SOPHIA ARNDT: Hi, this is Sophia Arndt.
ABBEY MULCAHY: And Abbey Mulcahy.
**EMMA VASA:**And Emma Vasa.
ARNDT: From the Minnesota Daily. And welcome to The Daily Beat, our podcast dedicated to the arts and entertainment scene of the Twin Cities. And in case you were unaware, there was like something football related happening this past Sunday, but more importantly, it was the Bad Bunny concert as the Super Bowl halftime show.
So we’re gonna be talking all about the Super Bowl halftime, as you know, this historic event, the Bad Bunny performance itself, and then all the really fun, cool stuff that came with it. So for those who don’t know, the Super Bowl beginning in 1957 used to feature high school and college marching bands during the halftime show, kind of as just a natural pause in between the two halves.
So these usually featured drill teams or your classic college halftime show. This all changed in the 1990s when national programmers began to realize that there was this time in between, you know, first half, second half of the game where they could fill it with not only advertisements, but also national performers.
So this originally happened in 1992 when a now famous comedy sketch called “In Living Color,” broadcasted on Fox during the halftime break. So that then sort of encouraged programmers to look for a performance to fill that space because they realized they could make a lot of money by keeping viewers on the program during the halftime show.
So from that, the halftime show as we know it was born, like all good things, it started with Michael Jackson. So in the early 1990s, the halftime show of Michael Jackson happened in 1993 to be specific. So it was the first non marching band performance, and it centered around the theme of “Heal the World.”
So it was Jackson and 3,500 local children performing music. You know, his discography as this huge involved performance. And the finale ended with some audience participation and it was a huge hit. And then from then on we have the halftime shows that we now are incredibly familiar with.
So, you know, 2013 was Beyonce. Then we had Coldplay, Beyonce and Bruno Mars in 2016, which was honestly, one of my personal favorites. Through 2020, which is when we had Shakira, Jennifer Lopez, Bad Bunny and other artists perform all the way to 2025 with Kendrick Lamar and his performance of “GNX,” the album, which was a huge moment, and it was a very significant performance because it was, the halftime show was a political statement in itself.
VASA: Yeah. It was a much more direct performance.
ARNDT: So in September, it was announced that Bad Bunny would be the halftime show performer. This was hugely significant because it was the first time that the NFL would be having a non-English speaking performer as its headliner. In the past, there had been a focus on Latin culture with Shakira, but this was the first time we were gonna have a purely non-English performance, which was huge.
MULCAHY: So Bad Bunny, we know him as Bad Bunny, Benito. Well, Bad Bunny’s a 31-year-old musician from Puerto Rico who has been creating music since around 2016. He initially started releasing stuff on SoundCloud where he was discovered and has kind of taken off since. He’s had very successful features with artists like Cardi B and Drake and his albums from like 2018 onwards have done super well in the charts.
He won the Latin Grammy for Best Urbana Album and made it onto the Rolling Stones list of the best 500 musical albums of all time for his 2018 album “X100pre.” He had an extremely successful album in 2022 titled “Un Verano Sin Ti,” which was both critically and commercially successful, and propelled him once again to the top of the billboard, two hundreds and into the consciousness of many U.S. listeners.
It contains tons of popular songs, including the one that he opened his Super Bowl halftime performance with “Titi Me Pregunto,” and this album was the first Spanish album to be nominated for album of the year at the Grammys.
VASA: When did you guys start listening to Bad Bunny?
ARNDT: I was familiar with his music, but I didn’t start actually listening to his like full discography until his most recent album. It really became like my soundtrack for this past summer. So that’s me. But what about you, Emma?
VASA: You know, it’s a crime for me to say he’s the love of my life because I really, I’ve obviously like heard of him within the last, you know, year or two, like his name has come up of course. But I was never like, oh, you know, let me give this a full on listen until, you know, his appearance on SNL about what, four months ago or something like that.
And so then I was like, “OK, he’s funny, he’s charming, he’s got a, like, obviously his music is fabulous.” So then I definitely started giving it a little bit more of a listen, but the Super Bowl has definitely cemented like, oh, he’s gotta become a staple name in my playlists.
ARNDT: What about you, Abbey?
MULCAHY: I’ve been listening since around his 2022 album. I’ve been trying miserably to learn Spanish for years, and so he’s been a really, a really good tool for that. And also just a super fun artist. Whose music pumps me up, gets me excited and inadvertently I end up, I end up learning more about Puerto Rico through his music. So that’s always been a pretty fun thing.
