21 hours ago, hardtack said:

…because that exemplified precisely what a pregame/halftime show should be! They were able to present something that not only gave those present a fantastic experience, but that was also designed with the home viewing audience in mind. While the crowd got a well staged live show, for us at home It was like watching a crazy good music video clip.

I’d never heard of Bad Bunny until all of Trump’s ramblings, and people being all upset over the fact his performance would be in Spanish (he’s from Peurto Rico), but wow, if that was typical of what he does, those going to his shows during his tour here are in for a real treat; he was phenomenal!! As were Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin.

Who cares American bulltish, can’t we just be Australians for a day?

21 hours ago, hardtack said:

…because that exemplified precisely what a pregame/halftime show should be!

Really? I thought it was rubbish

4 hours ago, Oxdee said:

Strange choice to have a performance all in Spanish considering it’s an English speaking country. No one understood what he was saying. There would be an uproar here if a singer decided to sing songs all in Greek or Italian

45 Million Americans speak Spanish. Bad Bunny is Puerto Rican. All Puerto Rican’s are American.

As someone who used to live in the US it always makes me laugh at the Australian perception of America. It’s an incredibly diverse place. They have a broken electoral college system, but don’t mistake it for total ignorance.

When I think about the US I often think about Yeats’ poem The Second Coming… ‘The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity’.

I think about that line a lot actually. It’s the root problem.

3 hours ago, BDA said:

Never heard of bad bunny but I'm sure his political views are just as tedious as kid rocks.

Personally, i prefer my favoured artists to stay away from politics. I liked early U2 music, but jesus wept, Bono is such a dose i find it hard to separate him from the music.

Early non-political U2 music... like Sunday Bloody Sunday?

The design of the show for the crowd would have to be the worst ever done, anywhere. If you look what people at the ground could see in other social media posts, it was [censored], they couldn't see anything as it was made for TV and the big screen.

As for the song etc, not my style, maybe with subtitles I could have followed it better. But thats his thing, singlng Spanish only and wanted they wanted. (some lyrics would have causes a scandal if sung in English apparently)

but lots of trees etc blocking what was happening was poor idea.

As for the alternate half time show, what a bunch of tossers.

Edited 6 hours ago6 hr by darkhorse72

30 minutes ago, gs77 said:

Early non-political U2 music... like Sunday Bloody Sunday?

way too political for me

1 hour ago, binman said:

Did you go AshMac?

I didn't obviously, but that's exactly what i thought watching - ie it would have been horrible watching it live. You wouldn't have been able to see anything with all the sugar cane and the rest of the palaver. It's so obviously not for the crowd at the game, but rather for people watching on TV, Youtube etc etc.

I was there and you're correct - it very obviously is not for the crowd at the game. All I could see was people dressed up as trees!

22 hours ago, hardtack said:

…because that exemplified precisely what a pregame/halftime show should be! They were able to present something that not only gave those present a fantastic experience, but that was also designed with the home viewing audience in mind. While the crowd got a well staged live show, for us at home It was like watching a crazy good music video clip.

I’d never heard of Bad Bunny until all of Trump’s ramblings, and people being all upset over the fact his performance would be in Spanish (he’s from Peurto Rico), but wow, if that was typical of what he does, those going to his shows during his tour here are in for a real treat; he was phenomenal!! As were Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin.

So you want the AFL half time entertainment performed in a foreign language?

1 hour ago, lorn said:

Really? I thought it was rubbish

I liked it, you didn’t…no big deal.

28 minutes ago, Sydee said:

So you want the AFL half time entertainment performed in a foreign language?

I really couldn’t care less to be honest, although I’m not sure how you came to that conclusion. But while we’re going there, how did you feel about the Grand Old Flag being sung in the Woiwurrung language of the Wurundjeri people, at the 2019 AFL Indigenous Round?

1 hour ago, The heart beats true said:

45 Million Americans speak Spanish. Bad Bunny is Puerto Rican. All Puerto Rican’s are American.

As someone who used to live in the US it always makes me laugh at the Australian perception of America. It’s an incredibly diverse place. They have a broken electoral college system, but don’t mistake it for total ignorance.

When I think about the US I often think about Yeats’ poem The Second Coming… ‘The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity’.

I think about that line a lot actually. It’s the root problem.

So 15% of your national audience understood what he was saying. Enough said

44 minutes ago, Sydee said:

So you want the AFL half time entertainment performed in a foreign language?

Exactly.. please tell me how many people want to hear a a singer singing in Chinese considering 12% of Australia has Chinese heritage…

1 minute ago, Oxdee said:

So 15% of your national audience understood what he was saying. Enough said

Well, in all fairness, I’d say that maybe less than 2% of those watching Kid Rock would have understood what he was saying.

1 hour ago, The heart beats true said:

45 Million Americans speak Spanish. Bad Bunny is Puerto Rican. All Puerto Rican’s are American.

As someone who used to live in the US it always makes me laugh at the Australian perception of America. It’s an incredibly diverse place. They have a broken electoral college system, but don’t mistake it for total ignorance.

When I think about the US I often think about Yeats’ poem The Second Coming… ‘The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity’.

I think about that line a lot actually. It’s the root problem.

45 million Americans speak Spanish as their first language - another 15 million speak Spanish as a second language. So, minimum 60 million Americans, aprox 20 percent of the population speak Spanish.

