Bad Bunny candidly addressed several of the headlines that have been surrounding his superstardom this year in a new interview with Vanity Fair.
Among the numerous topics discussed, the Puerto Rican singer touched on his loss for album of the year at the 2023 Grammys. Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti” broke countless records after its release last May, including making history as the first Spanish-language album nominated for album of the year. The album did not win in the category that also listed such heavyweights as Beyoncé’s “Renaissance,” Adele’s “30,” and Kendrick Lamar’s “Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers,” and instead, the crown went to Harry Styles’s “Harry’s House.”
Bunny said he was somewhat relieved that he didn’t win, as it “spared him an ego trip,” writes writer Michelle Ruiz. “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,” Bunny said. “I know I was going to get emotional. It would have been powerful and hard, dealing with that pride.”
He continued, “Maybe they weren’t ready for a Spanish-language album to win the big prize… 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.’”
Bunny still found the time to gush over Styles, describing his “Love on Tour” concert in Los Angeles as “brutal” and “killer.” Aside from awards, Bunny also offered very pointed words for the CBS-assisted Grammys telecast and its initial lack of Spanish captioning.
Instead of translating the performance or Bunny’s acceptance speech for best música urbana album on Feb. 5, closed captions simply read “non-English.” It sparked a fiery backlash that prompted the network to swiftly address the slip-up and by the time the Grammys were rebroadcast in primetime on the West Coast, the encore had updated Spanish language closed captioning for his opening performance.
Bunny told the publication that the entire thing was “so fucked up,” and said he “didn’t even realize what had happened at first.”
“It’s ugly to say that I saw it as normal. 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,” he said.
Elsewhere in the article, Ruiz suggests a new album from the hitmaker may be coming later this fall though neither Bunny nor his team confirmed that to be true.
“And now an album this fall, about which Martínez—a master of surprise reveals—is insistently coy (as is his publicist),” writes Ruiz.
“I am playing around and enjoying myself, letting go,” said Bunny. “I’m being inspired a lot by the music of the ’70s’—across genres, in both Spanish and English—’ but I’m not sure if this is going to shape my music, generally or just one song.”
