I came into this year’s Super Bowl halftime show with low expectations and an open mind. I wasn’t expecting anything groundbreaking. I wasn’t even looking for something particularly memorable.
What I did expect, however, was a performance that felt appropriate for the Super Bowl—an event that, for better or worse, functions as the most distinctly American cultural moment of the year. That expectation was not met.
From the start, the choice of Bad Bunny as the halftime performer never made much sense. This has nothing to do with partisan politics. Whether a performer supports Donald Trump, opposes him, or avoids politics entirely is irrelevant.
The issue is representation. The Super Bowl is not just another concert venue. Rather, it is a national event watched by tens of millions of Americans and marketed as a celebration of American culture.
The United States is a melting pot of cultures, languages, and backgrounds. But American culture still has shared foundations, and the most basic one is language. English is the common thread that allows a country this large and diverse to function as a single society.
When a halftime show is dominated by music performed largely in a language most viewers don’t understand, it can cease to feel like a unifying moment and instead seem disconnected from the audience it’s intended to entertain.
This is not an argument against Spanish music or Spanish-speaking artists. Bad Bunny is undeniably popular and successful. His music has a place, and his fans are real.
But the Super Bowl halftime show is not about individual popularity alone. It is about creating a moment that resonates broadly with the American public. That did not happen here.
Objectively, the performance itself was horrible. There was little actual singing, minimal engagement, and almost no effort to connect with the audience watching at home.
The energy felt flat. The set lacked spectacle. Even setting aside the language issue, it was simply boring. As a piece of entertainment, it failed to justify its place on the biggest stage in American sports.
What made the situation worse was how politicized the performance became—though not by conservatives. The politicization first came from the left, which treated the selection itself as a cultural statement. That framing turned the halftime show into a symbol rather than a celebration.
The Super Bowl should not be used to make ideological points about identity or culture.
There have been plenty of halftime performers who were not conservatives, not Republicans, and not Trump supporters. That has never been the issue.
Those performers understood their responsibility: connect with the audience, communicate in a shared language, and deliver a performance suited to the moment.
This halftime show did none of those things. It should not have happened, and it should serve as a lesson. The Super Bowl is an American institution, and treating its halftime show accordingly is not exclusionary—it is a matter of respect for the audience that made it what it is.
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