Let’s begin with a little quiz.
Fill in the blank: the “legitimate heir to Frank Sinatra, Michael Jackson and Beyonce” is _____.
Tough one, right? Taylor Swift, maybe? Lady Gaga? John Legend? Slim Whitman?
All wrong. According to the once-esteemed Time magazine, the answer is … Bad Bunny.
Yes, THE Bad Bunny.
In fact, Mr. Bunny is of such great importance that he is on the cover of the latest issue of Time. Mr. Bunny now joins a pantheon of world figures who have made Time’s once coveted cover, people like Einstein, Roosevelt, Gandhi and everybody else in the 20th century who mattered. It appears the standard of who is cover-worthy has dipped in the 21st century.
According to Time, Bad Bunny “bent global pop culture to his will – by refusing to compromise on anything”. That’s one tough Bunny.
If you, like me, are unfamiliar with the oeuvre of Mr. Bunny, let me explain.
Bad Bunny (real name Benito Antonio Martinez Ocassio, which could have just been abbreviated to BAMO) is the biggest “artist” in the world, says Time. His album was the top-selling in the world, beating out Taylor Swift and Harry Styles. His tour raked in $435 million last year. His videos have racked up a billion views on YouTube. For three years, he has been Spotify’s most streamed artist. Time says he did all this while refusing to compromise in anything, including “the dresses and nail polish he wears”.
And he hasn’t recorded a single song in English.
No form of entertainment writing is more prone to hyperbole than music writing, and Time goes all out. “He is a master aural chemist,” the article gushes, who creates “cutting edge music that resonates at the club, on the beach, or at home on a lazy Sunday afternoon.”
Time magazine stopped being culturally relevant about 20 years ago (Time once had a circulation of 20 million; today, it’s about one million), so putting a pop star on the cover comes across as a sad attempt at being hip, like grandma shopping at Aritzia (which, the internet tells me, is a popular place for 20-ish women to shop). It’s just, well, sad. What’s left of Time’s readership is not interested in Bad Bunny. Bad hips, bad knees, sure. But not Bad Bunny.
Popular music today is unimaginative, repetitive, manufactured, all glitter and gloss with minimal musical skill. But I like to keep an open mind, hoping there might be a diamond in the dross, so from time to time I’ll check out a new performer.
So, I listened to some Bad Bunny.
And guess what!
He’s terrible. I’d rather listen to Bugs Bunny. He cannot sing. He has no range. The songs are relentlessly the same, with a beat that drills into your brain.
To be fair to the esteemed Mr. Bunny, I am old. When Elvis Presley burst onto the scene, old timers derided his singing, his style, his sexually suggestive (for the time) hip swiveling. Frank Sinatra initially described rock as “sung, played and written … by cretinous goons”. (Frank eventually came around, singing with Elvis on a TV special.) So, maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m just an old guy stuck in the past, an old man who can’t adjust to changes in music.
Naaaah. Bad Bunny is, well, bad. At least he’s honest.
In This Corner 