When O’Neil Thomas found out that Bad Bunny was going to perform at the Super Bowl halftime show, he cued up “Tití Me Preguntó,” one of the star’s many club wreckers, and began fumbling through the lyrics aloud. “I’ve got to start learning some songs because I don’t want to be left out of the party,” Thomas, 28, recalled thinking.
He filmed the process for TikTok, giggling at his flubs and using his hands to accentuate the rhythmic cadence of the language. The resulting video was viewed more than 4 million times.
“My Spanish teacher has been Mr. Benito himself,” Thomas said, referring to Bad Bunny’s real name, Benito Martínez Ocasio. “I’m listening to his music as often as I can: If I’m cooking, if I’m at the gym, I’m bumping his stuff.”
When the star hosted “Saturday Night Live” in October, he told viewers who didn’t understand Spanish they had “four months to learn” the language. In fact, even before Bad Bunny’s challenge, a number of his fans had already embarked on this mission, hoping to at least level up to the point where they could shout along during halftime of Sunday’s Super Bowl showdown between the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks.
Duolingo hopped on the trend—the language-teaching app offered 1,000 new users four free months of instruction with the code “Benito.” More than 60% of those who signed up are still at it, according to a company spokesperson. Duolingo is also planning a larger marketing campaign tied to Bad Bunny’s halftime appearance; the company’s famous owl mascot was recently spotted dressed as the singer in the New York City subway.
“It’s better to enjoy music when you have a full grasp of the context of what he’s talking about, especially when it comes to some of his deeper songs,” said Amy Tiffany Cortés-McIntyre, 30, who started teaching her husband Spanish using Bad Bunny lyrics in early 2025.
Since Bad Bunny released his debut album in 2018, he has entranced millions of fans who don’t know a lick of Spanish. In 2025, he was the most streamed artist on Spotify for the fourth time, beating out Taylor Swift and the Weeknd. His latest release, “Debí Tirar Más Fotos,” was the fifth most popular album of the year in the U.S., according to the data company Luminate, landing ahead of luminaries like Kendrick Lamar and Sabrina Carpenter whose songs are in English.
These achievements helped upend the music industry’s long-held belief that singing in Spanish would limit artists’ reach and prevent them from conquering the U.S., the world’s biggest music market.
Some conservative commenters are upset that the latest Super Bowl performer doesn’t record in English. (In 2020, when Shakira and Jennifer Lopez headlined halftime, the show incorporated both Spanish and English, and Bad Bunny appeared as a guest.) The “Tití Me Preguntó” singer made light of the criticism on SNL, joking that “everyone is happy” about his selection.
Over the summer, Cortés-McIntyre was one of many fans who made the pilgrimage to San Juan to see Bad Bunny during his 31-date residency . In advance of the show—which turned out to be “probably the best concert I’ve ever been to”—she started tutoring her husband, Johnny McIntyre, in Spanish.
“I felt like it was a great way to teach him more about my roots,” said Cortés-McIntyre, who met her spouse on the sixth season of the hit Netflix series “Love Is Blind.” “Bad Bunny makes so many different references to the experience of being Puerto Rican, whether on the island or a part of the diaspora.”
Brianne Elliott, 25, has also been brushing up on her Spanish for months. In September, she saw a livestream of Bad Bunny’s final residency concert at Ray’s Bar on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. She was an instant convert: “This is sick.”
After she found out that the star would be gracing the Super Bowl stage, she posted a video of herself trying to master his lyrics. Although Elliott took Spanish in high school, she had barely spoken the language since graduating. Now she’s on a streak of practicing over 100 days, frequently posting clips of her progress online.
Thomas was surprised by the enthusiastic reaction to his “Tití Me Preguntó” video. Many commenters cheered him on, sharing stories of their own efforts to memorize the words to their favorite songs in other languages—often English. Some native Spanish speakers praised Thomas’s pronunciation.
With the Super Bowl rapidly approaching, Cortés-McIntyre’s lessons with her husband have picked up again. “He has a really good accent,” she noted with pride. “He said a line from a Bad Bunny song to me yesterday, because now he knows what it means.”
Write to Elias Leight at elias.leight@wsj.com
