I Actually Listened to the New Bad Bunny Album. This is What I Heard

Random Notes 33 Comments


Yeah yeah. I’m very aware this is a country music outlet. And I know that Bad Bunny is not a country artist. And no, there weren’t any country artists harmed in the writing of this article because they could’ve been covered and Bad Bunny is. Don’t worry. Saving Country Music remains very, very committed to producing content about independent country artists for you and everyone else to patently ignore. That is a solemn promise.

But as this imbroglio has unfolded about Bad Bunny winning the Grammy’s Album of the Year ahead of his halftime performance at the Super Bowl, it struck me that the vast majority of people were discussing an album and an artist they had heard little to no music from. The first and foremost rule of music criticism is that you have to listen to the material, and do so from an objective perspective, and with an open heart and mind.

It happens to be that recently I was taking a very long road trip from the tip of Florida back to Texas, and had plenty of listening time to spare. So I thought I would just pull up Bad Bunny’s Grammy-winning Debí Tirar Más Fotos (I Should Have Taken More Photos) to see what it was all about. Am I in any way qualified to “review” the album as a country music critic? Absolutely not, and that is not what this is. Though in my defense, I am not entirely foreign to Latin music either, and know a decent amount of Spanish to usually be able to discern the theme of a song.

I had no idea what to expect from this album. Because again, I’m a country music critic. But what I did know about Bad Bunny was that the top line description for him was that he was a rapper from Puerto Rico. So that’s generally what I expected to hear, which meant there was a chance I only got 45 seconds or a song or two into the album before bailing. Because I’m not particularly interested in listening to hip-hop, especially if it’s in a second language.

But what I found was not a hip-hop record at all. Debí Tirar Más Fotos is very distinctly a Latin record, and probably too diverse, and at times, too traditional to even label it as distinctly Latin pop. There are most certainly pop moments in the album, just as there are hip-hop moments and influences. But it’s not just the Spanish language that makes this album distinctly separate from mainstream American music culture. It’s the rhythms, the instrumentation, the textures and the intent.

Frankly, this album is too rich, to eclectic, too involved and ethnic for the at-large American appetite to ever even consider adopting wholesale. Those worried that Bad Bunny will use the bully pulpit of the Super Bowl halftime show to take over American culture need not worry. This is not Ricky Martin and his sellout American Spanglish bullshit. This is not Pitbull and his hype man gimmick where he spreads bovine fertilizer all over the audience while trying to not get any on his pearly white suit.

Cover art for Debí Tirar Más Fotos


Previously, Bad Bunny has collaborated with big North American artists like Cardi B and Drake on pop crossover hits for United States consumers. Debí Tirar Más Fotos doesn’t have any of that. Instead Bad Bunny collaborates with other Puerto Rican artists like singer RaiNao, and a traditional Puerto Rican ensemble called Los Pleneros de la Cresta.

Music critics and Bad Bunny himself have said that Debí Tirar Más Fotos is his most personal record to date. But every artist says that about every single album they release. In this instance though, it’s probably true. This is an album for Puerto Rico, and of Puerto Rico. And yes, let’s not overlook that Puerto Rico is officially part of the United States, even if it’s separated by ocean similar to Hawaii, which gifted country music the sound of the steel guitar.

Reggaeton is the term that’s used for the prevailing version of Puerto Rican hip-hop music, including much of Bad Bunny’s material. But even that labeling doesn’t seem entirely apt here. There is still a lot of Electronica happening for sure, and the album still feels distinctly modern. But the verses are way too melodic to label it rap in many instances. There is straight up salsa music on certain tracks, along with “plena” music, which is the more traditional and Indigenous music of Puerto Rico.

This is not a sellout record. It’s a record that captures an artist entrenching himself back into his native roots. This would be the country music equivalent of an artist like Taylor Swift making a record with strong traditional country elements, soliciting Asleep At The Wheel to guest on a track, and kind of out of the blue, and kind of at the height of her career. It’s probably fair to say that Bad Bunny took some risks making this project. It’s also probably fair to say those risks were rewarded.

