yanqui" which is "Yankee"—even Southerners are Yankees in Latin America). In Canadian English, it's not such a big issue; they call themselves Canadians and us Americans. I'm not familiar with how people think about it in Canadian/Quebecois French, Haitian French/Creole, Brazilian Portuguese, or any of the other French or English speaking places in the Caribbean, Belize, etc.

After listing out all these countries in the Americas, Bad Bunny says in a mix of English and Spanish (timestamp: 12:33): "And my motherland, my homeland, Puerto Rico." He holds the football out to the camera. It's quick, and impossible to see clearly in the video, but the stencil on the football says, "together we are America." Then he says in Spanish, "We're still here," and spikes the football in the end zone.

[12:41] Last song as everyone exits the field is "Debí Tirar Más Fotos" (in English: "I Should Have Taken More Pictures"), the title song of his most recent album.

Bad Bunny yells, "Now, yeah!" and then they sing together and dance in a big group, not choreographed dancing here but really just jumping up and down and being exuberant.

Lyrics:

I should have taken more pictures when we were together
I should have kissed you more and held you more when I had the chance
I hope my people never move away
And that when I get too drunk there's always someone around to help me

This repeats and fades out as they come off the field. (The last line tends to get lost in the commotion, they maybe don't actually sing it in the performance, but people who know the song know it's in there at least in spirit.) As he's leaving, he says "Thank you so much" in Spanish.

They only played a little bit of this song, but it's a very popular song and I personally enjoy it a lot, so I'll give a little overview that this is a raucuous, bittersweet, sometimes joyful post-breakup song. The feeling of the chorus is that, when you're feeling heartbroken and grieving a relationship that ended and maybe kinda barely holding on at times, you have friends and family and community, all these people around you that you can lean on.

Whew! We made it all the way through.

Postscript: Some Thoughts on a Few Related Topics

If you'll indulge me, let's wrap up with some notes—partly informational and partly my opinion here—on a couple questions about Bad Bunny being the headliner this year and his choice to do the show almost entirely in Spanish.

On choosing Bad Bunny to perform: One type of comment I've heard is along the lines of, "They should have chosen an artist people are familiar with. I don't even know who this guy is. " — Lurking inside this criticism is an underlying question about who the Super Bowl is for. Some people are deeply invested, emotionally and socially, in the sport of football and feel that the Super Bowl should be targeted to, and appeal especially to, longtime football fans. The vast, vast majority of those fans are English-speaking people from the US, and they tend to view football as a uniquely American sport. But the NFL is a business built on top of that sport. The NFL is interested in growing the market for professional football generally and for Super Bowl viewership in particular. In their view, the longtime football fans are going to watch the Super Bowl anyway, and so they will try to book halftime performers who will bring in new audiences who might not have watched otherwise. The NFL didn't always used to take this strategy with the halftime show, but it's what they're doing lately. It's a fundamental tension built into their business model.

With that being said, I think that in all years, not every show is for everyone. Last year, I knew next to nothing about Kendrick Lamar aside from the fact that he was in a massive feud with Drake, about whom I also knew next to nothing. Neither of those guys are obscure in pop culture, we just all have our rocks we live under and that was one of mine. And I didn't have the interest or bandwidth to learn anything more about Kendrick Lamar beforehand. I watched the halftime show live, it seemed skillful, I didn't have the background to really understand most of it, I shrugged and moved on.

As for this year's choice: Bad Bunny is a broadly popular and commercially successful artist. He has mainstream as well as international appeal. A whole bunch of my middle-aged, white, suburban, English-speaking friends were looking forward to his performance. People find his music through friends (I first heard Bad Bunny via a friend who is semi-conversational in Spanish and a huge fan of reggaeton despite being from a 100% Polish-American family), via background music and little video clips on Instagram and TikTok, and in the playlists for our fitness classes. You hear little bits here and there, you enjoy the rhythm, the melody, the energy, and then you see clips of Bad Bunny on late-night shows or on Hot Ones and you feel like, oh, this guy is friendly, he's got a good heart. You catch him hosting Saturday Night Live. You see his Tiny Desk Concert from NPR Music. You don't understand all his lyrics, but you enjoy spending time with him and his work and he doesn't feel like a stranger. And there he is, rising to the top of Spotify and Apple Music and selling albums and concerts like a champ.

Also—I completely forgot about this even though I watched some of it—Bad Bunny has appeared at multiple WWE events since 2021, first as a singer but then mostly doing guest spots as a wrestler. I am not kidding. He has been on Monday Night Raw and SmackDown several times, was part of a tag-team match at WrestleMania 37, was in the 2022 Royal Rumble, was part of the Spanish announce team at WrestleMania 39, and had a one-on-one match at Backlash 2023. He is also a playable character in a couple WWE video games. On top of that, he's been in a few movies, including Bullet Train with Brad Pitt and Happy Gilmore 2 with Adam Sandler. I think what I'm saying here is that there are multiple entry points for non-Spanish speakers to have come across Bad Bunny in pop culture. Not everyone knows him, of course, but way more people know him than one might think.

