Bad Bunny Super Bowl Halftime Show

At the Super Bowl halftime show, Bad Bunny put on an endlessly rewatchable performance. It featured Lady Gaga, Ricky Martin, and a real wedding. But it didn’t shy away from this political moment, and Bad Bunny’s place in the culture wars. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:21Stephen Thompson?

  At the Super Bowl halftime show, Bad Bunny put on an endlessly rewatchable performance. It featured Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin and even had a real-life wedding. It was filled with dancing and unabashed joy, but it didn't shy away from this political moment and Bad Bunny's place in the culture wars. I'm Stephen Thompson. Today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, we are teaming up with It's Been a Minute for a recap of the Super Bowl halftime show. Here's host Brittany Luce.

• 0:51Speaker 02

  OK, y'all, we all just witnessed the Bad Bunny halftime show. First impressions, what words are running through your mind?

• 0:59Speaker 03

  Joy, excitement, wepa. This was for Puerto Ricans. I was so gagged sitting in my living room watching it all unfold. I was screaming. Sorry if my voice is a little hoarse.

• 1:12Speaker 02

  That's all right. That's all right.

• 1:13Stephen Thompson?

  I mean, there's so much to unpack in this performance. This is an endlessly rewatchable performance because there is so much text and subtext. But as far as first impressions and the first thing that I'm taking away, I think this is one of the top five Super Bowl halftime shows of all time.

• 1:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think you're right.

• 1:30Stephen Thompson?

  I think Prince, for me, is probably still number one.

• 1:34Speaker 02

  Agreed.

• 1:34Stephen Thompson?

  But this is up there with Beyoncé. This is up there with some of the all-time great Super Bowl halftime shows, just as a piece of stagecraft, as a piece of just joyful performance. So much movement, the camera work. This was an extraordinary technical accomplishment. And we'll get to how joyful it was, you know, just as an experience, how much it meant to this hemisphere. But I just, just to take a step back right at the beginning, I think this is one of the all-time great Super Bowl halftime shows.

• 2:14Speaker 02

  I'm still processing it. I mean, I'm very glad we're talking about this right now. Moments ago, we all witnessed the Bad Bunny Super Bowl halftime show, and we are here to break down what happened in the performance and why it mattered. And to do that, we are here with music and entertainment critic, Rihanna Cruz.

• 2:29Speaker 03

  Happy to be here.

• 2:30Speaker 02

  And Alana Casanova Burgess, host of La Brega Podcast.

• 2:34Speaker 04

  Hello.

• 2:35Speaker 02

  I mean, honestly, I, my, my mind is blank. I just am like, okay, Puerto Rico flag emoji, crying emoji.

• 2:43Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 2:45Speaker 02

  Vibrating heart emoji.

• 2:48Speaker 04

  I still have goosebumps and it's been like an hour.

• 2:51Speaker 03

  My phone was like blowing up. I catched up on all my text messages, people being like, are you seeing what's happening right now? I FaceTimed my brother, like crazy stuff is going on.

• 3:02Speaker 02

  Listen, my mom, my sister FaceTimed me right after it was over to say that, um, our mom said that if she had a son, she would name him Benito.

• 3:11Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 3:12Speaker 02

  My mother, by the way, is not having any more children at 70.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  Suffice to say, she felt very strongly.

• 3:21Stephen Thompson?

  She feels like anything is possible.

• 3:22Speaker 02

  Anything, right. And that's what Benito said. He said, believe in yourself. Okay, so I will note that we are taping this about an hour after the performance. So I know it's incredibly fresh. I know it's incredibly fresh. But Alana, Rihanna, what moments are sticking with you?

• 3:35Speaker 04

  Oh, I mean, the, the parade of American nations. Towards the end, we see Benito with the light blue Puerto Rican flag, right? Very important. And then he says, together we are all America, right? Is that right? And he's holding a, something akin to that. And it's also in his football with like, together in all caps. And then he starts saying like, just every country, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru.

• 4:08Speaker 04

  And he shouted out United States and he shouted out Puerto Rico. And we see just a parade of uh flags of all of the nations of the Americas. And there we see the other Puerto Rican flag, the official one. And it was stunning. It was like a parade of nations.

