Let me be straight right here and say I simply completed watching Unhealthy Bunny’s Tremendous Bowl halftime present and since I’m supposed to jot down down a number of ideas, lengthy story brief: Holy smokes. How may you not swoon over that? I even felt a chill or two.
It was rousing, humorous, surprisingly touching. Perceive, I really like Tremendous Bowl halftime exhibits, however often as a result of they’re bonkers. For many years, they went past nuts. Till a number of (Prince in 2007; Madonna in 2012; Beyoncé in 2013) transcended nuts. Unhealthy Bunny’s was nearer to a cultural second, a paradigm shift, a reimagining of how a lot a halftime spectacle can resemble artwork. It was a love letter to residence and a hand prolonged outward, inviting you to bounce with him. No query, right here was one of many extra comprehensible halftimes.
In reality, whereas Child Rock and his tremendous mates have been on Turning Level USA’s social media and YouTube channels enjoying an alternate halftime present in protest of the NFL handing its official halftime to a Spanish-speaking artist, Unhealthy Bunny was professing, in each Spanish and English, the facility of neighborhood, the that means of togetherness.
However once more, I really like all halftime exhibits.
I can’t be trusted with such essential opinions. Most likely neither are you able to, and should you refused to look at as a result of Unhealthy Bunny sings in Spanish and also you thought you wouldn’t perceive what he was saying, let me elevate you a Tremendous Bowl halftime in 1970 starring Lionel Hampton on vibraphone, a recreation of the Battle of New Orleans (with a subject of useless and dying troopers) and the singing of Carol Channing. Certainly, one of many stranger Tremendous Bowl halftime exhibits ever, precisely 40 years in the past, the 12 months the Chicago Bears destroyed my beloved Patriots by 36 factors, was so creatively complicated, the parents of Up With Folks — pure uncut Tremendous Bowl halftime kitsch — cuisinarted “Born in the usA.” right into a vanilla mash of Huey Lewis and Kenny Loggins, after which, whiplashing once more, tacked on a be aware that the actual star of the night was Martin Luther King, Jr.
In the case of Tremendous Bowl halftimes, you’ll be able to’t make these items up.
Principally as a result of it looks like they make these items up about 20 minutes earlier than halftime.
See, Tremendous Bowl halftimes are like these outdated Stefon sketches with Invoice Hader on “Saturday Evening Reside,” squirreling collectively non-sequiturs and calling it a celebration. In 2011: The Black Eyed Peas, Slash and Usher. In 1995: Tony Bennett, the Miami Sound Machine and Indiana Jones. In 1988: Chubby Checker, the Rockettes and 88 grand pianos. Hell, the primary Tremendous Bowl halftime ever in 1967 starred males flying round in jetpacks, marching bands and 300 pigeons.
Unhealthy Bunny’s efficiency, as compared, did what smarter halftime exhibits do: In addition to its over-the-moon spectacle, apart from its veritable recreation of your complete island of Puerto Rico, apart from the inevitable and literal fireworks, it was carried out in a singular voice —not in contrast to what Prince did, or what Tom Petty managed in 2008 with out dancers or conceptual flash.
Unhealthy Bunny — and should you listened to his previous few albums, you anticipated this— was largely about music, and connections, and a well-recognized love gleaned from traditions. There actually was no stage. There was, quite, a forged of tons of, dancing collectively and spreading aside, amongst tall grasses, outdated males enjoying dominos, avenue distributors, a nail salon, utility employees dancing from their phone poles, rows of brass horns and a full string part — the final led by Giancarlo Guerrero, the new conductor of Chicago’s Grant Park Music Pageant, a Costa Rican native.
Assume dizzying, however in the very best of how.
For these new to Unhealthy Bunny, some context: His identify caught due to an outdated household picture, an image of a younger Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio sporting a bunny costume, glowering. His music, holding a foot sooner or later and the previous, is homage to Puerto Rican traditions, heavy on salsa, with notes of hip hop, huge band, indie rock and reggaeton. It may not be your world, nevertheless it sounds just like the world. And sometimes, it erupts like a avenue social gathering — regardless of his solemn singing voice coating all the pieces in bittersweet, his phrasing alternating with dramatic gasps, as in that case bereft he doesn’t discover the social gathering behind him.
Some argue that he’s the preferred recording artist on this planet, and in that case, I’d guess that his secret is how informal and unpretentious his disparate combine sounds, how near the bottom it feels. Because the New Yorker put it: “The larger he will get, the extra native he appears.” His collection of concert events celebrating Puerto Rico final 12 months turned such a world occasion that Moody’s barely raised its monetary outlook for the island.
His halftime present was a kaleidoscopic extension of that triumph, a sunny snapshot of the island imported to the 50-yard line, largely eradicating something like a standard stage, spreading dancing and musicians outward and evenly, inserting Unhealthy Bunny on the middle of a continuing swirl of motion.
What struck was how healthful a Unhealthy Bunny halftime could possibly be. How may loud chunks of the viewers have appeared threatened by this?
However then, as a bellwether of how gradual we could be to embrace social change, one may do worse than watch the previous 59 years of Tremendous Bowl halftimes. For many years, it was a nationwide bathroom break. Within the Nineteen Seventies, throughout the heyday of Led Zeppelin and Earth, Wind & Hearth, halftime was a bouillabaisse of marching bands and performers a decade or extra previous relevance. There have been salutes to Duke Ellington and Outdated Hollywood.
The template for years of halftimes was cemented by an occasions director named Tommy Walker, the person behind the Primary Road parade at Disneyland. With out intending, even because the Vietnam Battle lingered on and the nationwide temper was grim, halftime turned basic Americana, a telling combination of self-parody and pleasure.
Nothing modified till the 1991 halftime, anchored by New Children on the Block. Amazingly, that was the primary halftime that includes a up to date hitmaker, albeit inserted into Disney’s “It’s a Small World” theme.
The next 12 months, Gloria Estefan was the halftime star.
The 12 months after that, Michael Jackson.
And so forth. Tremendous Bowl halftime is now watched by an estimated 100 million folks, far and away probably the most seen musical efficiency of the 12 months, if not at all times probably the most remembered.
Unhealthy Bunny’s Tremendous Bowl halftime present in photographs
After all, for the reason that Nineteen Nineties, it hasn’t at all times been a easy street. (Who instructed the Rolling Stones to play a brand new track? In 2006?) Because the pageantry of Unhealthy Bunny reminded, possibly one of the simplest ways to strategy a Tremendous Bowl halftime is by mixing the old-school with a number of new. Dr. Dre and Eminem and Kendrick Lamar (2022) reworked the calcified revue halftime right into a rousing survey of 2000s rap. Prince reached even additional again for inspiration, discovering room to incorporate the Florida A&M College marching band.
Unhealthy Bunny introduced on Woman Gaga and Ricky Martin, seamlessly, with out stopping to genuflect, the temper shifting from sweaty to open-hearted, then lastly, with Unhealthy Bunny dancing off the sector, singing into the digicam, a livid insistence on decency itself. You don’t have to talk Spanish to know when somebody is standing his floor.
Unhealthy Bunny’s powder-weight identify suggests a flash-in-the-pan, an artist-of-the-week; should you by no means heard of the man till you heard he was enjoying halftime, maybe the announcement seemed like disrespect of the at all times, ahem, dignified halftime custom. However right here was a efficiency of such pleasure, class and self-determination, it struck a louder be aware: This political second will cross sooner or later; Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio won’t.
cborrelli@chicagotribune.com
