The second Bad Bunny appeared at the Super Bowl LX halftime show, standing between the rows of grassy sugar cane in his all-cream football-pad inspired outfit and two-carat honey-desert diamond earring, and began rapping "Tití Me Preguntó" with all of the swag that he could muster, I started screaming. I screamed as he bopped past the coco frio station and the uncles/grandpas playing dominoes, and while he grabbed the (cherry?) piragua and ducked underneath the boxers, or when he stood atop the celeb casita. I did not stop screaming until I started choking up near the end. Importantly, I do not speak Spanish and did not understand a single word or lyric (except for the cameo from Lady Gaga), and it did not matter. Each stroke of symbolism and uplift of Puerto Rican culture communicated Bad Bunny's complete command of the global stage, his love of country, his insistence on joy and ass-shaking, and his exuberance as protest in these dark days. The second the performance was over, I called VF contributor Michelle Ruiz, who was as moved as I was, and until 1 a.m., we worked on parsing what Bad Bunny's lovefest meant. And speaking of love, there were a lot of celeb couples, old and new, in attendance (including the potential hard launch of Kim K. and Lewis Hamilton 👀).
Outside of the Benito Bowl, in the opposing spirit of hateration and holleration, Turning Point USA staged its own weird, poorly attended counterprogramming event, including an opening song titled…wait for it… "Real American." And also as expected: big beer, big tech, and big pharma showed up with their (not that fun) Super Bowl ads. Alas, today is a new day (and also Michael B. Jordan's birthday!). |
ADRIENNE GREEN,
EXECUTIVE EDITOR |
It was one of the most feverishly anticipated, instantly controversial halftime shows in history. You didn't need to know Spanish to grasp the message: Puerto Rico is America; fiesta is a form of protest; joy is a kind of rebellion. |
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The counterprogramming to the halftime show was predictably xenophobic, but (perhaps) surprisingly low-quality and poorly attended. |
Big beer, big tech, and big pharma showed up, but the Super Bowl ads were thin on excitement this year. |
Jewelry designer Marvin Douglas Linares tells Vanity Fair about creating the single earring that would accompany the Grammy Award winner's monochromatic look: "It wasn't the loudest design I've ever made. But it might be the most meaningful." |
Sources close to the prince and princess of Wales say they are appalled by the scale of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor's involvement. |
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Michael B. Jordan, who turns 39 today, shares his secret trick for tapping into his Oscar-nominated dual leading roles in Sinners, the nature of his working relationship with Ryan "Coog" Coogler, and his millennial-coded aversion to social media. |
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