There’s a reason Bob Dylan has never played the Super Bowl halftime show.
OK, there are several dozen reasons Bob Dylan has never played the Super Bowl halftime show. But one of the reasons is simple: Nobody watches the Super Bowl halftime show for the lyrics.
People watch the Super Bowl halftime show for the spectacle. For the energy. The sonic component is not an afterthought, but it’s a delivery system. Even if the halftime act is an act you love, I’m gonna posit that nobody’s favorite version of anybody’s favorite song is the version as it was performed at the Super Bowl. Don’t be a weirdo and attempt to give me counter-examples.
Think back on the Super Bowl halftime memories you have and unless they relate to that really special 12-layer dip that your ex once made — the extra layer was “granola” — they’re probably 95 percent related to imagery. I’m talking Prince’s ginormous shadow/silhouette or Michael Jackson’s magical teleportation act or Rihanna’s pregnancy reveal. (Or Nipplegate or Left Shark, because memorable halftime images don’t have to be positive.)
In fact, one of the very rare lyric-based halftime memories I have relates to last year’s show, with Kendrick Lamar leading an entire stadium to shout “A minor!” So if you want to make an argument that only acts that publicly humiliate Drake should play the Super Bowl, I find your point to be very compelling.
But if you are making, or have attempted to make, the argument that Bad Bunny was a bad selection as halftime performer because the Puerto Rican superstar’s songs are primarily in Spanish? Nah. Even you don’t sincerely care. We live in a country that is now largely bilingual (or trying to be), and it isn’t my fault you took French in school. Serge Gainsbourg’s Ghost can perform next year.
And who did you want playing this year’s halftime show instead of Bad Bunny? Lee Greenwood? Don’t be a clown. Metallica for vague regional connections? Sure, I’d have been happy with that, but don’t pretend Metallica is a magical elixir binding every demographic together. Plenty of reasonable and respectable people hate Metallica. You just don’t care about them. Taylor Swift? If booking Taylor Swift were that easy, everybody would do it.
So here we are. Trumped-up controversies aside, Super Bowl LX — gotta love Roman numeric simplicity — featured Bad Bunny, and his only mandate was to deliver 10 to 12 minutes of diversion between concussions and commercials — period. Diversion. Distraction. Even “entertainment” is a bonus. To expect anything more from an event that used to employ Up with People is folly.
(Common Sense Disclaimer: This is, of course, all disingenuous. Bad Bunny represents, and is beloved by, a huge portion of AMERICAN music fans, many of whom have never seen or heard their culture or language represented like this on a stage like this. The words and how they’re delivered are hugely representatively potent. But that’s nuance, and any argument that Bad Bunny, a music superstar with a vast film and television footprint and recent top-tier Grammys wins, didn’t belong on this stage is inherently devoid of nuance. Words matter. Representation matters. Diversion in a difficult moment matters.)
So did Bad Bunny succeed?
(Yes. By being there, Bad Bunny succeeded.)
More than two hours after Green Day energized the pre-show with the rather pointed “American Idiot” — clearly everything I said about lyrics not being Super Bowl-ian was a lie — Bad Bunny brought Super Bowl LX to life.
And good gracious this Super Bowl needed an injection of whatever it was that Bad Bunny brought to the game.
Coming after one of the worst halves of football in Super Bowl history and a slate of commercials that represent the largest waste of money since Melania, there was an astonishing lowering of entertainment expectations leading into halftime.
But I don’t think “lowered standards” had much to do with my reaction. Put simply: This was the most impressively conceived and executed Super Bowl halftime production I’ve ever seen. That’s not the same as “best straightforward, concert-style Super Bowl performance I’ve ever seen”; sometimes you really DO just want a familiar artist to stand on a stage and play five of their hits with a group of dancers on the field in front of them while everybody at home sings along. Plenty of people were singing along to Bad Bunny, too, but there was also a whole narrative, one that celebrated Puerto Rico and the Americas, capturing every aspect of life, from hard everyday work — in the cane fields, on power lines — to family to a relationship that went from proposal to marriage ceremony to joyful party. I’m just going to keep saying “joy”/”joyful,” because that’s what it was.
Did I understand every detail of it? No.
Am I sure there were nuances to the cultural specificity being articulated that there’s no way a 40-something white guy could possibly get? Absolutely.
Do I hope some publications have Puerto Rican writers exploring and decoding those nuances? I surely do.
But here’s the thing I know with certainty: When I don’t understand something, I can either attempt to do a little research and follow a few links and learn about the things I couldn’t process in the moment, or I can complain. And, honestly, why would anybody in their right mind complain? Because I understood that the halftime show was about life and humanity and telling a story in a way that’s nearly without Super Bowl precedent. It was vital in every imaginable definition of the word. It was necessary and it was alive and it was musical, well beyond a simple set list.
There was a string symphony and a brass band and Lady Gaga popped up and even sang in English, just in case that was a thing you thought was necessary. Oh and Ricky Martin! Bad Bunny knew that some people might not know who he was, but he made sure he brought a few friends whom everybody knows. Jessica Alba, Cardi B, Pedro Pascal and some people I don’t recognize were at this party as well.
The set design was remarkable, from the sugar fields to an urban neighborhood, from night clubs to barber shops to a domestic living room where the family gathered to watch last week’s Grammys speech from Bad Bunny. There’s some precedent for using the Super Bowl field as more than just a stage. It was only four years ago that the turf at SoFi was turned into a recreation of South Central for performances from Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and more, but that was tiny and intimate compared to this.
The integration of technology and performance was like nothing I’ve seen in this venue. The camerawork, following Bad Bunny through these tableaus of everyday life, was surely Emmy-worthy. Parts of it called to mind the movie version of In the Heights, in which Jon Chu brought a neighborhood to life for two-plus hours, but the idea of doing it live makes one marvel at what director Hamish Hamilton was able to execute. There were dozens (hundreds?) of dancers and performers, and the choreography was exceptional and — this goes without saying — universal. It wasn’t just the sexy troupe of dancers in khaki shorts and white tank tops. There was a married couple slow-dancing, and grandpas dancing in ways that probably embarrassed their kids, and grandkids grooving with total, youthful (but fully choreographed) abandon.
There were moments when Bad Bunny played a role that was less showcase performer and more like the Stage Manager in Our Town, with an entire island — with the entirety of the Americas, Central and North and South, inclusive of the United States, but not exclusively the United States — as his Grover’s Corners. He was our guide, showing us around his world and, in many cases for the audience, introducing and curating his music.
More than that, the show was fully immersive. If some “pundits” claimed that they felt excluded by the selection of Bad Bunny, the entire conception of the show was to bring everybody in. I’m not sure the camera was ever positioned away from the field. There were no long or wide shots, no sense that this was being contained to 30 yards at a football stadium. Occasionally a drone or crane brought the camera 15 or 20 yards aloft, but that was just so you didn’t miss the scope of what was happening, not so that you ever lost your presence as part of it.
And, again, I’ll admit: I didn’t recognize all the songs. There were snippets from at least a dozen, I think, and had to look up what they were and I still don’t know where one ended and the next one began, but that was by intent. It was a 15-minute tableau that expressed the continuity of life, the flow. I just watched with jaw-dropped appreciation for how every level of the performance came together within the confines. At no point did Bad Bunny and the show’s producers take the easy way out, and if you can’t appreciate that, I hope you found something that brought you similar happiness.
And maybe next year, they can get Bob Dylan. Or Metallica. Not Lee Greenwood, though. Don’t be ridiculous.
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