ARNDT: So one of the things that’s been a staple for NFL halftime shows is they usually pick a theme to pursue. So, like I said, with Michael Jackson, it was “Heal the World.” But since then, you can cite a running theme throughout the music or the selection of artists that are presenting. So when looking at the most recent ones, we have Kendrick Lamar, which was a huge focus on American hip hop and rap culture.
Which was also, you know, a very present theme in 2022, where our musical performance came from Eminem, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar and Mary J. Blige, which was sort of supposed to be a celebration of West Coast rap and hip hop culture. And then, looking now to 2026, we have Bad Bunny performing, which was unofficially supposed to be a celebration of Puerto Rican culture.
MULCAHY: And his latest album, the one from 2025, titled “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS,” really makes that so clear that his music, his performance, really values his Puerto Rican heritage and the Super Bowl performance did a wonderful job at bringing out the best parts of that album. There’s so much symbolism, so many important features of Latin artists, Latin figures that. It aligns pretty well with the themes that like you brought up.
ARNDT: So when looking at the actual performance, we just wanted to highlight some of the really amazing visual symbolism and themes present in his performance and break down the actual message that was there. So immediately we are shown the visual of a sugarcane farm. So this is an obvious reference to the Puerto Rican history of sugarcane farms and plantations. So Puerto Rico was and is an American colony, but initially when it was colonized, it was forced to produce sugar cane on plantation systems.
So opening with this visual of sugarcane farms and people actively farming it was a very clear representation of the long history of American exploitation in Puerto Rico for its natural resources. And I do wanna take this moment to highlight anarticle by Yesha Callahan for BET that spoke about her grandmother’s experience in surviving the work on a sugarcane plantation in her youth.
And how seeing this represented in a Bad Bunny performance at the Super Bowl was incredibly impactful, especially as it highlighted that this was not work. People did, this was work that people survived every single day. So a specific quote I wanted to highlight from her is the first image of the halftime show is labor, not glamor.
They’re not dressing up the history of the exploitation of this island, but instead illustrating that they were forced to work and forced to produce this. And then we see Bad Bunny, Bad Bunny appears. He’s wearing a jersey that reads “Ocasio,” which is a reference to his mother’s last name and an honoring of their relationship.
And immediately we are thrown into this visual celebration of what I kind of understood as a Puerto Rican neighborhood. So, you get a neighborhood walkthrough. So as Bad Bunny is performing, he’s walking through all these moments in time of like a classic neighborhood living and celebrating life in Puerto Rico. There’s a piragua stand, which is a traditional shaved ice treat that is incredibly popular in Puerto Rico.
A nail salon, a boxing match, which is in reference to Puerto Rico’s long history of boxing, plantos, a barbershop and even a domino table, which, I was probably my favorite detail from that walkthrough. So while watching it, I felt as though Bad Bunny was taking the American public through the vibrant recreation of his home.
It’s a reality that there are many in this country that do not know or understand. Puerto Rican culture and Latin culture as a whole by highlighting this very beautiful and celebratory moment I thought was very beautiful. So other notable moments was therewas a real wedding that took place at the NFL.
VASA: I know, when that point came on for the performance. Like me and my friends were like, “Oh, I wonder if that’s a staged. Like, imagine if that was real.” And then come to find out that was a real wedding. And I was like. How beautiful. How stunning. Wow. Yeah.
ARNDT: Yeah. So the story behind the real wedding is that the couple that was on stage had some extra invites to their wedding and they sent them out to local businesses and just thought, “Hey, what if we sent one to Bad Bunny as a joke?”
MULCAHY: Of course.
ARNDT: And little did they know they’d be getting married on the.
MULCAHY: On the field.
ARNDT: On the field, Levi’s Stadium at Santa Clara. So, and, notably their something blue was Lady Gaga in a blue dress performing a salsa rendition of “Die With a Smile.” And honestly, I’ll say my favorite detail of the wedding was the small child sleeping across three chairs.
MULCAHY: Yes. Yes. So cute.
**VASA:**It was so cute.
ARNDT: Such a, such an accurate depiction.
**MULCAHY:**Yes.
**ARNDT:**There’s always one child sleeping at the function.
MULCAHY: Sleeping or crying.
