Apr 9: Good Bunny

I've been preparing a lengthy post for my LivingGeography blog and to share at the GA Conference. 

It's now ready and I'm posting it today to coincide with my session at the GA Conference 2026.

It's taken me a while to get this post finished. It would have been better nearer the actual event, but better to be accurate and useful than rush something out.

It's also going to be part of my session at the GA Conference which I'm co-presenting with Matt Podbury.

It's also a cross-posting from my World of Music blog. This is taking shape nicely and is well into its second month, with hundreds of blog posts in draft ready to go, and some very nice guest blog posts already edited and ready to share.

The Superbowl half-time show is one of the highest profile cultural events in the USA (although three times as many people globally will watch a top-level Premier League football match than the Super Bowl itself).

This year, the musical act chosen was Bad Bunny.

Bad Bunny's Wikipedia entry describes him as follows:

Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio (Latin American Spanish: born March 10, 1994), known professionally as Bad Bunny, is a Puerto Rican rapper, singer, record producer, and occasional professional wrestler.

Dubbed the "King of Latin Trap", he is widely credited with helping Spanish-language rap reach mainstream global popularity and is considered one of the greatest Latino rappers of all time.

He has won numerous awards, and also appeared in a range of films. He was the first Spanish speaking artist to win Album of the Year - at the 2026 Grammy's.

Bad Bunny has been named Spotify's most-streamed artist globally four times (2020, 2021, 2022, and 2025), making him the first and only artist to achieve this distinction.

Puerto Rico, officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico,is a self-governing Caribbean archipelago and island organized as an unincorporated territory of the United States under the designation of commonwealth.

Puerto Ricans have been US Citizens since 1917.

Puerto Ricans often call the island Borinquen, a derivation of Borikén, its indigenous Taíno name, which is popularly said to mean 'Land of the Valiant Lord'. 

The terms boricua, borinqueño, and borincano are commonly used to identify someone of Puerto Rican heritage

Puerto Rico was colonised by the Spanish before the Americans claimed it.

In 2017, Puerto Rico suffered back-to-back large hurricanes: the Category 5 Hurricane Irma and the Category 4 Hurricane Maria.The storms caused an extreme amount of damage to the island, causing the following effects: all power was knocked out, 95% cell service, 43% of waste water treatment plants, 40 thousand land slides, 97% of roads blocked, 28% of health facilities damaged, leading to over 90% of the population applying for assistance after the storms.

(Seek out Gemma Sou's 'After Maria' project)

This has also become the subject of a Bad Bunny protest song - El Apagón ('The Power Outage') about continuing power problems.

“His very presence on the stage is a statement,” said Petra Rivera-Rideau, co-author of the book P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance. 

“The fact is that we’re currently in a moment where Spanish is seen as a mark of being foreign, of not belonging, where people are getting profiled for being Spanish speakers – that ups the ante and importance. It can’t really be overstated.”

Source

There was lots of coverage of the politics of the selection ahead of the show.

The show didn't go down well with a certain old man...

Apologies for sharing the following image:

This De Adder cartoon went out in Canada, with thanks to Peggy March for sharing it.

MAGA weren't pleased, and created their own rival show.

A piece in the Financial Times suggested a link with future US foreign policy. This link may not be permanent. Rana Foroohar suggested that the show:

"..provided a decent political roadmap for what a post-Maga America should aspire to embrace: pro-growth humanism inside and outside our own borders..."

There's a great image as well to reinforce the global spread of the musician.

The Guardian review here provides a summary of his Half time show and points out the cultural references back to Puerto Rico.

These include the reference to Boricua joy.

Scenes described in the Guardian piece linked to above include:

1. A young man carrying a Puerto Rican flag before a sea of sugarcane opened with a benediction for all of us: “Qué rico es ser latino. Hoy se bebe,” (“How sweet it is to be Latino. Today we drink”)

Sugar cane is an important crop and is linked with colonialism and slavery in locations where it has been cultivated.

2. References to Puerto Rican community life.

• los viejos playing dominos,
• street vendors selling coco frío, piraguas and tacos (sold by Los Angeles’s actual Villa’s Tacos),
• boxers Xander Zayas and Emiliano Vargas in the fight,
• a man proposing to his girlfriend just as the femme-forward Yo Perreo Sola starts. “Las mujeres en el mundo entero,” he says, “perreando sin miedo”. (“The women in the whole world, perreando without fear.”)
• Behind him, at la casita he built in the image of a house on the island, is a yearbook of stars, including Karol G, Pedro Pascal, Cardi B, Jessica Alba, Young Miko and Alix Earle.

Bad Bunny carried the Puerto Rican flag of independence, the original flag of the territory that was outlawed until 1952 and is distinguished by its sky blue triangle. While performing a salsa version of her 2024 Bruno Mars duet Die With a Smile, Lady Gaga wore a dress in the same shade.

Finally, if you haven't seen it yet, the show can be seen here:

And a set list here

1. "Tití Me Preguntó" (Bad Bunny)
2. "Yo Perreo Sola" (Bad Bunny)
3. "Safaera" (Bad Bunny)
4. "VOY A LLeVARTE PA PR" (Bad Bunny)
5. "EoO" (Bad Bunny)
6. "Mónaco" (Bad Bunny)
7. "Die with a Smile" (Lady Gaga)
8. "BAILE INoLVIDABLE" (Bad Bunny)
9. "NUEVAYoL" (Bad Bunny)
10. "LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii" (Bad Bunny and Ricky Martin)
11. "El Apagón" (Bad Bunny)
12. "CAFé CON RON" (Bad Bunny)
13. "DtMF" (Bad Bunny)

Some more responses to the show from musicians.