Before I give you the irreverent review you didn’t know you needed, I must say first and foremost that I’m old and uncool.
Caveat: I’m old.
I’m closer to 50 than 40. When I get the remote, which is rare, and I’m in a mood for music or dance, my go-to is Great Performances on the PBS app. I never would have believed it 20 years ago, but classical, ballet and opera are firmly in my rotation. And of course French chanson.
Once you’ve gone there, it’s hard to back to popular music. It has to be remarkable pop music. Bad Bunny isn’t remarkable. He’s a generational talent for sure, but I doubt anybody will be listening to Titi Me Pregunto in 50 years.
Or maybe I’m too old and uncool.
Not everybody in Latin America likes this.
When friends and family ask me to be their cultural interpreter, I tell them it’s important to understand that this does not represent all of Latin America. They may like him as an ambassador, but even many Puerto Ricans avoid places that play his music.
Bad Bunny makes the equivalent of popular hip-hop. I want to compare him to The Weeknd because Bad Bunny has similar artistic chops, but I don’t think his music is as good. The Weeknd has at least one single that people will still be listening to in 50 years. Bad Bunny is more like Nelly. Dominant while he’s around, but he’ll be forgotten.
“Titi Me Pregunto” is the Spanish-language equivalent of Hot in Herre. It was a smash hit at the time, but will soon be obnoxious.
It was raunchy.
My bicultural family anticipated the halftime show, and it kicked off with a big “perreo” dance. “Perreo” literally translates to English as the “bitch-in-heat dance.” A pack of scantily clad dancers imitate the behavior of bitches in heat, which veterinarians describe as showing off their swollen vulvas and standing in ways that facilitate mounting.
Earlier that day, my wife and I were planning our daughters’ first communion with the other parents from our church. We were shopping for white dresses that don’t bare the girls’ shoulders. Watching this dance troupe later that day imitating a pack of bitches in heat is not my idea of what should be televised for a general audience.
Pure wool gringos had long broken rules of decency at the Super Bowl, most notably when Justin Timberlake disrobed Janet Jackson over 20 years ago. But again, even many Latinos don’t want to be associated with the bitch-in-heat dance or “ho house” reggaeton.
It was an amazing show.
It is possible that the music isn’t timeless, parts of the show were tasteless and it was one of the most memorable half-time shows in recent history (especially after last year’s dud). All those things can be true. The fact that we’re talking about it underscores the unprecedented gringo interest in Latin America. We’re at a high-water mark.
We saw Lady Gaga do something I’ve been seeking for years now: salsa in English. I can’t speak for all the elitist snobs but if one had to go pop I think Lady Gaga is near the top of the list. And Ricky Martin … inoffensive, traditional, sure.
The set design and choreography, even the bitches in heat in their “ho house” reggaeton way, were exceptional.
Bad Bunny is an artist ambassador.
Despite not all Latinos liking his music, I think most admire Bad Bunny’s courage to use his platform to speak out and advocate for Latin America. He inspires. Latin America had been forgotten for a generation, and now the region is taking the world stage. It’s all the timelier given the political situation and controversial law-enforcement tactics here in the States.
My heart sank when Bad Bunny closed the show with the tedious “America” argument. He had been calling out all the countries of Latin America, driving home the “rising region” narrative in a perfect conclusion to the show, then just as my heart lifted … he pivoted to say it’s all America.
If you were listening with an English ear you’d think he meant all these people make up our country, the United States of America. And that’s awesome. But when you’ve embedded in Latin America, you know he was arguing for the English language to adopt the Spanish definition of “America.”
This whiplash of my emotions is another testament to his being a real artist.
I have been a defender of the English definition of “America.” I’m part of the resistance against adopting the Spanish definition. But in that moment I felt doubt. Bad Bunny broke me down. Here it is punctuating a Super Bowl halftime show, and a damned good one at that. I thought about all the times I tiptoe around the word, using “American” sparingly here on the blog.
Maybe it’s not my fight. There are plenty of gringos who will die on that hill. I can sit it out, keep my powder dry.
The white-nationalist show wasn’t as bad as you heard.
Speaking of gringos who will die on that hill, the partisan white nationalists held a dueling show to protest Spanish at the Super Bowl. And it wasn’t as bad as you heard.
It started with, of all songs, Real American by Brantley Gilbert. That song is not as awful as most pop country today. I could get through the whole number if I set my mind to it. More remarkable are the anabolic steroids! Brantley is what years of anabolic steroid use looks like on someone who is not very strict with their diet. If he were, he would look like a fitness model on a bodybuilding magazine.
Brantley is the kind of guy who can fight the war over the English-language definition of “American,” whenever the white nationalists learn of the debate.
The rest of the show would have sucked for most people, but having been in the States for seven years now (!), I know that many Americans listen to and in fact enjoy pop country. The shooting flames and bunting were titillating even if disrespectful.
There were no bitches in heat, but Kid Rock’s lip-sync performance of Badwitdaba was a curious feature for the “law and order” party. It’s not a bad song if you were a delinquent loser in the 1990s, as I was. Hence, I have a soft spot for the tune.
Like Bad Bunny redeeming his bestiality segment with a positive message (love is stronger than hate!), Kid Rock followed his ode to sex, drugs and hating cops with a gospel song. A lovely string duet introduced a mediocre cover of a mediocre gospel-adjacent, ‘Til You Can’t. I was horrified to learn the duet were actors, not musicians, doing the equivalent of lip-syncing their instruments.
The Turning Point USA halftime show wasn’t a good show. It was objectively inferior to Bad Bunny’s show on any standard, but it certainly had an audience. And it wasn’t as bad as you may have heard.
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Ok homey, let me say this about that. There isn’t an English version and a Spanish version of American history. There’s just history—and it’s pretty clear that “America” has always referred to two continents, not one country with a good branding department.
In Spanish, an “americano” is anyone from Alaska to Argentina, and someone from the United States is an “estadounidense.” That’s not political ideology; it’s just grammar. Languages don’t hold referendums on vocabulary.
As for comparing a Super Bowl halftime show to shopping for a First Communion dress—those are two entirely different universes. One is a billion-dollar pop spectacle built to be loud, flashy, and a little outrageous. The other is a religious ceremony built on modesty and tradition. Expecting them to share the same moral tone is like complaining that a nightclub doesn’t feel like Sunday mass.
And predicting which pop songs will survive 50 years is a risky business. Every generation thinks its parents’ music was timeless and its kids’ music is noise. History usually has a sense of humor about that.
The Americas are big, diverse, and multilingual. No single country—or columnist—gets to trademark the name.
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Yep buddy, the above anonymous was me. I wasn’t logged in
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