ARNDT: Another notable moment in the performance was the feature of power lines. This was a reference to Puerto Rico’s ongoing electrical crisis and failing power grid in the wake of Hurricane Maria.
So El Apagón was the protest song that was featured as well as the Puerto Rican flag, which Bad Bunny chose to use the traditional Puerto Rican flag, but with the light blue version, which is often associated with the Puerto Rican independence movement and the long history with that.
The final song, choice of “CAFé CON RON,” where a Bad Bunny made a statement for the first and only time in English during his performance saying “God bless America,” after which he proceeded to name every Latin American country by name with the inclusion of the United States, Canada and finally ending on Puerto Rico.
So there were flags present from each country waved behind him as a sea of unity. And just behind him on the big screen, you can see a final message: “The only thing stronger than hate is love,” which was a powerful statement from Elizabeth George Speare novel, “The Bronze Bow.” It was a line spoken by the character of Jesus in her novel before his crucifixion.
I adored this performance. I felt such a sense of joy and celebration watching it, and just a little bit of hope for all the beautiful messages and showcase of unity. I just absolutely adored it and I thought the music was fantastic.
VASA: For me, this in a way kind of hit a little closer to home. So when I was preparing for the Bad Bunny bowl preparing for this performance, I was listening to more of his music and his discography, like a week leading up to it. And so it really reminded me of like my childhood when I was watching Bollywood.
And I don’t speak Hindi or Tegulu, but I truly loved watching Bollywood. And for me. It wasn’t even the fact that even though I didn’t know the language, I understood the message. You know, whether it’s, you know, with me, with Bollywood, like you can see the artistry, the passion, the heart, love loss, anger, all of these emotions.
It’s translated far beyond language, but also in the costuming, the emotion, the tone, you know, things like that. And I feel like Bad Bunny’s performance, like it, it felt like that, again, the performance wasn’t about performing predominantly in Spanish. It was about, you know, cultural identity and really reflecting that and showing that.
And so I had like a sense of pride for the Puerto Rican and like Latin communities of like how beautiful, how impactful to have that on such a prime stage. Yeah, and it just kinda reminded me like, you know when, we’ll probably get into this, when Bad Bunny kind of directly speaks to the camera and like.
ARNDT: The translation of it was, “My name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio. And I am here today at the Super Bowl 60. It’s because I never ever stop believing in myself. You should also believe in yourself. You’re worth more than you think. Trust me.”
VASA: And I feel like, you know, when I was scrolling on social media, kind of like the days leading after and seeing like little kids watching the TV and like seeing Bad Bunny speak to the audience and like speak to those children.
I was like, wow. How beautiful. Is that how like I’m just envisioning like what would my younger self like really feel in that moment? So I really, I really loved this performance. It was so sweet.
MULCAHY: I also thought it was incredibly moving, especially to see not only representation, but such joyous, proud representation that is put on by someone who has been there for Puerto Rico, understands what it means to live in Puerto Rico and be Puerto Rican and to carry that pride with him throughout his entire career. This past summer, he had a residency in Puerto Rico where he put on 31 different shows; it sold out and there were over half a million attendees.
And the first nine shows were open to only Puerto Rican residents as a way to give them access to this performance, this amazing music that was cultivated and homegrown in Puerto Rico. And so knowing how much, how much Bad Bunny has really changed the game in terms of representation and even just musically bringing forward such a unique sound and such thoughtful lyrics.
Seeing that on screen was really moving for me. I was sitting there in my living room, stuffing my face with all sorts of chips and dips and just like grinning the entire time. It’s such a joy to be able to learn Spanish and also learn about culture at the same time, and so I, I was just so happy to see this halftime show.
ARNDT: And of course with all good things, there was also some people who maybe weren’t as excited about this show as we were.
VASA: Yes. And so, um, when Bad Bunny was announced to be the Super Bowl halftime performance, not everyone loved the idea of a Spanish speaking artist taking the main stage. And so Turning Point USA announced that they would be hosting their own True All American halftime performance as kind of a counteract, or more specifically as to serve as an alternative entertainment option celebrating American culture, freedom and faith.
And so they announced that on October 9. And so the lineup for their halftime performance was Kid Rock, most notably, we had Brantley Gilbert, Lee Brice, and then Gabby Barrett, all of which are American musicians, singer songwriters, predominantly in the country rock scene.
