The last achievement of Bad Bunny is larger than one song at the No. 1 position. Any time that the Spanish-forward record “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” (“DtMF”) reached the top of the Billboard Hot 100, it further highlighted how a Spanish-forward song could become the cultural moment, and then become the mainstream standard in the United States. The song was the first Spanish-based song (mostly) to hit the top spot on the Hot 100, a marker in the sand for an all-genres chart where the radio trend has been traditionally dominated by English.
It was the chart jump that followed the Bad Bunny Super Bowl halftime set, which was proudly Spanish-language and Puerto Rican in its identity. The performance served to propel renewed focus on several songs simultaneously, making the halftime performance a launchpad, not just to “DtMF,” but a group of songs that shot up the U.S. charts together.
The title of “DtMF” was not the only one that was gaining altitude. During this time, both “Baile Inolvidable” and “Nuevayol” ascended to the upper portion of the Hot 100, with “Tití Me Preguntó” re-entering the chart as well-known old cuts of its repertoire were brought back, along with new material. This multi-song momentum was also in line with the broader narrative of Debi Tirar Más Fotos which is an album constructed on a throwback palette that references traditional style but remains squarely in Latin Urbano. In public words, Bad Bunny has termed the project as a tribute to Puerto Rico and Latino community as a whole, and the impact of the album is something communal and not personal. His speech at the Grammys acceptance awards showed that he stated, “There’s nothing we can’t do.” He further stated, that “I want to dedicate this award to all the people who had to leave their homeland to follow their dreams.”
The most dramatic manifestation of that surge to chart-watchers was in other places than the Hot 100. The streaming success of Bad Bunny went as far as the tallies of Streaming of Billboard that were tallies focused on Latin where consumption was difficult to overlook. He occupied every spot on the Latin Streaming Songs list in a full-week saturation that reflects how the listener is responding to the lists less as a tool of co-created programming than as a reflection of communal behavior in the act of listening. There were a number of old favorites reemerging with the present album tracks indicating a mixture of intensity of the new release and loyalty to the catalog. In other Latin charts, he filled the top spots, as well, which is a rarity with only one single artist dominating the airwaves.
The cultural ripple effect appeared in such a strange location in the process of the Super Bowl broadcast: a five-second conversation that catapulted a small company into a new era. A taco stand was going by the name Villa’s Tacos on the stage, and its owner, Victor Villa, had told us later the aftermath was immediate and overwhelming. They were round-the-clock, Villa said to USA TODAY Sports. “They’ve been the most tiring 72 hours of my life, but they’ve been some of the best 72 hours of my life.”
The latest “history” headline by Bad Bunny, then, lies at the boundary of charts, of language, of being visible: a first of the month hit that does not just represent fandom, but signifies a mainstream shift of the U.S. mainstream where Spanish lyrics are fully embraced, where a halftime stage can propel an album, a catalog, a neighborhood business all at the same time.