• 4:28Speaker 03

  I mean, I agree. I'm in a similar boat that that lasting image of the parade of flags and kind of reframing the idea of what God bless America means as something that extends to both North and South America, Central America and the Caribbean, et cetera, et cetera. Like, I thought that was really remarkable. But I, I think I'm really staying with the image of Ricky Martin singing "Lo que le pasó a Hawaii", which is a very strong song about the idea of decolonizing both Puerto Rico and Hawaii and all colonized territories. Like, it's a

• 5:12Speaker 02

  Well, also specifically not turning Puerto Rico into 51st state, like very explicitly.

• 5:17Speaker 03

  Exactly. And, and kind of like a condemnation of what colonization is.

• 5:30Speaker 03

  I thought that was really powerful to have that on the Super Bowl stage and have someone like Ricky Martin, who was and still is one of the biggest crossover Puerto Rican musicians of all time. When Ricky Martin came into the music industry, he was straddling these two worlds of like English-speaking music and the Latin music industry. And I think his biggest hits, he

• 6:02Speaker 03

  Had to kind of record English and Spanish versions, right? Like, he had to live in both of these worlds. He had to kind of fetishize his own culture for success and things of that nature. And to kind of have Ricky Martin singing this really powerful song that like is so pro Puerto Rican independence was really, really powerful for me. And that's, you know, I'm a little monster. That's not even going into the Lady Gaga.

• 6:28Stephen Thompson?

  I was gonna say, I can't believe Rihanna has gone this far without talking about Lady Gaga showing up at this show.

• 6:34Speaker 03

  Lady Gaga came on stage, I kid you not, I got eight text messages in a row from people that I haven't talked to since college. Like, it was really amazing to see.

• 6:44Speaker 04

  I have to say, I was watching it with four other people and we were all like, who is that? Why, who's this blonde lady on my screen? And I'm, I'm in like Puerto Rico mode, so I'm like skimming through like every person I know. I'm like, who is it? Who is it? Who is it? Who is it? And then someone said, I think that's Lady Gaga. And we're all like, no way. What would she be doing there?

• 7:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was very surprised to see her, but I'll tell you what, that salsa version of Die With A Smile.

• 7:10Stephen Thompson?

  I know.

• 7:11Speaker 02

  Listen, I slapped, I was like.

• 7:14Speaker 03

  Let me drop a little bit of Lady Gaga history on you. She has always been here for the Latino community. This is something that she's highlighted throughout the course of her career. She sang songs in Spanish. She really like is tapped in to the pequeños monstruos, you know, her Spanish little monster fanbase. Um, it's always been a part of her, um, a very strong part of her artistry really over the years. And her performing that, I was like, oh, it's giving a vida. Like, she was in her vida bag.

• 7:47Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh.

• 7:48Stephen Thompson?

  Sure, absolutely.

• 7:51Speaker 02

  I know, I feel like she was more in her la isla bonita mode. After she was done, I was like, Madonna is somewhere.

• 7:56Speaker 03

  Madonna, watch yourself.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  Banging her fist against the table, like, with jealousy. Cause I definitely remember Madonna's Puerto Rican face, low and hemorrhagic.

• 8:06Speaker 03

  Spanish lesson off of hard candy? Nobody wants to talk about that.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  Okay, so I, I, I wanna, we've touched on so many different things already, but I think that that highlights like one of the big themes of, of the show, which was just like, this performance is about world building. Like Bad Bunny was inviting us to Puerto Rico from the very start. I mean, the first images that we see are, look like hivados, like, like, kind of, you know, like farmers on a sugarcane farm plantation, like, cutting sugarcane.

• 8:38Speaker 04

  Cortando cana.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, and, and then they bring that visual, obviously, to the football field. Now, the African American in me is like, plantation, football field, NFL Combine. I went full like Dr. Umar, like, with my cookie on where I'm like, there's levels to this commentary right here. There are levels. I'm like, he's telling y'all to wake up. I don't know if he read all of that, but I will say it does kind of speak to, it speaks to the Caribbean diaspora, it speaks to the African diaspora, speaks to the slave trade, but it also speaks specifically to Puerto Rican history. I thought that was really interesting, but I want to hear from you all. Like, like, like, how would you describe the story he was trying to tell?

• 9:24Speaker 02

  And what moments really captured that for, for each of you? Steven, I want to start with you on this one.

• 9:28Stephen Thompson?

