The 60th Super Bowl took place in Levi’s Stadium in San Francisco on Sunday, Feb. 8 between the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots. Green Day kicked off the Super Bowl during the opening ceremony and Bad Bunny entertained the masses during halftime.
Green Day began as the first artists to perform at the Super Bowl. The three core members of Green Day, lead vocalist Billie Joe Armstrong, bassist and backing vocals Mike Dirnt and drummer Tré Cool, are all from the San Francisco Bay Area, making this a homecoming for the band. The group played four songs off their seventh album, “American Idiot.” First opening with “Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)”, then moving to “Holiday.” Notable in Green Day’s performance was their refrain from politics, something uncommon for the band. In “Holiday” they chose to skip over the last verse, which references George W. Bush, the president when “American Idiot” was released, with the line “Sieg Heil to the President Gasman.” With that omission, Green Day continued to “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” they capped off their opening performance with “American Idiot,” continuing to stay away from political discourse. In recent years, “American Idiot” has been used to call out President Donald Trump and his platform– “Make America Great Again” (MAGA). Recently, in the second verse, the line has almost always been sung as “I’m not a part of the MAGA agenda.” Instead of singing the second verse of “American Idiot”, Green Day worked the crowd and welcomed past Super Bowl MVPs, Peyton Manning and Joe Montana, onto the stage.
The pregame entertainment continued with the national anthem sung by Charlie Puth followed by Brandi Carlile, who sang “America the Beautiful.” Coco Jones finished out the pregame entertainment with “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”
With that, Super Bowl 60 began! Each team had a solid defense with the only scores coming from field goals. Going into halftime, the score was 9-0 in favor of the Seahawks.
The Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime Show began as the Seahawks and Patriots exited into the tunnels. Bad Bunny began his performance with “Titi Me Preguntó” surrounded by sugarcane fields and dancers with pava hats. Pava hats are Puerto Rican straw hats made from leaves, typically worn by rural farmers.
Keen-eyed viewers may have spotted the jersey that Bad Bunny was wearing with a white jersey with the name “Ocasio” on the back and a 64 on the front. Bad Bunny’s full name is Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, hence why it was on his jersey. The 64 is debated on its meaning, some believe it could be a tribute to his late uncle’s jersey number, others believe it could be a reference to the year his mother was born. There has also been speculation that 64 could be a reference to “El Último Tour del Mundo”, Bad Bunny’s third album, the first Spanish album to top the all-genre Billboard 200 chart in 64 years.
He continues with the song walking past varying depictions of Puerto Rican culture. Bad Bunny stopped by a few Puerto Rican food stands such as a Coco Frio cart with fresh coconut water and a piragua stand with shaved ice with fruit syrup. He also passed by a group of older men playing dominoes and two women doing each other’s nails. Exiting the sugarcane fields, he stands on the roof of a depiction of a Puerto Rican casita. As he began his next song, many celebrities made an appearance dancing on the porch of the casita including Cardi B, Jessica Alba, and Pedro Pascal. These celebrities appeared to celebrate their Latino heritage and descent.
Another notable face came later, appearing behind the bar while Bad Bunny was singing “Nuevayol.” USA Today explains that the bright-eyed woman is Maria Antonia “Tonita” Cay, the owner of a last-of-its-kind Caribbean Social in New York.
About half way through his performance, Bad Bunny spoke directly to the camera, “Mi nombre es Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, y si hoy estoy aquí en el Super Bowl 60, es porque nunca, nunca dejé de creer en mí. Tú también deberías de creer en ti. Vales más de lo que piensas. Confía en mí.” Which translates to “My name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, and if I’m here today at Super Bowl 60, it’s because I never, ever stopped believing in myself. You should also believe in yourself. You’re worth more than you think. Trust me.”
The camera then moves to the top of a building with a couple getting married. This couple was not a set of actors but rather a real couple that got legally married during the show. The couple invited Bad Bunny to their wedding, but the artist was unable to attend due to Super Bowl planning. Instead, he asked the couple if they would like to get married at the Super Bowl. Bad Bunny served as the couple’s witness and signed their marriage certificate. The happy couple and crowd clear the way for a surprise appearance by Lady Gaga, coming off her Grammy wins as well. She sang a Latin-inspired rendition of “Die With A Smile” adorned in a blue dress and a flor de maga, the national flower of Puerto Rico. After finishing the song, Gaga and Bad Bunny joined in the dance and celebration that was happening on the roof.
Moving from the roof to the lawn of the casita, Bad Bunny continued the show with “NUEVAYoL”. He paid homage to his recent Grammy win as a mother, father and their young son were seen watching “Debi Tirar Mas Fotos” win Album of the Year. It was the first Spanish-language album to win the category at the Grammys before Bad Bunny leaned down to the boy, handing him a Grammy and telling him to “Cree siempre en ti,” which means, “always believe in yourself.”
He moved onto one of the final sets of his performance, a set of fake power lines. He sang “El Apagón” which literally translates to “The Blackout”. The song and the set were a comment on Puerto Rico’s frequent power outages, as during the performance, the power lines even sparked and exploded at times.
Bad Bunny ends his performance on a high note singing “DtMF” while listing each country by name in North and South America. Dancers with flags of each of these countries run through the entire stadium in unity. Behind him, on the screen at Levi Stadium, the words “The only thing more powerful than hate is love” appeared, a direct reference to one of his Grammy speeches in which he said, “We’re not savage, we’re not animals, we’re not aliens,” he said. “We are humans and we are Americans. I know it’s tough not to hate these days, and I was thinking, sometimes we get contaminados – I don’t know how to say that in English – the hate gets more powerful with more hate. The only thing that is more powerful than hate is love. So, please, we need to be different. If we fight, we have to do it with love.” His last message for the country was showing the football he had been carrying from the beginning of his show that reads “Together we are America”.
