Recency bias can be a real thing, of course. Something that happened 50 years ago might be even better than something that just happened in the same category five minutes ago. We simply remember the more recent bit better. That could be the case with Bad Bunny's halftime performance at Super Bowl LX.
Maybe. Or, well...possibly not.
The truth is that no matter what came before, Bad Bunny would compare to it favorably. Prince put on the all-time Super Bowl halftime show. He played in a thunderstorm in Miami and turned it into the kind of performance that wasn't just elite for a halftime show, but any live event. The Purple One is probably untouchable in terms of the best Super Bowl shows ever.
Bad Bunny's Super Bowl LX halftime show already ranking highly
But Bad Bunny? He put on a whole cultural event in less than 14 minutes. There was a wedding, a celebration of Latin cultures, Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin sang, and through it all, the Puerto Rican icon danced, swayed, spoke, and sang in sheer perfection.
Maybe many didn't understand what he was saying, unless one spoke Spanish, but that wasn't needed. We weren't watching a poetry reading after all. We were watching a musical artist at his peak. Plus, music transcends language, race, culture, and political beliefs. It should anyway.
If the show upset some, that's on them, not on Bad Bunny. He was brilliant.
The website Looper has already produced a post-Bad Bunny list of the best Super Bowl halftime performances ever, and the Latin star comes in hot. Looper's Leo Noboru Lima ranks Bad Bunny second behind Prince.
Lima wrote, "...the second he threw down that football with 'Together we are America' written on it, it was clear that he'd made the ground shift underneath him," while rightfully pointing out that Benito Antonio MartÃnez Ocasio didn't try to be anything that he wasn't. In other words, the artist known as Bad Bunny was unique, fully in control of his realm, and energy personified.
To be sure, Lima's list is not recency bias, either. He has Diana Ross's 1996 show as the ninth-best performance. That might be a stretch, but the icon was fantastic.
The only real shame was not having U2's show in 2002 among the top five. They chose to fill in for Janet Jackson after she withdrew because the show came so soon after 9/11. U2 not only played a great 13 minutes, but also included the names of the 9/11 victims. It was beautiful, heartfelt, and needed.