Bad Bunny
ENGIE Stadium, Sydney
Saturday, February 28th
Bad Bunny, aka 31-year-old Puerto Rican rapper, singer and actor Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, has a lot of reasons to be joyful right now. Despite derision and outright xenophobia from President Trump and his MAGA cronies, Bad Bunny’s recent Super Bowl half time show was a feel-good triumph that was watched by a record 135.4 million viewers worldwide, and his most recent album Debí Tirar Más Fotos (“I Should’ve Taken More Photos”) took home Album of the Year at the 68th Grammys, making it the first Spanish-language work to receive that honour. Not bad for the first eight days of February.
Add billions of streams, record concert ticket sales and a blossoming acting career into the mix, and you’d have to assume that Bad Bunny must be ready to burst into a planet-sized supernova of joy ready to engulf everyone around it. Luckily for his fans – 45,000 plus of whom fill ENGIE Stadium in Sydney tonight for the first of two sold-out concerts – that’s precisely what Bad Bunny does in a live setting.
Arriving on stage in a crisp, pale suit and sunglasses that likely cost the same as the average car, Bad Bunny attempts to absorb the roars from the crowd and chants of his birth name “Benito” with a cool detachment, but as that joy spreads like wildfire throughout the stadium, he can’t help but drop the facade and break into a wide smile at the love being directed his way.
From there, the good vibes go into overdrive. Bad Bunny starts the show by bringing his Puerto Rican heritage to the forefront via plena ensemble Los Pleneros de la Cresta, who, along with a swathe of other musicians and back-up singers, join Bad Bunny for an ecstatic version of “La Mudanza” that practically demands the audience to get up and dance.
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Adding to the spectacle are a sea of co-ordinated coloured lights firing off from the crowd, omitted via “camera” props given to attendees to hang around their necks.
From there, it’s a dizzying blend of traditional Latin instrumentation (congas, pandereta pleneras and a Spanish guitar-adjacent cuatro) bringing life to reggaeton favourite Callaíta from 2022 album Un Verano Sin Ti (“A Summer Without You”), as well as several highlights from Debi Tirar Mas Fotos. Those include “Pittoro de Coco”, salsa scorcher “Baile Inolvidable” and dembow party-starter “Nuevayol”, which artfully samples El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico’s 1975 salsa classic Un Verano En Nueva York.
Image: DL Webb Smith
The old-meets-new opening section of the show is so strong that the gig could end there and everyone would go home happy, but it turns out Bad Bunny is only just getting started.
After a humorous video where Bad Bunny, in one of the only moments he speaks English, tells us the Australian delicacies he’s sampled since being here (Vegemite, Tim Tams and chicken parmie, among them) via a CGI Puerto Rican crested toad named “Concho”, the action moves to the opposite end of the stadium, where a second stage dubbed “La Casita” sits. Essentially an authentic Puerto Rican-style homestead coloured hot pink, it’s set up to look like a buzzing house party swarming with bump ’n’ grinding revellers.
The location switch sees Bad Bunny ditch the suit for casual streetwear – a baseball cap, shorts and an Adidas jacket – and get firmly into his rap bag, where he tears through over a dozen booty-shaking hits that transform the stadium into the world’s biggest nightclub, complete with a dazzling array of lasers and fireworks.
Highlights include “Neverita”, where the unlikely combination of reverb-heavy guitar and alternating trap and house beats combine into the perfect tropical cocktail, anti-misogyny banger “Yo Perreo Solo” (“I Twerk Alone”), the Bond-score-meets-trap of “Monaco”, and reggaeton belter “Safaera”, which manages to flip a sample from Missy Elliott’s “Get Ur Freak On” into something equally as infectious as the source material.
Although only around 0.7 per cent of the Australian population speaks Spanish, it’s heartening to see that most of the crowd tonight clearly do, with them regularly reacting to Bad Bunny’s Spanish language-only banter with eruptions of cheers and applause.
Image: DL Webb Smith
Los Pleneros de la Cresta make a welcome return for “Café Con Ron” and an epic round of pandereta plenera drumming before the action returns to the main stage, where Bad Bunny, now in trademark furry aviator hat, stands poised to deploy another barrage of bangers to an already well-fed and satisfied audience.
Horn-heavy sexy slow jams “Ojitos Lindos” and “La Canción”, released as a duet with J Balvin in 2019, make way for thrilling protest anthem “El Apagón”, which explodes into a thumping dancefloor rave up in the second half. For dessert? The nostalgia-laced gem “DTMF” and reggaeton banger “Eoo”, which ensures everyone is up and moving right until the show’s very last second.
Thirty-plus songs over two-and-a-half hours may sound utterly exhausting, but in Bad Bunny’s capable hands, it’s an engrossing, big-budget spectacle that features so much visual panache and so many rich flavours of Latin music that you can’t help but be enraptured from start to finish, regardless of whether you speak Spanish or not. The impeccable vibes, it turns out, are more than enough to get your hips shaking and your heart cracked wide open.
Taking aim at Trump’s ICE goons, Bad Bunny proclaimed “The only thing that is more powerful than hate is love” at the Grammys on February 1st, and it’s a statement that is demonstrably put into action at this unforgettable debut Australian show. As a celebration of Puerto Rican culture, music, history and Bad Bunny himself – a true superstar to his core – tonight’s stellar performance is as generous a sharing of joy as you’re ever likely to receive at a live show.