And that doesn't include the millions who live in cities and regions that have big Latino communities that have basic grasp of Spanish (i spent a bit of time in New Mexico and heaps of non-Latinos i met could understand, and speak a little, Spanish).

Hell, Bosch speaks Spanish!

Edited 5 hours ago5 hr by binman

1 hour ago, BDA said:

way too political for me

growing up in Ireland in the 70s, I think it's fair enough to sing about your life experiences

U2s music pre '93 was great but agree Bono got way to big for his boots and needed to learn to STFU

5 hours ago, hardtack said:

I have no issue with politics in music as after all, that’s what music was in the days of the bards and traveling minstrels. Even in the 20th century, artists like Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and many more too numerous to count, were all political.

Fair comment

I note you reference to an older generation of musicians. They expressed their politics through their music. Which I’m fine with. And I get the sense they meant what they sang about. I don’t get that sense from modern musicians. I’ve picked on bono because he can’t walk past a microphone without pontificating, yet he has some very questionable tax structures in place.

i guess its the hypocrisy that gets on my nerves

10 minutes ago, DubDee said:

growing up in Ireland in the 70s, I think it's fair enough to sing about your life experiences

U2s music pre '93 was great but agree Bono got way to big for his boots and needed to learn to STFU

fair. i was being facetious with my previous comment

Bob Geldof is another who should learn to STFU

I like it because it causes so much angst to the orange clown and his intellectually challenged redcaps. I reckon Stephen Miller would throw his toys out of the bath just thinking about someone singing in Spanish in his pearly white vision of America.

Edited 4 hours ago4 hr by Roost it far

“You don’t know what it’s like to be on the high seas with two hundred girls

When the flight attendant goes d wn on you in the sky.”

Thankfully the underage kids didn’t understand this line..

On 09/02/2026 at 17:28, dazzledavey36 said:

No i wasn't. This has nothing to do with any previous AFL performance

And yes i am being serious. I could ask you the same question in how you came to conclusion that was actually a great half time performance.

It was horrid.

Looks like i wasn't the only one who thought so too.

What's the bet most of the posters you showed have white hoods...

6 hours ago, binman said:

Agree with much of the above.

One quibble - Bad Bunny IS mainstream.

He's not some obscure; niche woke artist that the NFL put on as some sort of statement. As i have noted he is the BIGGEST ARTIST IN THE WORLD.

As RPFC noted the NFL are a massive, massive business. The biggest sporting organization in the world, they generate more than $23 BILLION every year. It is untouchable.

The silly MAGA boycotts and alternative half time shows are water off a duck's back - in fact as i noted the NFL would love all ythe faux outrage because it's free publicity. As they could care less about losing the MAGA crowd, which for all the pathetic snowflake bleating, they won't anyway.

The NFL is aggressively looking to expand into foreign markets and make NFL an international sport. Next season they are playing nine regular season games, for points, internationally, including one at the MCG. Another is in Brazil. They are looking at having a team permanently based in Mexico City.

The NFL choose Bad Bunny solely because it was a very smart business decision - who better to penetrate international markets and drive brand recognition than the world most popular, most streamed musician?

As i predicted yesterday, the Bad Bunny (and Lady Gaga and Ricky martin) half time show had more viewers (140 million views and still climbing) than any previous show - just shading last year's artist that caused such angst among the MAGA snowflakes, Kendrick Lamar. In a world where attention is currency that's very good business.

As for the show being in Spanish? More than 60 million Americans (including Bad Bunny) speak Spanish as either their first or second language - nearly a fifth of the American population.

That's exactly right Binman he's the hottest artist in America and world. Very much mainstream.

I probably should have said "the mainstream that traditional fans expect" or are comfortable with.

The Spanish thing doesn't surprise me one bit in California as a lot of them are fluent.

Great show and good to see the NFL thumb the nose at MAGA even if indirectly.

8 hours ago, Oxdee said:

Great message but no one understood a word of it… pretty much sums it up

Reductive post.

First of all, I didn't say no-one understood a word of it. You're deliberately misquoting me. There are 60 million Spanish speakers in the US, not to mention the millions of Spanish speakers around the world who would have watched.

As for the "message", communication is much, much more than just words. Everybody knows full well what he was saying and what this was about, which is why there's a backlash from the usual suspects.

8 hours ago, Oxdee said:

Strange choice to have a performance all in Spanish considering it’s an English speaking country. No one understood what he was saying. There would be an uproar here if a singer decided to sing songs all in Greek or Italian

What, like opera?

My #1 most listened to artist for the last decade is Rosalia - can understand little of what she sings (she uses 13 different languages on her most recent album) but there’s no denying the emotion of her delivery

I have no opinion at all about the show itself except that if it gets up Trump's nose that's fine by me, but I hate the AFL shows. As always, the AFL demonstrates it does not believe in its own product, by refusing to accept that some people go to the football for the purpose of watching the football.

The Superbowl has the advantage of an extended half time break ( if we did that we would lose the advantage that the fitter team deservedly has) and huge funds - but it still detracts from the focus in the game.

If we must have entertainment, the Grand Final sprint would be fine.

52 minutes ago, whatwhat say what said:

What, like opera?

My #1 most listened to artist for the last decade is Rosalia - can understand little of what she sings (she uses 13 different languages on her most recent album) but there’s no denying the emotion of her delivery

Yes.. let’s see the backlash if an opera was played at the grand final.