Bad Bunny at the Superbowl - with Julia Tilton

Julia Tilton with analysis after Bad Bunny's groundbreaking half-time Super Bowl show. 

Transcript

Bad Bunny 0:03

Nunca voy a cansar de dar gracias por esto. Gracias Puerto Rico por hacerme, por convertirme, en todo lo que ustedes han querido que yo sea. Siempre he sido el mismo, con el mismo corazon, con la misma passion, con el mismo pasion por lo que hago. Y les prometo que nunca voy a cambiar.

Jon Bonfiglio 0:24

Hi everyone, that clip was from Bad Bunny's long-running residency in Puerto Rico last year. But tonight, a few uh a few hours ago, was the highly anticipated, pre-criticized, longed-for half-time Super Bowl show. And what a tour de force it was. Music, symbology, multiple guests, a celebration of all things Puerto Rico within the context of the USA with a huge underscore, which clearly made the point. America is America because of its diversity. And Latinos in the USA are American too. As promised, here is regular guest, Julia Tilton, with her reaction.

Julia Tilton 1:10

Hi everyone, this is Julia Tilton. I am recording here to share some of my thoughts on the Bad Bunny halftime show. And I took some notes so that I can start from the beginning of the performance, which by the way, uh as some of you may know, I'm a big fan of Bad Bunny, and I had very high expectations for the show. And I just have to say it was everything that I could have wished for and more. And I'm gonna break down what I noticed, and since it's been a little bit of time since the performance, I have of course been on social media, and so there are some other things that I picked up on as well. I want to start with what Benita wore. Um so in the opening scene of the performance, you can see his jersey on the back says Ocasio, um, which is of course part of his name. Um, and then on the front is the number 64. This sort of struck me, and I thought that it might have some meaning, so I looked it up, and 1964 was a um significant year in Puerto Rico's history. Uh, it was the year that Roberto Sanchez, the leader of the Popular Democratic Party, was elected and signified a transition for Puerto Rico. So that was something that I noticed. Um, and then in the set list, he sang 10 different songs. Um, some are much longer, some are shorter. The second song was Yo Perreo Sola, which uh is a popular song of his. It was one that he sang on tour. Um, but important, it brings attention to domestic violence, particularly against women. Um, so I thought that that was interesting that it was part of his set list. Also, Lady Gaga being the first surprise guest. To me, this connected some dots. We, of course, saw Lady Gaga last week crying at the Grammys when Benito won. Um, and there was very clearly a sort of camera shot on her. She was actually interviewed after the Grammys, um, being asked why she was crying. And so to me, this just kind of connected the dots that she obviously knew that she was going to be performing at the Super Bowl. And so that was a very sweet moment. The next sort of big moment that I caught was this very symbolic sort of passing of the torch of Benito's Grammy, Bad Bunny's Grammy, to the little kid. There was a TV, and you could see Bad Bunny's acceptance speech for his Grammy, and then there was little kid, and Benito comes up and hands the Grammy to the kid. No, there was a lot of speculation on social media that this kid was Liam Ramos, who was recently detained by ICE. It's something that John and I have talked about. That's not true. Um, I want to be clear on that. The the sort of uh reported take on who this kid is is that it was supposed to represent Bad Bunny as a little kid, but certainly social media and and critics are picking up on the fact that it is also maybe a nod to Liam Ramos and the attention that he has drawn internationally for this sort of symbolism of the cruelty of immigration and customs enforcement. So I thought that was interesting. There's also, and maybe I'm getting out of order, but the wedding of two individuals that sort of throws the rights kind of family values back in their face while being a celebration of love and joy and dancing. We saw before the Super Bowl that Bad Bunny said the world will dance, and that's exactly what we saw. And that leads into what I viewed and in the moment was really sort of excited about um when this came on was the big sort of political scene, political statement. Ricky Martin making uh the second celebrity sort of guest appearance. Although I will note that in La Casita, which is a big part of Bad Bunny's World Tour, we saw Pedro Pascal, Cardi B, and a couple of others um dancing at La Casita, but then we saw Ricky Martin singing. Uh, he was singing very importantly, Lo que le paso a Hawaii, which uh is a song about how um Hawaii uh suffered from gentrification at the hands of the United States. And in that song, Benito talks about his concerns that the same could happen to Puerto Rico. That scene then leads into these Transformers exploding on telephone poles and Bad Bunny himself actually climbing up those telephone poles and singing pretty forcefully about the treatment of Puerto Rico by the United States and talking about the blackouts at El Apagon, uh part part of his song there. And then that leads into again the sort of final scene where we see flags of all of these Latin American countries and actually the Western Hemisphere, because we see countries like Canada and the US included in that. Um of course there's lots of symbolism of Puerto Rico throughout the performance. Uh, and then with this final message on the big screens in English and really pointedly one of the only messages in English throughout the entire performance, um, that the only thing more powerful than hate is love. And then I did not catch this in the original performance because there was so much else going on. Um, but thank thanks to social media, there were lots of screenshots online of the football and the football that uh Bad Bunny was holding at the very end that had the message, Together we are America, which I think just sort of closes out this idea of harmony, of diversity, of America being all of these things. Um like I said, more than I could have ever asked for, expected, was very pleased with it and curious to see what critics say in the hours and days to come. Thanks.

Jon Bonfiglio 6:56

And I think it's worth mentioning also Ricky Martin's intervention with the song Lo que le paso Hawaii. The coming together at the end and the listing of Latin American countries with a defiant tone as the crowd of musicians came together behind him, then listing Canada and the United States, and finally Puerto Rico was a call to a bigger inclusivity. Such a high watermark at a crucial time. No doubt we'll talk about it more later in the week, but for the moment, here is the man himself.