\n\tWhen Bad Bunny recorded DeB\u00cd TiRAR M\u00e1S FOToS (DTMF), he wasn\u2019t focused on commercial success \u2014 and Grammy nominations weren\u2019t even a consideration.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI said: I\u2019m making an album in Puerto Rico, for Puerto Ricans,\u201d he told Billboard in 2025. \u201cI was perfectly happy to have it be successful in Puerto Rico\u00a0\u2026 This one was for my own, for my family, for my friends.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tOf course, DTMF turned out to be far more than a family affair. The album propelled Bad Bunny to the top of the Billboard 200<\/a> (for the fourth time), and to headlining the Super Bowl Halftime Show, something only two other Latin acts \u2014 Jennifer Lopez and Shakira \u2014 have accomplished.<\/p>\n \n\tThe icing on the cake was DTMF winning album of the year at the 2026 Grammy Awards, marking only the second instance in the awards\u2019 nearly 70-year history that an album primarily in a language other than English won the category; the first was Stan Getz and Jo\u00e3o Gilberto\u2019s seminal Getz\/Gilberto, recorded mostly in Portuguese, in 1965.<\/p>\n \n\tWhat were once blips on the modern music timeline now feel like harbingers of things to come for 2027. Rosal\u00eda\u2019s multilingual LUX \u2014 where the genre-defying artist sings in 13 languages, including Spanish, English, Latin and Mandarin \u2014 is generating buzz as a serious album of the year contender. Had BTS opted to submit to the Grammys<\/a>, its Korean and English ARIRANG would almost certainly have also been in discussion, especially given that BTS became the first K-pop act to ever garner a Grammy nomination in 2021.<\/p>\n \n\tBoth of these albums were unequivocal commercial successes: ARIRANG debuted at No. 1 on multiple charts, including the Billboard 200, Top Album Sales<\/a> and Vinyl Albums<\/a>, while LUX debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 and at No. 1 on five Billboard sales charts (Top Latin Albums<\/a>, Top Latin Pop Albums<\/a>, Classical Albums<\/a>, Classical Crossover<\/a> and World Albums<\/a>). They reflect the broader globalization of pop music, with fans increasingly willing to consume music that is not in English or their native language.<\/p>\n \n\tAs Luminate\u2019s 2026 midyear report puts it, \u201cThe music ecosystem is undergoing a shift as the historical dominance of English-language tracks steadily declines.\u201d In the United States today, according to the report, nearly one in 10 streams is of music in Spanish, and in the first quarter, casual listenership of music in Spanish reached 54%, higher than it\u2019s ever been. In Europe, where markets are known for \u201cborderless streaming diversity,\u201d the most listened-to pop album so far this year is the bilingual ARIRANG.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cPassion for music discovery has always been there, but now it\u2019s intensified and spread to casual consumers, expanding possibilities for artists worldwide. It\u2019s a beautiful thing,\u201d says Colleen Theis, president\/COO of The Orchard, who has long worked with emerging markets around the world.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cPeople appreciate great artistry and long for a sense of community,\u201d she adds. \u201cThese things transcend language. Artists that bring those elements together are drawing fans into their world more rapidly than ever. Rosal\u00eda\u2019s LUX is an excellent example of an album that defies categorization and is an enduring work of art, and people responded accordingly.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBut while an enthusiastic and wider-\u00adthan-ever audience may be listening now, the Grammys have long appeared inured to such outside influence. Other than Bad Bunny (who has been nominated twice) and Getz\/Gilberto, only one other album primarily in another language has ever been up for album of the year. The 3\u00a0Tenors in Concert 1994 \u2014 featuring Pl\u00e1cido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti, Jos\u00e9 Carreras and conductor Zubin Mehta \u2014 was nominated in 1995 and drew ire in a year where no alternative or hip-hop artists received nods, leading to allegations that the Recording Academy was out of touch. Partly as a result, the academy\u2019s nominating committees, comprised of knowledgeable voting members who were invited to deliberate on final nominees, were created \u2014 and for the next 22 years, those committees (whose membership was not public and who met privately) failed to nominate a single non-English language album or song in any of the four marquee categories.<\/p>\n \n\tThen came \u201cDespacito,\u201d which spawned a cultural revolution and was the most-streamed track of 2017. It was nominated in 2018 for three Grammys \u2014 including song and record of the year for its bilingual version featuring Justin Bieber \u2014 but won none.<\/p>\n \n\tThe pendulum began to swing in favor of allowing the full membership to vote for finalists, and by 2021, the academy, now under the leadership of CEO Harvey Mason\u00a0Jr., began a concrete, tangible effort to expand and diversify its voting pool. That year, it went back to allowing the full academy membership to decide the fate of the final nominations, eliminating most nominating committees altogether.<\/p>\n \n\tIn the last two years alone, 4,900 new voting members joined the academy as part of its new membership model, introduced in June 2019, that aims to boost the number of women, people of color and people under 40 in the academy through each year\u2019s new member class.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cSince transforming our membership model seven years ago, we\u2019ve made it our ongoing mission to build an active and engaged voting body \u2014 one where every genre and craft is well-represented and that reflects the vibrant ecosystem of our creative community today,\u201d Mason says. While Latin music is \u201can integral aspect of this evolution,\u201d so are other genres and music made in other languages that might have been ignored by voters before.<\/p>\n \n\tLooking at Latin music in particular, it\u2019s clear some concrete changes have \u00adresulted. Prior to Mason\u2019s first outreach in 2019, fewer than a dozen Latin acts had performed live on the telecast in nearly 50 years. Then, in 2019, the show opened with a standout Latin medley featuring a slew of performers: Camila Cabello with Young Thug, J\u00a0Balvin, Ricky Martin and Arturo Sandoval. Since, there has been at least one Latin performance per year and music in Spanish has become a normalized presence on the telecast.<\/p>\n \n\tThat normalization seems to have now extended to the nominees and winners themselves. Rosal\u00eda, for example, drew plenty of attention when, in 2020, she became the first artist who sings in Spanish to garner a best new artist nomination (Jos\u00e9 Feliciano won in 1969, but for an English-language album). The following year, Anitta, who sings in Spanish, Portuguese and English, was nominated in that category. This year, no one would bat an eye at an album of the year nomination for the acclaimed LUX.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIn any given year, the outcomes on Grammy night truly come down to what resonates with our voters. While our efforts to ensure a well-represented voting body matter enormously, so does the music itself,\u201d Mason says.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt\u2019s an undeniable moment in time where we are one world,\u201d says Rebeca Le\u00f3n, Rosal\u00eda\u2019s former manager who now manages artists including Danny Ocean and Tokischa. \u201cRosal\u00eda made a great album, and may the best album win. Good music can be made in any corner of the world. And I hope it doesn\u2019t stop with the Spanish language. We have to advocate for more.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThis story appears in the Oct. 3, 2026, issue of Billboard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Bad Bunny recorded DeB\u00cd TiRAR M\u00e1S FOToS (DTMF), he wasn\u2019t focused on commercial success \u2014 and Grammy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":868448,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,27340,5106,65662,1766,216,498],"class_list":["post-868447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-genre-kpop","tag-genre-latin","tag-grammys","tag-magazine","tag-music","tag-music-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=868447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/868448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=868447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=868447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=868447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}