When Bad Bunny was announced as a Super Bowl performer, the backlash began almost immediately. House Speaker Mike Johnson called him “unsuitable,” suggesting someone “more fitting,” like Lee Greenwood. Around the same time, Turning Point USA promoted plans for an “All-American Super Bowl” featuring “patriotic music” and “family values.”
The outrage over Bad Bunny isn’t really about his music. It’s about who gets to define what “American” means. America’s biggest stage still has trouble recognizing itself.
Bad Bunny, born Benito Martínez Ocasio, is one of the world’s most streamed artists and the second most streamed artist on Spotify overall, with over 80 million monthly listeners. While Greenwood, Johnson’s suggested replacement, has fewer than 500,000.
This isn’t a debate about popularity or talent, it’s about permission. When a Puerto Rican artist performs in Spanish before an American audience, some see cultural pride. Others see an invasion of a space they thought was theirs.
A similar discomfort surfaced in 2020, when Shakira and Jennifer Lopez headlined the Super Bowl halftime show. Their performance drew criticism for being “too sexual,” but the debate largely revolved around the choreography, not their citizenship. When Bad Bunny steps onstage, his existence becomes political, not his performance.
For many Latino Americans, this reaction is familiar. My own mother remembers watching a young Bad Bunny perform in crammed venues in Puerto Rico, years before his global fame. After she moved to the United States, she built a career and earned respect, but she was always still “too Hispanic” or “too different.”
The backlash to Bad Bunny sends the same message: diversity is celebrated only when it stays in the familiar background. America prides itself on being a melting pot and a land of opportunity, yet when someone like Bad Bunny achieves success on his own terms, some respond with the same old fear of difference disguised as patriotism. Success only seems to be celebrated when it conforms.
Bad Bunny has never tried to erase where he comes from or conform to the narrow version of success America rewards. He’s refused to soften his accent, abandon Spanish or cater to U.S. politics that criminalize immigrants, skipping North American tours in protest of U.S. Immigrant and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and anti-immigrant policies. Instead of chasing status, he invested in Puerto Rico and rebuilt after Hurricane Maria, uplifted local artists and reshaped how the island is seen abroad. He’s used his success to lift the community that raised him, something America’s own leaders often fail to do.
In a nation that prizes profit over people, Bad Bunny embodies the kind of leadership politicians fear; influence grounded in accountability, culture and love for one’s people. Critics claim he doesn’t represent “real America,” but what could be more American than building worldwide success from local roots without erasing where you came from?
He is Puerto Rican, yes, but also, born under the same flag as his critics and raised in the same faith many of his critics claim as the foundation of their values. His success represents the best of American ambition, global influence rooted in cultural pride.
Bad Bunny isn’t rejecting America when he performs in Spanish, he’s expanding it. His Super Bowl appearance challenges the idea that patriotism must sound a certain way or come from a certain ZIP code.
The question isn’t whether Bad Bunny belongs on that stage. It’s why a country that celebrates diversity on paper keeps punishing those who actually embody it.
