Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime performance was the epitome of unity, love, and hope for a greater future, and he is a genius at intertwining these central themes into a fun, celebratory mood.
Additionally, here are some easter eggs you may have missed in his action-packed, electric performance. The sugarcane set, which was seen repeatedly throughout his performance, paid homage to Puerto Rico, where Bad Bunny was born and raised, as sugarcane was historically a significant cash crop there. At the beginning of his performance, he walks through a maze of sugarcane, acknowledging the agricultural workers he passes, which represents the importance and resilience of Puerto Rico’s agricultural workforce.
Another detail of his performance that caught the public’s attention was when he gave his Grammy to a young Latino boy (Lincoln Fox) who represented Bad Bunny’s younger self. Though many thought he was supposed to represent a five-year-old boy, Liam Conejo Ramos, who was detained by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) weeks ago, that was not the main purpose of his appearance on the show. However, I believe this is up to your personal interpretation.
One more detail for his concert that I find the most powerful occurs when he is singing and dancing on the power lines and utility poles. He sings his song “El Apagón” (“The Blackout”), which has become a resistance anthem denoting the series of power outages that hit Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria in 2017 and are still a problem for the territory.
He also included guest singers Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin to celebrate inclusivity, as well as guest extras and dancers Pedro Pascal, Jessica Alba, Cardi B, Karol G, Young Miko, and more. There are a multitude of other easter eggs, but for the sake of keeping this concise, I won’t go into further detail.
However, I have one complaint: I wanted the grass people to start dancing. Though the extras were only dressed up as grass for the sole purpose of putting the set together quickly, they all should have joined the party at the end of the show just for the fun of it.
Bad Bunny not only underscores why he won Album of the Year for DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS at the Grammys, but also clearly represents his message of unity by displaying the billboard reading “The only thing more powerful than hate is love” above the arena. This moment of the concert was especially beautiful as he and the other extras stood together on the field, holding the American flag and flags from dozens of South American countries.
On the surface, Bad Bunny’s performance was a thrilling show that made the crowd stand up and dance along, even if they didn’t understand what he was singing. But that’s not what music is about. Music is about emotion, representation, unity, hope, despair, and every emotion and topic that every member of the human race can understand in some way. This is what his show exemplified on a deeper level. Every human has the same worth. We are all fortunate to have a worldwide community where we can find similarities with one another while also celebrating our differences.
This year, I have feared for America’s future in politics and cultural representation, but watching Bad Bunny promote the message “Together, we are America” on his football field finally made me proud to be an American.
