Photo by Harry Howe/Getty Images
Bad Bunny is weighing in on the Grammys’ closed captioning controversy.
During the live broadcast of the 2023 ceremony, CBS captioned the Puerto Rican superstar’s performance of “El Apagón” and “Después De La Playa” as “[SINGING IN NON-ENGLISH]." Not only that, but they similarly used he caption “[SPEAKING IN NON-ENGLISH]” during his bilingual acceptance speech for the "Best Música Urbana Album” award, which led many fans to call out CBS for being "disrespectful" and "racist."
As a result, CBS quickly added Spanish language closed captioning to the West Coast rebroadcast, as well as on-demand replays. However, the incident still bothers Bad Bunny, who shared his own thoughts on the blunder via his new cover story for Vanity Fair.
"So fucked up,” Bad Bunny said of the incident. That said, he also said he didn’t immediately understand the implications of what had happened, adding that "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?," he said. "Knowing that I was going to be there.…” Bad Bunny then pivoted, “I sing for those who want to listen to me and those who understand me.”
Bad Bunny then pivoted, “I sing for those who want to listen to me and those who understand me.”
Elsewhere in the interview, the star also touched on the moment when Harry Styles's Harry's House won “Album of the Year” over Bad Bunny’s critically acclaimed record, Un Verano Sin Ti.
“Maybe they weren’t ready for a Spanish-language album to win the big prize,” he theorized, though he said that he “didn’t even feel like [Album of the Year] had been stolen from me until the media started saying [it].”
“I saw that everybody thought I deserved the prize and everybody thought it was a robbery," Bad Bunny said. "That’s when they kind of convinced me, and I said, ‘Well, yes, it was a robbery then.’”
This isn’t the first time Bad Bunny has spoken out against the controversy, as he previously called the mishap “crap” in an interview for Time’s first all-Spanish cover and called on the Grammys to change their system.
You can read Bad Bunny’s entire Vanity Fair interview here.
