Benito Antonio Martinez, widely known as Bad Bunny, is a Latino global musician with over 80 million streamers on Spotify and was chosen for this year’s 2026 NFL halftime show. For the past 13 years, there have been different artists that perform during half-time in the Super Bowl, but there has never been this much controversy about who the performer is.
There are two sides of this controversy, one being that Martinez shouldn’t have been the performer and one that he should. The reason behind why people didn’t want Bad Bunny to be the performer is because “Bad Bunny is not American.” As ridiculous as this claim may seem, this is a serious argument made by those who are against him. If it wasn’t clear, Martinez is Puerto Rican, and if you didn’t know, Puerto Rico is in fact an American territory, so it doesn’t make sense to be saying he’s not “American.” These same people that are claiming that Martinez isn’t American are the same ones who dislike the fact that the majority of the show will be in Spanish, which yes, is true, but what’s also true is that not everyone speaks English. There will always be a language barrier no matter what language is being spoken, and that’s just facts. Not everyone understands English. My family doesn’t understand much English, but that doesn’t stop them from enjoying the performance every year. There is so much more that can be enjoyed during a performance than just the music.
This year’s visuals were outstanding, the visuals themselves told a story, and you didn’t need to understand Spanish to see that. I’ve seen some people bring up the fact that Bad Bunny’s lyrics are very explicit and that it would be inappropriate, but if we look at past performances, there are artists that I wouldn’t say write the friendliest of lyrics. An example of this would be in 2021 when The Weeknd was the performer. I wouldn’t say that The Weeknd’s music is bad what-so-ever, but I also wouldn’t say that his lyrics are PG-13.
These are all reasons why some didn’t want Bad Bunny to perform, but what seems to be the biggest reason is because when Bad Bunny released his tour dates for “Debí Tirar Más Fotos,” many noticed that there weren’t any dates in the U.S. Martinez made it clear to the public that he made this decision because he was afraid for his audience and the possibility of I.C.E. showing up to his shows and detaining people, which with this current situation, is a very reasonable concern to have. As a Latina myself, these comments feel more racial rather than real concern. I know this because the people making all these arguments can’t even bother to fully educate themselves and make sure that the claims they are making are actually valid. Bad Bunny had every right to be the performer no matter what his race is or what language he speaks. With everything politically going on, it was refreshing to see Latin culture being celebrated, and expressed, rather than being feared. Martizes is an amazing artist who is loved by millions.
Funnily enough, people’s complaints had an influence, so imagine the shock when Green Day performed before Bad Bunny. What makes this situation funny is that Green Day is very publicly anti-MAGA, which is the demographic of people who hate on Bad Bunny. So even though the haters got what they asked for, the chances of them being happy about the Green Day performance are very low.
