FINALLY intellectualizing Bad Bunny
FINALLY. This is the first installment in a short series about my favorite songs in Bad Bunny's new album, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS.
This is the first post in a short series about my favorite songs in Bad Bunny’s new album, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS. I’ve been really excited to share my thoughts about this album. Mostly, though, I’ve been wanting to let my non-Boricua friends and readers in on a little bit of the magic of Bad Bunny’s creative vision and why it’s genuinely transformed me as an artist.
The English translation of the album title is “I should have taken more pictures,” which gives you an idea of the nostalgic nature of the whole masterpiece.
Nostalgia is a huge theme throughout Bad Bunny’s music and lyrics, giving even his raunchiest party anthems an undertone of melancholy that you can’t quite put your finger on unless you sit down and really dissect the lyrics. It’s the perfect music to throw it back to AND cry to. Pretty brilliant, if you ask me.
Bad Bunny — or Benito, as we Boricuas like to call him — released his album Un Verano Sin Ti in 2022. It was romantically nostalgic and chock full of summer anthems yet bittersweet with elements of Puerto Rican cultural pride woven throughout.
One of the songs on that album, El Apagon, is an ode to the resiliency and liveliness of the Puerto Rican people despite the challenges they face. The word apagon is Puerto Rican slang for “power outage.” The use of the word in the song is an inside joke among Boricuas and a clever reference to our deeply flawed power grid, a result of our status as an under-resourced colony of the United States.
Still, El Apagon is one of the clubbiest, raunchiest (and I mean raunchiest) songs on the whole album.
To me, the foundational piece of his new album, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, is the story of an island looking back on better years; an island wary of an uncertain future.
Set against this backdrop, Benito looks back on his past relationships with regret and wistfulness at best, and petty spite at worst (which, of course, is still the BEST).
One of the most heartbreaking songs on the album, for example, is called LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii, which translates to “What Happened To Hawaii.”
The best way I can define the mood of that song: tropical grief. Heavy, humid storms and distant lightning. Rain pattering like tears on heavy, emerald leaves in El Yunque rainforest.
It’s beautiful, yet so gutting that I usually have to skip it if I’m casually listening.
(I will 100% analyze and share what LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii means to me in this newsletter with a full translation of lyrics, so stay tuned for that!)
Still, a twinge of optimism, hope, and resiliency shines through the cracks in each of his songs. I think this is partly why Puerto Ricans love him so much.
A spoken word section in one of his songs on DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS titled BOKeTE:
Gracia' a Dio', estoy vivo, eso es lo que importa
Yo me he enamora'o 515 vece', y contigo son 516
So eso no es na' nuevo
Toca seguir, pichar y olvidar
Y má' alante si hay que enamorarno' de nuevo, nos volvemo' a enamorar
Tú sabe' que a mí me gusta estar así, enamora'o
My translation:
Thank God, I’m alive, and that’s what matters
I’ve fallen in love five hundred and fifteen times
and with you, I’m going on five hundred and sixteen.
So, nothing new.
Just gotta keep going, keep trying and forgetting.
And if we end up having to fall in love again, then we fall in love again.
You know I like the feeling of it, anyway — being in love…
DISCLAIMER: This is not an official translation by any means, BUT in this series I intend to translate BB’s lyrics the way a spectacled scholar of Old English epic poetry might write a translation for the original Beowulf.
Anyway, it’s hard to describe the heavy feeling of homesickness and colonialist oppression felt by many of us in the Puerto Rican diaspora. Even writing this now, I’ve written and deleted multiple paragraphs of text trying to describe what it feels like. Frankly, I don’t think I have the words at the moment.
Maybe at some point I’ll be able to, but for now, Benito’s DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS will have to suffice. We’ll just have to do this the old fashioned Boricua way — dancing your way through the tough feelings and
THROWING
IT
BACK!
~for a cause~
Excited for this! Next post will be about BAILE INoLVIDABLE, my favorite song on the album. Get pumped.
Love,
Nat