  Boy, I mean, where to begin? Because I'm still, I'm still looking at this show from 10,000 feet in a way, and thinking about it kind of in the context of all the culture war stuff surrounding it in the weeks leading up to this performance, and how much this, this performance, as much as it has these layers and layers, and we're going to get to the storytelling in a second, and how it moves through, you know, the, the, you know, sugar plantations, and ultimately where he's like giving a Grammy to his younger self, and all these, these different things that we can unpack. At the same time, from 10,000 feet, I'm still thinking about how wholesome this show felt in, in a lot of ways, how unifying this show felt, and how the,

• 10:13Stephen Thompson?

  and, and I mean this in the best possible way, in the most complimentary way, how inoffensive this show was in the aftermath of these weeks and weeks of buildup in which he has. Ben kind of disparaged and and kind of people trying to tear him down and you know alternate, you know, the the alternate version of this halftime show that Turning Point USA put together with Kid Rock and all these different things where where you have it suddenly this show became this flashpoint in the culture war where it was seen as deeply offensive to a whole bunch of people in this country. But then you watch this show and how could you think that? And I think that in its own way, as much as we can unpack like

• 10:57Stephen Thompson?

  this was political, this was political, this is art, this is narrative, this is, you know, if you know the history of this, then this comes out. As much as we're unpacking that stuff, just as a pure piece of spectacle, this was a piece of of unifying theater. This was a this was a just a piece of spectacular entertainment. And so for me, I'm still kind of thinking about and I want to hear thoughts about the details of the storytelling. But I'm still viewing this thing from 10,000 feet and just marveling at what a spectacular piece of of like unifying entertainment this was. How much I felt a sense of a sense

• 11:37Stephen Thompson?

  of patriotism, a sense of of unity, a sense of, you know, being a part of this this bigger and more expansive and beautiful world.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  Specifically, a world that is larger than just the United States.

• 11:48Stephen Thompson?

  Right.

• 11:49Speaker 02

  And that's like, and as we've been discussing, a sense of the Americas and not just America. And almost inherent in that felt like a remark on perhaps the futility of borders and these lines that are drawn from country to country. I felt like he was making a statement that expressed that they are useful. So like as in as far as they can bring community and pride and then beyond that, beyond that, there is some way more room for fluidity there than we currently, I think. That we currently bring, I think, to the very United States interpretation of what a border is and is supposed to be.

• 12:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I watched it from outside of the United States. I watched it from the Dominican Republic and there were watch parties in town today. I've never seen that before. I mean, people were, people were excited, people were glued in. In terms of the wholesomeness, Stephen, that you were just talking about, there was this moment, I don't know if we're like, you know, going from the 10,000, let's like drill, drill down in.

• 12:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, drill down.

• 12:53Speaker 04

  But there was this moment, right, when he's doing the, where he's like going through all the girls, right, like, and then he picks out the, the engagement ring, right, from the jeweler, right? And then he's like, no, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna propose to her, right? So then he, he gives the ring to this couple, they get engaged. Then, you know, he turns around, and next thing we know, we're at a wedding. Other people are getting married. And what is more wholesome and beautiful than a wedding? And it was a very Latino wedding. You had like the kid asleep on the chair that he had to wake up. It was just, there were so many details. And I was thinking, you know, Stephen, when you said like, this

• 13:38Speaker 04

  is such a rich text, it absolutely is. I was also thinking, wow, he nailed everything. Like, you know, when you go to a Bad Bunny concert, you're not going to see him do complicated choreography like his Beyonce, right? That's not what you're going to go see. But he nailed every point of that story, right? He nailed like every look in the camera, every line that he was saying. It was just so clear. Like, the portrait that he was painting of us. And it was so, it was so fun. Like, I was like, oh, I've been to that wedding. How lovely. There we are. I don't know what Lady Gaga's doing there, but like, it's great.

• 14:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I think something that Bad Bunny did really well on this note, right, is reframing joy as a radical act.

• 14:31Stephen Thompson?

  Absolutely.

• 14:32Speaker 03

  And there were overt moments of protest in the performance and in the, the whole like mise en scène of the halftime show. But I, I think at its core, it's a show that centered joy and joy as resistance. And I think like with the way that Amer- like the United States is treating the Latino community right now, it feels wrong to celebrate in some ways. And I think that because Benito centered like a good time, right? He centered a wedding. He centered these moments of, of having fun. Like I think of, uh, the two men dancing perro.

• 15:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:15Speaker 03

  On, on screen.

• 15:16Speaker 02

  I was at a party. Everybody was screened with joy.

• 15:19Speaker 03

  My jaw dropped, literally, because I, I was just so taken aback by the idea of like centering this joy and dance and, and framing it as an act of resistance.

