Earlier this year, Spanish-speaking reggaeton sensation Bad Bunny gave the opening performance at the 65th Grammy Awards, singing his two hits “El Apagón” and “Después de la Playa” off his 2022 studio album Un Verano Sin Ti. However, his millions of Spanish-speaking fans were not able to get proper closed captioning for the moment.
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Simply captioning “singing in non-English” during the broadcast, the Grammys were unable to properly provide the song lyrics for viewers, which became a viral point of contention for Bad Bunny fans. Now, the 29-year-old has finally shared his thoughts on the situation.
“It’s ugly to say that I saw it as normal,” Bad Bunny told Vanity Fair in an interview published Tuesday (September 12). “Then it was like, wow, wait a minute, what the hell? Why don’t they have someone? Knowing that I was going to be there. I sing for those who want to listen to me and those who understand me.”
Later in the ceremony, Bad Bunny would actually take home a Grammy for Best Música Urbana Album. However, this would be the only award he would win in the three categories he was nominated for, which included Album of the Year as well. Harry Styles’ Harry’s House would actually beat out Un Verano Sin Ti, which Bad Bunny claims he was okay with at the time.
“It wasn’t because I didn’t feel I was deserving or because I thought I couldn’t win. It was because I don’t really want to hear myself,” he told Vanity Fair. “I know I was going to get emotional. It would have been powerful and hard, dealing with that pride.”
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But, as time went on and he gave it more thought, Bad Bunny actually aligned with his fans’ opinion that he should have won the AOTY Grammy, adding to his gripe with the Grammys when it comes to Spanish speakers.
“Maybe they weren’t ready for a Spanish-language album to win the big prize,” he said. “I didn’t even feel like [album of the year] had been stolen from me until the media started saying [it] and I saw that everybody thought I deserved the prize and everybody thought it was a robbery… That’s when they kind of convinced me and I said, ‘Well, yes, it was a robbery then.'”
If you’ll recall, Bad Bunny ran into a bit of trouble for this post-Grammys when he performed at Coachella, as the screen behind him displayed a tweet that disparaged Styles. “benito could do ‘as it was’ but harry could never do ‘el apagaon,’” the tweet read.
Bad Bunny would soon apologize for this, though, explaining that he had no control over the display screen behind him during his set.
Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images for Roc Nation