So this was streamed on YouTube as well as some other various services. A big question was how many people are gonna actually tune off of the Super Bowl halftime performance and tune into Turning Point USA’s performance? And so it was determined that reportedly 6 million concurrent views happened at the peak of the Turning Point USA live stream.
And as of February 10, as of recording this,the archive video has more than 21 million views. It was significantly longer than the Super Bowl halftime show. It ran for 30 minutes, which I was kind of surprised by. Because doesn’t that also run into the football time?
Some of the kind of controversy or kind of bigger speculations that came out of the Turning Point USA halftime performance was whether or not Kid rock was lip syncing and or if it was a prerecorded performance. And so Turning Point USA did not confirm if this was a prerecorded event. They haven’t made any official statements.
However, it seems as though Kid Rock has confirmed it for us in aFox News interview with host Laura Ingraham last night, February 9. He addresses these allegations of him lip syncing and while he defends that he was not lip syncing, it seems that he pretty straightforward, confirmed that it was a prerecorded show.
And in his words, “It was very difficult for the Turning Point production crew, who, by the way, I can’t say enough good things about, but was very difficult for them,” Kid Rock says, “I’m jumping around the stage like a rabid monkey wrapping my songs and I’m taking breaths and my DJ is filling in the other parts of it. I even told him. When I saw the rough cut, I was like, you guys gotta work on that sink. It’s off.”
ARNDT: I just think, especially if you’re going to do a halftime show, it better be live because this is, I mean, they like to say it’s the greatest stage of America, but it really, it really is a huge stage and it’s a huge opportunity and I have far more appreciation for performances that are actually being performed in front of our eyes.
I think it’s a testament to the artistry. I think it’s a testament to all the people who are working so hard behind the scenes to make this happen. Whether it be production runners, whether it be the musicians who are performing live. I think that it does a disservice to then be leaning on a backing track.
MULCAHY: Especially for this Turning Point halftime show where it seems like the point of it was to provide a better alternative to Bad Bunny show, yet you’re not able to perform live.
VASA: I, I watched a little bit, granted I did not watch the full 30 minute performance and I like rock. You know, I enjoy, you know, a classic American Rock song. Was I blown away by the full performance? Not personally. I like when it comes to a performance that you are trying to compare to the Super Bowl or provide an alternative to the Super Bowl.
I think one thing about Super Bowl halftime performances is that it is obviously so much more than just like standing on a stage and like performing your songs, it’s also an entire production and I feel like it, the Turning Point USA kind of lacked that production, the artistry that goes beyond the music.
ARNDT: I think one of the beautiful things about America is that there are so many different and diverse music groups and artists that you can listen to, and if you don’t wanna listen to a certain artist, you don’t have to. But that doesn’t mean that the people that like that artist are bad. Or of the wrong opinion.
And I will say with this whole counter halftime show, I think it really messes out on one of the core pursuits of the Super Bowl, which is to have an event that everyone can watch. And I think to go against that and say, “No, we don’t really want to watch that.” I think it’s just a little silly.
VASA: Yeah it feels a little silly.
ARNDT: It feels a little silly. Agree. So in conclusion, the 60th Super Bowl took place at the Levi Stadium with the Seahawks and the Patriots playing. The Seahawks won, and with just a fantastic performance from Bad Bunny.
VASA: It is reported to be the most viewed halftime show in existence so far. I think1.35 million, if I’m remembering my number right. I mean, this was a halftime show that like I will go back and I will watch again and again.
There are, like, we obviously touched on quite a few different symbolic pieces throughout the performance, but there was also so many that we, you know, hadn’t gotten to or we could dive more into and whatnot. And I think this is a performance that is so rich with, of course, culture and history and symbolism and, you know, everyone involved. Like everything was so intentional and so. Well thought out and.
MULCAHY: And well executed even.
VASA: Yeah.
ARNDT: Mm-hmm. So, looking ahead, we do know that the next Super Bowl in 2027 will be on Valentine’s Day, and I believe it will be at SoFi Stadium. Look forward to that. Keep your eyes peeled for who our next halftime show performance will be.
We wanna thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Daily Beat. This episode was produced by Ceci Heinen, and if you have any questions, comments or concerns you can reach us at[email protected]
This is Sophia Arndt.
MULCAHY: And Abbey Mulcahy.
**VASA:**And Emma Vasa.
ARNDT: Thank you so much and we’ll see you in the next episode. This has been The Daily Beat.