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Despite being one of the most streamed musicians in the world, Bad Bunny had never had a solo UK Top 10 hit – until now.
The Puerto Rican musician has attracted a huge number of curious new fans – and jubilant preexisting ones – after last week’s Super Bowl, where he performed in a half-time show described by many people as one of the greatest in NFL history.
His album Debí Tirar Más Fotos – which won album of the year at the Grammys this month – jumped 42 places to No 2 in this week’s Top 40, beating its previous high of No 13, while the single DTMF rose 39 places to No 4.
Bad Bunny has been in the UK singles Top 20 twice before as a guest artist, on tracks by Cardi B and Drake. Two other tracks from Debí Tirar Más Fotos are in this week’s Top 20, with Nuevayol at No 15 and Baile Inolvidable at No 20. In the UK, where non-English language hits are rare, an artist having three Spanish-language songs in the Top 20 at once is likely to be unprecedented.
Bad Bunny’s half-time show was a global sensation: according to NFL and Ripple Analytics, its 128.2 million viewers made it the fourth most watched Super Bowl half-time show in US television history (behind Kendrick Lamar’s show last year, Michael Jackson in 1993 and Usher in 2024), while more than half of views on social media came from outside the US.
Rightwingers had criticised the booking, and after the show Donald Trump called it “absolutely terrible, one of the worst … a slap in the face to our country”. But there was an outpouring of admiration elsewhere, from political figures such as Gavin Newsom and Meghan McCain to a five-star Guardian review by Stefanie Fernández, who wrote that Bad Bunny “reminded so many of us of the love, the community and the absolute joy that we create together every day in spite of everything else”.
Elsewhere in the charts, Taylor Swift jumps 14 places to No 1 with her single Opalite, boosted by the launch of its music video starring Graham Norton and the guests from his talkshow on the week Swift appeared, who included Domhnall Gleeson and Lewis Capaldi.
Olivia Dean’s The Art of Loving is at No 1 in the album chart for the seventh non-consecutive week, having not left the Top 5 since its release in September. J Cole is the highest new entry at No 3 with what is billed as his final album, The Fall Off.
The Official Charts Company has launched a new classical album chart this week, featuring the albums “released in the past 12 months that are making an impact across the UK, ranked by UK sales and streams”. Topping it in its first week is 21-year-old South Korean pianist Yunchan Lim, with an album of recordings of Bach’s Goldberg Variations recorded live in Carnegie Hall.