• 15:30Speaker 04

  I think you're totally right. Like, like, it's okay. It's okay. It's okay. It really is.

• 15:36Speaker 03

  Like, it's okay to be happy, you know? Like, I, I was sitting in my living room surrounded by my friends and we were all getting choked up. It was the same thing with the Grammys last week. Like when Bad Bunny won album of the year, like all the Latinos in the room, myself included, started crying. Like it feels like a win for the community and it feels so radical to have a, a, the biggest celebrity in the world, really, like speak for your people and say it's okay to dance, it's okay to, to have fun and feel good and dance perro and, you know, smile and stuff like that. Like it's exciting. I don't know. It, it really, it's, it's heartwarming.

• 16:15Speaker 02

  You know, one moment that immediately jumped out to me and many people watching, um, was when Bad Bunny handed a Grammy to a young Latino boy.

• 16:22Stephen Thompson?

  Yeah.

• 16:23Speaker 02

  And I took that, I, I initially took that, I mean, he, he doesn't just hand the Grammy to a young Latino boy. It's like a young Latino boy who's watched, sitting on a couch with his parents, watching Bad Bunny from last Sunday, give his acceptance speech for, I think, album of the year at the Grammys.

• 16:42Speaker 02

  And the camera pauses on this little boy for a few seconds, which is notable, right? Because this is, to Stephen's point, a show with incredible stage craft and camera movements and choreo. And like, it was just, it was like, there's so much going on, so much motion. But so to stop on just one person for that long, who wasn't moving, who was just a little boy smiling and holding this Grammy award. I think to a lot of people, it definitely felt notable, whatever the moment was. The reaction online, though, was speculation that the boy was Liam Conejo Ramos, a five year old boy that the Trump administration has been aiming to deport.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  NPR Music confirmed with Bad Bunny's team that that was not Liam Conejo Ramos. But I do think it says a lot about this moment and this performance, that the immediate online speculation turned to that as a possibility so quickly.

• 17:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I almost want to amend what I said before. Like, it's not okay. But wouldn't you so much rather live in the world that Bad Bunny built for us today than the other world we've been seeing, right? Like, and of course, we look at that kid and we think, I don't know, we can all discuss whether we thought it was or not, but like, that kid looked like Liam to me. It's also, you know, Conejo is Bunny in Spanish, so I've always, like, since this story came out, it's, you know, tugged at me. Tugged at all of us, right? But like, it could definitely be him. And I think, for us, like, we know what Benito looked like as a kid.

• 18:20Speaker 04

  We've seen, we've seen the pictures. And that kid, yeah, I mean, it's impossible right now to see the show and not think that, I think.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  The place where my brain did go was like, this child is the age.

• 18:35Stephen Thompson?

  Right.

• 18:35Speaker 02

  And size so tiny of the, you know, four, five and six year olds that, that, you know, our government has been separating from their families or deporting or locking in detention centers. I think that for so many of us, that's front of mind right now. And it's impossible, at least for me, it has been impossible not to look at any child and not have that be the first thing that comes to mind. So in this highly choreographed, very intentional performance, that long shot on that kid, that was like, not specifically this young boy Liam, but that, that this thing that's happening overall, the detention and deportation

• 19:19Speaker 02

  of children is one of the first things that popped into my head more broadly.

• 19:27Speaker 02

  Coming up.

• 19:28Stephen Thompson?

  Really? This is offensive to you? Think about why this is offensive to you.

• 19:33Speaker 02

  After a quick break.

• 19:36Speaker 05

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• 20:42Speaker 02

  That Bad Bunny in so many ways felt like he was really speaking directly to the audience. It was a performance to be seen, for sure. But I mean, but this is also a performance that was meant to be heard. There was the Jumbotron message at the end that read, "The only thing more powerful than hate is love," which is, I felt like a callback to me to Bad Bunny's acceptance speech, or one of his acceptance speeches at the Grammys last weekend.

• 21:04Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 21:04Speaker 02

  And there was the football Bad Bunny threw to the ground at the end, which had the words "Together We Are America" written on it. There were the-

• 21:12Stephen Thompson?

  He spiked it because he knew what had just happened.

• 21:16Speaker 02

  And this is why we have you here, Stephen, because I don't know what that means. There was a football game, so-

• 21:23Stephen Thompson?

  He threw the football to the ground like, "Woo! Funk!"

