The power of music was on full display during Bad Bunny's Super Bowl halftime show

Dear Gossips,

We will be talking about Bad Bunny and the Benito Bowl more than once today. Because when an artist brings that much joy to a performance, we should make it last as long as we can.

I am reasonably familiar with Bad Bunny’s discography – I work in pop culture, he’s one of the most streamed artists on the planet, if I didn’t know his work, I wouldn’t be doing my job. That said, I cannot pretend familiarity with his references, or understand the nuance in his lyrics, or most of the words spoken during his mega concert last night. But it doesn’t matter because joy and love are for everyone. And I could see and hear and feel the joy and love coming from him and the community with him on the field and beyond. I could sense Violeta on the opposite coast in a different country, vibrating with emotion, and I am grateful that she has taken the time to share some of those emotions for our site today in a post that will be up soon.

This is the power of music and it was on full display last night through the talents and the earnest intentions of one of the most electrifyingly thoughtful artists of his generation, who has always appreciated what he represents to his culture. Music can delight, it can inspire, it can embrace and heal, and it can teach. It can do all of these things and still be fun. Anyone who did not have fun during those 13 minutes was simply determined not to.

For the rest of us, what Bad Bunny gave us, no matter where we are from and what language we speak, was a great f-cking time. And a reminder that we are better together, that despite our differences, we can all share in the same simple dream: to be welcome, to be surrounded by laughter coming from children and seniors and everyone in between, to dance and play and love without fear, it’s not complicated at all.

What was complicated though was the production, the ideas that were so beautifully executed – from the set design to the choreography and all the tech work that was required to capture and deliver it both in the stadium and to each of our screens so that we felt like we were at the party. It was a staggering achievement and of course there was a huge team involved in pulling it off but probably everyone would agree the genesis of it all is Benito himself. To have this vision, the monumental ambition of it, on this scale, and then to go about realising it, it’s breathtakingly impressive and also so pure. We will never know the hopes and expectations he carried into that assignment. How much pressure he would have been feeling to do right by his people, without excluding people. And you can only really live up to all that pressure by taking yourself out of it. My overwhelming takeaway from that performance is that it wasn’t about ego, it was about service. Since it was his purpose, dios mio, did he f-cking serve.

More on Benito soon. But here he is moments after the performance – overwhelmed, exhausted, and grateful.