The Puerto Rican superstar fit an impressive amount of symbolism and messaging into his thirteen-minute performance.
Bad Bunny’s halftime show performance at the Super Bowl was no doubt a visual spectacle as colorful and lively as Puerto Rico itself. The artist, who proudly declared his real name, Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, for Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, fit a multitude of details, messages, and surprises into a thirteen-minute performance. Below are just five key moments you should be aware of.
The authentic sets representing Puerto Rican history and everyday life
Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance opened in a set based on the island’s sugarcane plantations. As the 31-year-old artist passed through the towering stalks where workers toil over the crop, every corner he turned revealed a different aspect of Puerto Rican culture. He gets an icy treat from a piragua stand, walks by the elders playing dominoes, and drops in on the women at the salon doing their nails.
As he took us through the sets during the performance, from the wedding with salsa music, to the beat-up pickup truck in the campo (countryside), to Nuyorican staples like Toñita’s Caribbean Social Club in Brooklyn (Maria Antonia Cay, aka Toñita, was in the show), each location helped complete the world that shaped Bad Bunny and his music.
Cardi B’s cameo and other star-studded moments
Anyone who attended Bad Bunny’s “No Me Quiere Ir De Aqui” residency last summer at el Coliseo de Puerto Rico will recognize the casita, the stage house designed to look eerily similar to an everyday cement house found in the Caribbean. Plenty of A-listers partied inside the casita, which doubled as a VIP section during the concerts. At the halftime show, it was no different. Cardi B, Pedro Pascal, and Jessica Alba were just some of the celebrities seen dancing on the porch while the Boricua artist took us through some of his most danceable hits.
Then there were the surprise performances. Lady Gaga shocked everyone when she appeared and sang a salsa rendition of her single, “Die With a Smile.” And the show wouldn’t have been complete without Bad Bunny featuring another Puerto Rican musician. Ricky Martin graced us with his cover of Bad Bunny’s “Lo Que Pasó a Hawaii” (What Happened to Hawaii).
He called out Puerto Rico’s power outages
After Ricky Martin’s performance, sparks flew in the stadium. But these were not celebratory flashes of light; the camera cut to performers falling off power lines after being “shocked” by the electricity. This transitions into another of Bad Bunny’s political anthems, “El Apagón” (the blackout), about Puerto Rico’s constant power outages, one of the symptoms of the island’s economic crisis. In 2021, Puerto Rico’s government-owned power company, the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, declared bankruptcy, and as a result, a private company called Luma took over the country’s power grid.
He shouted out the Americas, not just the United States
Which flags did you recognize from Bad Bunny’s performance? The “Baile Inolvidable” artist shouted “God Bless America” in his outro, but he wasn’t just referring to the United States; he made a point to spotlight Latin America and the Caribbean, including countries like Cuba, Jamaica, and Mexico. Behind him, the featured flags recognized more nations, especially smaller Caribbean islands like Grenada, Sint Marteen, St. Kitts and Nevis, and the Cayman Islands.
The wedding that took place during the performance was real
The couple that was pronounced husband and wife in the transition between “Monaco” and Lady Gaga’s surprise appearance was actually married in that moment, Variety reports. Bad Bunny’s reps confirmed that when we watched an actual wedding, the bride and groom were not actors.
