Bad Bunny’s Halftime show comes from one of his most politically outspoken albums yet, and that is saying something for an artist who managed to make a very successful single out of Puerto Rico’s power grid crisis. “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS” is, at its core, a plight against erasure, whether that erasure comes from being forced to move from your homeland due to gentrification and resource scarcity or from being forced to adopt a national image and history that better reflects the wishes of your colonizers. Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl show, then, shows the essence of the album’s narrative conclusion: The only way to stop erasure is through love.
Bad Bunny’s introduction to his show, set in sugar cane fields, brings us to one of the greatest aspects of the performance, which is the scenery. The set is multifaceted, composed of multiple sets that reflect the Puerto Rico Bad Bunny loves so much: hundreds of people dressed as sugar cane stalks and shrubs building a maze, which evokes the colonial imagery of the plantations that were Puerto Rico’s primary economic sector during the Spanish occupation. Familiar Boricua scenes include a piragua cart, a nail salon and a kid sleeping at a party on top of three chairs; an elaborate (and real) wedding, complete with a multi-tiered wedding cake; some rather unstable electric poles; a casita that emulates that of Bad Bunny’s Puerto Rico residency (by being there, you are part of the biggest house party in the world); a colorful barrio block, with a barbershop and a corner store. The pieces of this set were carefully selected to showcase Puerto Rico—both its ugliness and its beauty—and make you love it just as much as Bad Bunny loves it.
The actual performance itself was also endlessly electrifying and dynamic. For most of the show, wherever you looked, there was relentless action. One minute, Bad Bunny is moving more yards across the field in 13 minutes than the New England Patriots did in the entire game, then you are at his house party, where dozens of skilled dancers and celebrity cameos (Cardi B, Pedro Pascal and Jessica Alba) are celebrating. The tight pacing then reveals a standard Latino living room, frozen after Bad Bunny falls through the ceiling, and the show briefly segues to a medley of popular Puerto Rican reggaeton songs. This is all while Bad Bunny presents some of his most successful songs from both “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS” and other past albums, with recognizable tracks such as “Titi Me Pregunto,” “Me Porto Bonito” and “Safaera.”
As if the action couldn’t stop there, the focus then shifts to Lady Gaga singing Bruno Mars’s part of “Die With A Smile” while backed by a full salsa band. While she represents decades of tension and collaboration between white American and Latino artists, her presence also probably has to do with the fact that Bad Bunny is a self-proclaimed “Little Monster.” This does not mean that it cannot not pump up the energy of the audience watching, especially as they start dancing together for “BAILE INoLVIDABLE.” Bad Bunny’s musical victory in the United States is only further established once he moves on to a barrio street block for more partying with the song “NUEVAYoL,” which celebrates the Puerto Rican diaspora in New York City. He takes a shot from Maria Antonia “Toñita” Cay (the leader of one of New York’s last Puerto Rican social clubs), someone whom he explicitly shouted out in the song. Additionally, where he originally sampled Puerto Rican boxer Félix Trinidad saying, “The best in the world! Puerto Rico,” Bad Bunny shows a clip of his Grammy acceptance speech for his historic win as the first Album of the Year fully performed in Spanish, being watched by a young kid. Bad Bunny then proceeds to give the kid his Grammy, and I can’t wait for what comes next.
But here the show goes on a standstill. I have no problems with Ricky Martin. I know that I should respect my queer Latino elders as a good queer Latina. I know that no one else shares my opinion. But Ricky Martin, dressed in a white guayabera and seated in the white plastic chairs under the palm trees that evoke the album cover of “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS,” completely butchered and oversung one of my favorite songs of the album and the album’s most politically important song, “LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii.” The beautiful and simple melody of the song, which is sung in an almost tired drone by Bad Bunny, is needlessly belted to hell and back with random riffs interjected in the middle in ways that outright downplay the song’s quiet plea not to let the gentrification and population removal that occurred in Hawaii happen to Puerto Rico as well. This, I recognize, is a matter entirely of personal taste, but it killed a lot of the excitement and love I had for the Halftime show up until that moment.
The last few songs—those being the aforementioned power grid song,“El Apagón,” the party anthem “CAFé CON RON” and some brief verses of the album’s titular “DtMF”—were still fantastic, but some of my wide-eyed excitement died off after Ricky Martin’s guest performance. This, however, does not mean that when the flags of all the countries in the Americas started filing in through the sugar cane shrubs and Bad Bunny said “God bless America” before starting to recite all the names of said countries while a giant screen behind him read “the only thing more powerful than hate is love,” I did not get teary-eyed. I sobbed rather loudly, for it is proof that, even while everything seems to be going wrong and the United States seems to be more hateful than ever, there are still things to be proud of, things to love and things to hope for in the future. Bad Bunny hopes that we can all unite through one great party, and I hope that, at least for now, this love can bond all of us who still have hearts.