On the choice to do almost everything in Spanish: The criticism here is, of course, "It's the Super Bowl. Most of the country doesn't speak Spanish. He should have performed in English so people could understand the songs." — The choice to perform in Spanish is an artistic, commercial, and some would also say political question, and of course everyone is free to have their opinions and preferences here. To inform those opinions, I will offer a note that Bad Bunny performs specifically in Puerto Rican Spanish with a lot of slang. Even for many, many native Spanish speakers, this is linguistically challenging. There are differences in pronunciation, in the way words are shortened and smushed together, in regional vocabulary, and then a lot of slang on top of it. (Imagine someone who writes and sings in English, but they're from Scotland, and their pronunciation, vocabulary, cultural references, and slang all reflect that.) So even those Spanish speakers—who are the vast majority of Spanish speakers, Puerto Rico isn't that big—can come away feeling like, ooh, I like this but I have no idea what he's saying half the time. If they're curious, they might look up the lyrics and go from there, digging into the vocabulary and the cultural and historical references and whatnot. Or they might just shrug and say, who cares, I enjoy dancing to this. I enjoy having this on while I'm making dinner or driving or whatever. As an artist, from what I've seen, Bad Bunny's attitude is that he's offering songs that are tied to a specific time and place, steeped in and representing a specific language and culture (and set of subcultures). It's OK if you don't understand everything. It's OK if you barely understand any of it at all. You are not excluded. You are invited in to enjoy the music on whatever level you're able to and to connect with whatever hits you. He has said that he would prefer you to dance along and be present with the music that way, rather than to understand every single thing he's saying. That's the stance he takes as an artist.

Oh, and a third note on being or not being unifying: I forgot, one other criticism I see a lot is, "If this was supposed to be unifying, he should have done XYZ thing instead." — This one stumps me because I frankly do not know where this "if this was supposed to be unifying" idea is even coming from. I don't think the halftime show is ever meant to be a project of national healing and unity. It's meant to be a piece of entertainment, a free concert in the middle of a highly commercialized football game. So... ???

When I'm being patient and charitable, I can recast this objection from "if this was supposed to be unifying" (an objective, agreed-upon expectation or obligation) to something more along the lines of, "this could have been used as an opportunity to..." or "it's too bad he didn't...". That kind of phrasing, to me, more clearly expresses a person's wish to have felt more comfortable and included. More importantly, it's a wish to feel like we live in a more unified, less divided and hostile country. Which is great! But I think it's better expressed as a personal desire, without implying that Bad Bunny violated some kind of social contract by performing almost entirely in Spanish. And it's even better if we act on our desire to be less divided and hostile by taking a few steps to be open to the unfamiliar and learn new things. Trust goes both ways.

This country—like all countries, communities, and cultures large and small—is a massive, ongoing group project. We all need to put in the work. Sometimes it's active work. Sometimes it's good-faith listening-and-learning work.

Going deeper for just a bit more: when I say that if we care about being less divided we should be taking steps to be open to the unfamiliar and learn new things, I'm thinking not so much about individual regular people here. I'm not saying all the non-Spanish-speakers in the country should have to dig in and research everything on their own. I'm thinking more about the figures in news and entertainment media who abdicated responsibility with this halftime show, and used their air time to gripe and complain rather than doing anything productive to help people get up to speed before the show or do honest, explainer-type coverage of it afterward. These people are media professionals. They are getting paid for their time. They are entrusted with your time and attention, which is valuable. They know how to be informative in other circumstances. During the Olympics, they bring on people who know how to talk viewers through what they are seeing in each event, helping people appreciate the nuances of high-level competitive gymnastics, figure skating, luge, and on and on. And we are all familiar with the type of pre-Super Bowl coverage that gets people up to speed on each of the teams: how their seasons went, how draft picks worked out or didn't work out, what were the coaching successes or challenges, who are the standout players, etc. No one knows in advance what will happen in the game itself, of course, but there's a huge effort to get casual viewers interested in the game and oriented to where the teams and players sit in the context of the current football season and of the history of football broadly. The conversation is framed around what people can expect from the championship game and what they might want to look out for while watching. On top of that, there is continuous coverage during and after the game helping people understand and appreciate what they just saw. The coverage is never along the lines of, "What a disgrace that the Seahawks are playing this year. Seattle is crawling with antifa. Why are they forcing Seattle on me? You know what? Let's have an alternative Super Bowl instead." That would be absurd. But that is the kind of coverage of the halftime show that we got from some news and media outlets this year. Those people got paid... for what? To leave their viewers feeling riled up and aggrieved but no better informed at all? Who does that serve? Not you. Not me. And meanwhile it's left to people like me (and many others doing this work in their own family and social circles) to put in the time and effort to be actually informative. To help people understand what they're looking at, understand even just how to watch a musical performance when you don't understand the language. And we're doing that work for fucking free. We should demand better from the people getting paid to be on TV. We deserve better.

OK, that's it from me! Thanks for reading all this! I know it was a lot.

Love,
Jen