How Bad Bunny won the Super Bowl culture war

Never mind the Seattle Seahawks versus the New England Patriots, on Super Bowl Sunday, the battle was between two nations. On network television, in the blue corner, Bay Area locals Green Day and bilingual US citizen Bad Bunny were representing America. Online in the red corner, meanwhile, Turning Point USA’s rival All-American Halftime Show – starring Kid Rock and (you’ll never guess) some country singers – was aimed squarely at ‘Murica.

Many on the gobby right of US media and politics are made nervous by Bad Bunny. As well as claiming never to have heard of the Grammy-laden 31-year-old, much of their time is spent bemoaning that he’s from Puerto Rico, a place different from English-sounding locales in the vicinity of the Super Bowl such as San Jose or San Francisco. Presumably, they’ve never heard of West Side Story, either, or that Puerto Ricans are part of the stitching of the nation’s musical heritage. Smoke on your pipe and put that in.

As graceful as a Californian dawn, for his part, Bad Bunny offered no assistance to anyone looking to be offended by his attendance. Chances are they were already offended, and not by the fact that he performs in Spanish (“nobody understands a word this guy is saying,” seethed Donald Trump after the show).

This time last week, at the Grammys in Los Angeles, the 31-year-old accepted the award for album of the year with the words, “before I say thanks to God, I’m going to say ICE out’”. Seven sleeps later, next thing you know he’s at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara claiming ownership rights of an annual event as American as active shooters and apple pie. He even had Ricky Martin and Lady Gaga up there with him.

So, please, let us not be naïve. Last year, 133.5 million people watched the Super Bowl halftime show. Twelve months on, with all that’s going on, the very presence of Bad Bunny on its stage is an act of political resistance.

Claiming to celebrate “faith, family and freedom”, over on the internet, meanwhile, the All-American Halftime Show appeared to have been broadcast from a sex dungeon. Underlit on its black set, Kid Rock’s short selection of seemingly lip-synched songs failed to include Cool, Daddy Cool in which he raps the lines “young ladies, young ladies, I like ‘em underage, see/some say that’s statutory (but I say it’s mandatory)”.

Perhaps these days he’s a changed man. Or maybe it goes without saying that this is what he likes. He is a Christian nationalist, after all.

Earlier in proceedings, for viewers in the UK, the Super Bowl jamboree started at the reasonable hour of bedtime. But instead of broadcasting Green Day’s four-song medley at the pregame show, Channel 5 allowed host Dermot O’ Leary to natter away from his stadium broadcast booth. As someone who has long believed that sternly inoffensive O’Leary would triumph as the public face of the entertainment division of a totalitarian state, I hold him personally responsible for eliding one of the world’s great punk rock groups from British eyes.

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Trump’s Super Bowl culture war

Ian Winwood

Considering they’ve spent the weekend popping off at ICE and Epstein, Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem, the decision by Green Day not to act out by exploding an effigy of Donald Trump live on TV seemed a touch timid. On closer inspection, though, by filling half of their five-minute set with their two most explicitly political songs – Holiday and American Idiot – at the expense of hits from Dookie, their most commercially successful album, the band made their point all the same. “Information age of hysteria,” sang Billie Joe Armstrong, “it’s calling out to idiot America.”

More than 20 years ago, Armstrong wrote American Idiot in response to a song by throwback rockers Lynyrd Skynyrd that elegised God, grits and gravy, the American Flag, and the life without mobile phones or the internet on the southside of the Mason Dixon line.

“It’s like, ‘I’m proud to be a redneck and I was like, ‘Oh my God, why would you be proud of something like that?’” Armstrong said. “This is exactly what I’m against.”

In other words, don’t despair: the war is nothing new. The opposing forces of MAGA and those who wish merely for America to be sane again may be fighting for higher stakes than ever, but we have been here before. There is no ultimate victory; there is no final defeat.

As the Seattle Seahawks celebrate victory in Santa Clara, for once at least, let us pass over the predictably shrill and brittle complaints of Trump (who, unlike last year, didn’t turn up in person) about the music at Super Bowl LX. Instead, let’s hand the final word to one of the people who wrote and performed it.

As the halftime show neared its end, at Levi’s Stadium, a scoreboard above an end zone displayed the slogan, “The only thing more powerful than hate is love”. Down at the field of play, Bad Bunny held a football in his hand bearing the words, “Together, we are America”.

Ian Winwood is the best-selling author of Bodies: Life And Death In Music