If, as Taylor Swift sings, “haters gonna hate hate hate hate hate” I have no idea how they’d manage to keep it up after watching the mind-blowing Super Bowl halftime show last night.
Bad Bunny and his enormous crew — not just the spectacular dancers and magnificent musicians and actors, but the light and set and costume and props professionals — put on a show so life-affirming, so joyful, so stirring, and so sensational that I am still in tears.
- His bravura entrance in that cream colored ensemble!
- His swooping, commanding procession through the utterly eye-popping set! (The sugar cane: OMG how did anyone pull THAT off?)
- That delicious number from Lady Gaga, featuring a FIRE horn section!
- The telephone pole sequence!, bearing witness to the rolling blackouts. The casita!
- The adorable child who accepted his future Grammy!
- The dancing! The absolutely adorable glimpse of a gaggle of fellow Puerto Rican celebrities, dancing and singing and celebrating!
- The final set piece, with the cast marching and waving flags of every nation in the Americas, as Bad Bunny proudly recited their names — my God how amazing.
- And the cast — THAT CAST. Everyone was there — young and old, big and small, tattooed and pierced, athletic and portly — featuring every possible glorious, beautiful combination of Black and brown and pale bodies in a kaleidoscopic encapsulation of all that is America.
You didn’t have to be a Bad Bunny fan. You didn’t have to be a Ricky Martin fan, or even know who Lady Gaga was. You didn’t have to speak a single word of Spanish or know a single song. You just had to be human to feel your heart light up with joy.
I’m not going to argue that knowing the songs, or the history, wouldn’t have made it a bit richer for you. But you didn’t need that. This show was 100% perfectly accessible to all.
Bad Bunny pulled off that rarest of feats: he made everyone in the stadium, and everyone watching around the world, feel like part of One Human Family. He made you think of home, and your mom, and dancing, and your dreams, and struggle, and freedom, and togetherness, and humanity. Oh — and it was FUN!!!
The narrow, bigoted, foul reactions of Trump and his shrinking tribe of hateful MAGA minions were disgusting. I am not going to dignify anything any of them said by commenting on it here. I am also not going to embarrass the pathetic rabble who performed at the “patriotic/real America” counter programming by pointing out how unnecessary, and small, they were.
Instead, I am going to say:
It’s on YouTube. I think you should watch it. It is, as the young kids say today, a BANGER.