• 21:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:28Stephen Thompson?

  And that is signifying that, uh, it signifies success.

• 21:32Speaker 02

  Oh, okay. Well, there you go. And see, this is why we, this is why we have you here.

• 21:35Speaker 03

  He knew he killed it, though, because at the end, when everybody was singing "DTMF," and you see him take out his in-ears and the mic cuts off because he wanted that last moment to be with him and everybody on the field with him. I thought that was really special, too. Like, you could tell that this meant a lot to him.

• 21:54Stephen Thompson?

  I think by saying explicitly messages like, "Believe in yourself," and like, "Love is better than hate," like, if you divorced those statements from the show that we just watched, they could be, they could be painted behind the, on the end zone of any given NFL game where they like paint end racism, you know, on the, on the, you know, where it's like, where the NFL has, has adopted tons of kind of boilerplate statements, pro-love, anti-hate, right? But within the context of the show, they felt meaningful, they felt radical, and they, they, as I said kind of earlier in this conversation,

• 22:36Stephen Thompson?

  they just undercut all of the culture war claptrap that surrounded the lead-in to this show. Like, really, you're offended by "Love is better than hate"? You're offended by "Believe in yourself"? You're offended by "We're all human beings and we all deserve love and respect"? Like, that's, that's some like shocking, radical statement. So I, I think, I think in a way, the, some of the implicit messaging-

• 23:07Stephen Thompson?

  Is like, really? This is offensive to you? Think about why this is offensive to you. Cause it really like, nothing that's being said here is actually offensive to you if you think about it.

• 23:19Speaker 03

  Well, that's why when the performance was announced, you know, and it was announced that Bad Bunny was going to be the halftime performer. Like, I had kind of a sour taste in my mouth, especially the show coming after an album that is so anti-colonial.

• 23:37Speaker 03

  And so pro Puerto Rico, mostly because of this history that the NFL has with racism. And I, I just felt that was at odds with what Bad Bunny is trying to do as an artist and how radical of a performer Bad Bunny is. How radical his messaging is, both in and out of his lyrics. Um, it took me a second to kind of get over that, so to speak. Eventually I ended up at a point where I, I've kind of recognized, you know, um, the politics of the NFL with the fact that Bad Bunny is inherently radical. Like I said earlier, like joy is resistance, I think is really powerful and important. But at the same time, like, do we want to fit inside small boxes?

• 24:21Speaker 03

  You know, um, after seeing the halftime show, I am

• 24:28Speaker 03

  on the side of, I think it was good for him to get out there, but I do think his statements, as we've talked about, right? These kind of like milquetoast statements of love is more powerful than hate. Like, you know, there's only so far you can get with that.

• 24:42Speaker 02

  Hmm. Listen, oh my gosh, David, Alana, Rihanna, this was a dream conversation. Thank you all so much for staying up and talking with me about all things Bad Bunny. I really appreciate it.

• 24:53Speaker 03

  Thanks for having us.

• 24:54Stephen Thompson?

  You, Brittany?

• 24:55Speaker 03

  I'm on the West Coast, so I got a whole night ahead of me.

• 24:59Speaker 02

  Oh my God, so you could like hit the club after this. I had to leave a party and I'm like, and you, and you'd be able to go.

• 25:04Stephen Thompson?

  I, I DVR'd the game. I'm going to go watch Seattle finish crushing the Patriots.

• 25:09Speaker 02

  I couldn't. Do we know who won or do you want, do you not want to?

• 25:12Stephen Thompson?

  No, I just got the news alert a second ago and it's like Seattle smothers New England.

• 25:16Speaker 02

  Oh, good. Oh my gosh, that's good for me in a good mood.

• 25:21Speaker 02

  That was Stephen Thompson, co-host of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, music and entertainment critic, Rihanna Cruz, and Alana Casanova Burgess, host of La Brega Podcast from Futuro Studios, which has a brand new season out. And I am Brittany Luce, host of NPR's It's Been a Minute.

• 25:36Stephen Thompson?

  This episode was produced by Liz Metzger, Corey Antonio Rose, and Mike Katzif. The showrunner for Pop Culture Happy Hour is Jessica Reedy, and the showrunner for It's Been a Minute is Barton Girdwood. Hello, Come In provides Pop Culture Happy Hour's theme music. Thank you for listening. I'm Stephen Thompson, and we will see you all next time.

• 25:58Speaker 00

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.