2 weeks ago
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Bad Bunny has had a hell of a week. It started with a significant win at the 2026 Grammys, where Benito took home the Album of the Year award for his great 2025 record, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS. To be invited to perform at the Super Bowl, one of the biggest stages in America, was one thing; finally receiving peak institutional recognition for an album that deliberately centered Puerto Rican culture and musical history was another.
But let’s be real: There was certainly an elephant at Levi’s Stadium on Sunday, and that was the fact that Bad Bunny was representing Latin heritage and culture on one of America’s biggest stages at a moment when the Trump administration has ramped up ICE raids and anti-immigrant rhetoric to unprecedented levels. Just days earlier at the Grammys, Benito made his position crystal clear when he declared “ICE out” during his acceptance speech — a direct rebuke to the ongoing deportation operations targeting Latino communities across the country. Though he assured that the set would be a “party,” his presence at the Super Bowl wasn’t just about entertainment; it was inherently political, whether he explicitly addressed it or not.
Unlike the Grammys, though, there weren’t any explicit condemnations made, nor any remarks about ICE, Trump, or the horrors of systemic oppression. In addition to speaking en español for the entirety of the performance, the most explicit nod to the current crisis arrived as the performance introduced a young Latino boy resembling Liam Ramos, a five-year-old who was detained by ICE last month in the Minneapolis area. The show depicted the boy in front of a television watching Bad Bunny’s acceptance speech for Album of the Year at the Grammys; Benito then gave the boy his own Grammy and he smiled at the camera. It was a pointed moment of reflecting Bad Bunny’s vision of “The American Dream,” that representation matters, and that the children of immigrants in the United States deserve to grow up and realize their potential.
Overall, he opted to keep things mostly focused on fun, but there was also bit of poignancy to the way the show began. The performance opened with field workers harvesting crops as Bad Bunny made his way through tall tropical shrubs and a portrayal of daily life in Puerto Rico; singing “Tití Me Preguntó,” he passed men seated playing cards and a woman getting her nails done, he visited a piraugua vendor and picked out a ring from a local jeweler. From the very outset, it was clear that this performance would be both personal and specific to his Puerto Rican upbringing, a celebration of Caribbean and Latin legacy that honored both -everyday life and superstardom.
Being the first solo Latino and Spanish‑speaking artist to headline the Super Bowl halftime show — at this particular political moment in America — is a big deal. But as Bad Bunny has proven throughout his career so far, he makes the gravity of the moment and all the pressure placed on his shoulders feel as light as a feather. Few stars have such infectious confidence and hypnotic command; watching Bad Bunny’s opening number brought me straight back to his whirlwind 2023 headlining performance at Coachella, where he opened with a raucous, similarly unforgettable rendition of “Tití Me Preguntó” that brought the whole audience under his thumb. Such was the case for this year’s opening number, which led to straight to a house party sequence as Benito ran through infectious renditions of “Yo perreo sola” and “EoO.”
By the time he finished his third song, Bad Bunny had already delivered on his promise of bringing the party. And then Lady Gaga showed up. Donned in a light blue dress and against a backing band of singers, instrumentalists, and percussionists, Gaga ran through an up-tempo, elated rendition of her Bruno Mars collab “Die With a Smile.” As she’s proven time again with her chameleonic performances and indifference to genre, Lady Gaga never takes the easy way out; she was just as magnetic as our host for the evening, who promptly followed her performance with a wedding sequence and a joyous interpretation of “BAILE INoLVIDABLE.”
Perhaps surprisingly, though, it was Bad Bunny’s performance of Un Verano Sin Ti cut “El Apagón” that was the most powerful of the evening. As he scaled an electrical pole with other workers dangling around him, he asserted his love for Puerto Rico, beginning and ending with explosions on the connecting power lines. The momentum from the number had Bad Bunny soaring through to the finish, which was an exuberant, massive performance of hit single “DtMF.”
Providing a space for joy was about as explicit as Bad Bunny got, though — those hoping to hear an “ICE out” reprisal or a swipe at Trump would have to dig further into the fine print. Still, it was cathartic to see Bad Bunny lead through movements of specificity and collective pride, to physically corral the masses of dancers to suggest that there is power in numbers, that we are stronger together than we are isolated. He concluded the show by announcing “God Bless America” and proceeding to name nearly every country in North, South, and Central America, with the United States as the penultimate name. In this moment, he wanted to emphasize that this land belongs to all of us, that all of us in the Western Hemisphere are Americans.
As Kendrick Lamar proved during his show last year, the Super Bowl Halftime Show is a perfect opportunity to showcase the kind of collective joy that marginalized communities create for themselves as both celebration and defiance. Last week, Bad Bunny reminded us that love is “the only force stronger than hate.” His halftime show was living proof of it.
Bad Bunny Super Bowl Halftime Show Setlist:
Tití me preguntó
Yo perreo sola
EoO
Die With a Smile (with Lady Gaga)
BAILE INoLVIDABLE
NUEVAYoL
El apagón (with Ricky Martin)
DtMF
Bad Bunny's Super Bowl Halftime Show Performance
byu/handlit33 inFauxmoi
English (US) · 