At a time of widespread fear and distrust in the United States, Bad Bunny offered a loving and optimistic vision of the American experience during his halftime show at Sunday\u2019s Super Bowl LX at Levi\u2019s Stadium in Santa Clara.<\/p>\n
Leading an expansive and multigenerational crew of singers, dancers and musicians, the 31-year-old Puerto Rican superstar followed up his historic album of the year win<\/a> at last weekend\u2019s Grammy Awards with a busy and colorful performance that drew lines between the traditional folk forms of his native island and the throbbing reggaeton beats that have made him an icon to young people around the globe.<\/p>\n The first Spanish-language halftime show in Super Bowl history, Bad Bunny\u2019s 13-minute set transformed the gridiron into a collection of settings including a field filled with laborers, a bodega, a wedding party and a casita like the one the singer built his popular 2025 San Juan arena residency around. The performance included surprise appearances by Lady Gaga, who sang a salsa-fied version of her hit \u201cDie With a Smile,\u201d and Ricky Martin, who joined Bad Bunny for \u201cLo Que Le P\u00e1so a Hawaii.\u201d Karol G, Cardi B, Pedro Pascal and Jessica Alba were among those dancing on the field.<\/p>\n Dressed in a cream-colored football jersey marked with his real last name, Ocasio, Bad Bunny seemed eager to showcase the many facets of ordinary Latino life; among the extras in the show were a group of older gentlemen playing dominoes, a guy selling tacos and a small child watching TV \u2014 watching Bad Bunny deliver his Grammy acceptance speech, in fact. The singer then materialized and handed the boy one of his Grammys and told him always to believe in himself.<\/p>\n For \u201cEl Apag\u00f3n,\u201d which explores Puerto Rico\u2019s troubled electric grid, Bad Bunny and several dancers performed while twirling around prop utility poles. That song comes from the singer\u2019s 2022 album, \u201cUn Verano Sin Ti,\u201d but much of the halftime show pulled from Bad Bunny\u2019s latest LP, \u201cDeb\u00ed Tirar M\u00e1s Fotos,\u201d including \u201cBaile Inolvidable,\u201d which had him and Gaga dancing as though at a wedding reception, and \u201cNuevayol,\u201d which featured a beautifully detailed street scene.<\/p>\n The show ended with the album\u2019s title track, \u201cDTMF,\u201d as Bad Bunny proclaimed \u201cGod bless America\u201d \u2014 he then listed the countries of Latin America along with the U.S. and Canada \u2014 against a giant message on the stadium\u2019s scoreboard that read, \u201cThe only thing more powerful than hate is love.\u201d As he left the field, he spiked a football emblazoned with another note: \u201cTogether, we are America.\u201d<\/p>\n Bad Bunny\u2019s performance was controversial before it even began.<\/p>\n President Trump called his booking \u201ca terrible choice\u201d and said that \u201call it does is sow hatred.\u201d Right-wing commentators framed Bad Bunny\u2019s selection as un-American (though Puerto Rico is of course a U.S. territory); Turning Point USA, the conservative organization founded by the late Charlie Kirk, put together a so-called All-American Halftime Show featuring Kid Rock<\/a> in an appeal to viewers scandalized by \u2026 the Spanish language? Dancing? The idea of fun?<\/p>\n For the NFL, the blowback was a calculated risk as the league makes a push to globalize its fan base. Bad Bunny\u2019s show was the latest in a long-term deal between the league and Jay-Z\u2019s sprawling entertainment company, Roc Nation, which took over producing halftime in 2020 amid bruising criticism of the NFL\u2019s handling of race in the wake of Colin Kaepernick\u2019s protest against police violence targeting Black people.<\/p>\n Before kickoff Sunday, Charlie Puth performed a slick, yacht-rock-style rendition of the national anthem for which he accompanied himself on Rhodes electric piano, and Brandi Carlile sang \u201cAmerica the Beautiful\u201d with help from her frequent collaborators SistaStrings on violin and cello. The venerable Bay Area punk band Green Day also put in a characteristically punchy mini-set meant to mark the Super Bowl\u2019s 60th anniversary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At a time of widespread fear and distrust in the United States, Bad Bunny offered a loving and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169959,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[7625,29160,81520,81519,36517,6308,44782,48,52,51,10572,47,50,49,752,18767,1860,7091,21670,776,11191],"class_list":["post-169958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-america","tag-bad-bunny","tag-colin-kaepernick","tag-colorful-performance","tag-dancer","tag-field","tag-halftime-show","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-league","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-nfl","tag-puerto-rico","tag-show","tag-singer","tag-stadium","tag-sunday","tag-super-bowl-lx"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}