Arguably the biggest track on the record is called”BAILE INoLIDABLE.” After the minute introduction, it’s a straight up salsa song, and is written as a tribute to Puerto Rico and its history. The video features Bad Bunny learning how to salsa dance in scenes that are similar to going to places like The Broken Spoke, The White Horse, and Sagebrush in Austin, Texas to learn to Texas two-step. The fact that he’s wearing a Yankees/Dodgers hat symbolizes how Bad Bunny has been Americanized away from his own culture.


Within this context, you can understand why irrespective of any commercial success, the album also became critically-acclaimed, including winning the Grammy for Album of the Year. Bad Bunny career’d out with this album in many ways.

Now, does any of this mean that the album is any good? That of course is in the ear of the beholder. But what it also means is that when it comes to this particular album, the idea that it’s being roundly supported by American Music consumers outside of the Latino diaspora living in the United States is very fair to question. The constant defense of Bad Bunny and his pick for the Super Bowl halftime performance has been that he’s super popular. Sure he is. The numbers don’t lie. But with who?

This music is way too involved and esoteric for the average American listener. The vast, vast majority of support from this music is coming from outside of the United States, or expats from other countries living within it. It also doesn’t feel like Bad Bunny has any upside potential with the general American population by performing on the Super Bowl. As has been surmised by many before, booking Bad Bunny is all about broadening the appeal for the NFL in South and Central America and in the Caribbean, not broadening the appeal for Latin music within the U.S.

In much of the Caribbean and Latin America, music is so much more foundational to culture than it is in the United States. You really have to embed yourself in the Texas dancehall scene, or Cajun and New Orleans jazz, or certain Native American populations to find such a seamless marriage of culture and sound compared to what happens in places like Puerto Rico, Columbia, or Brazil. Music is life to a lot of these populations, including very specific rhythms and dance traditions indigenous to specific regions.

That is one of the reasons the Grammys have an entire other awards show and apparatus that is charged with covering Latin Music specifically. It’s called the Latin Grammys. It’s held in an arena and is televised by Telemundo and all across the Latin world, getting ratings often commensurate with the Grammy Awards proper. This year, Bad Bunny’s Debí Tirar Más Fotos won for Album of the Year at the Latin Grammys, double dipping with the Recording Academy.

Why doesn’t hip-hop have its own Grammy Awards, or country, or rock, or American pop? It’s because they probably don’t justify the need, while Latin music does due to the diversity of sound, and the dedicated population of performers and fans. But let’s also stop acting like Latin music is being marginalized in American culture. Thanks to Bad Bunny, the Grammys, and the NFL, it’s arguably being over-represented while already being richly supported.

What does all of this mean for American music culture at large? That’s a good question. No doubt, politics can result in people adopting music they otherwise wouldn’t. When the [Dixie] Chicks were “cancelled” from country music in the early 2000s, you had the NPR crowd all of a sudden adopting their music when they otherwise would never listen to it. You saw some of this with the Beyoncé “country” album as well, Cowboy Carter.

But again, Debí Tirar Más Fotos is just going to be too inaccessible to US audiences to see White American housewives listening to it in rebellion. It’s fair to ask what Bad Bunny will perform during the Super Bowl halftime though. It might be more of the rootsy/traditional songs from Debí Tirar Más Fotos. But it could also be mostly his big crossover hits.

Bad Bunny isn’t Latin culture taking over American culture as some have feared. The American music consumer is too shallow for that to happen. That doesn’t mean there aren’t some dance clubs outside of Latin communities slipping Bad Bunny songs into the mix or something. But these are isolated instances.

Ultimately, the inclusion of Bad Bunny in the Super Bowl Halftime Show is the ultimate move of cynical American capitalism on the part of the NFL. It’s all about the potential revenue of extending the NFL’s footprint into Latin America as opposed to attempting to take over American culture with Latin music. Bad Bunny is simply the vessel for all of this. Listening through Debí Tirar Más Fotos, that’s what you conclude.

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