For the first time in history, a Spanish-language album won Album of the Year at the Grammys. The winning album, “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” by Bad Bunny, featured 17 songs, including five singles titled, “El Club,” “Pitorro de Coco,” “Baile Inolvidable,” “DTMF” and “EoO.” “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” became the fastest album made by a man to reach one billion streams, doing so in just 13 days, and is now sitting at around eight billion streams. Bad Bunny has had a record-breaking year, culminating this February in his debut Superbowl halftime performance.
On Feb. 8 Bad Bunny, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, was the first Puerto Rican artist to ever perform a Super Bowl halftime show. The opening shot of his production was of sugar cane fields, which paid homage to Puerto Rico’s sugar cane industry, and the exploitation of Puerto Rican natural resources by European colonizers. His performance then continued to highlight Puerto Rican culture through references to traditional dances and parties.
Emma Gay ’29 reacted to Bad Bunny’s performance, saying, “Personally, I really liked the halftime show. I thought it spread a good message and was more meaningful than past Super Bowl performances.” At the end of his show, as Bad Bunny was playing his new hit song, “DTMF,” he showed a billboard behind him with the message, “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.” To end his performance, he named every country in the Americas while holding a football saying “together we are America.”
