Bad Bunny Called Out The Grammys For Failing To Provide Proper Captioning For His Performance, Even Though They Knew He “Was Going To Be There”
Bad Bunny has addressed the "Non-English" caption controversy stemming from his performance at the 2023 Grammys earlier this year.
A quick refresher: Bad Bunny, who hails from Puerto Rico, made history when his album, Un Verano Sin Ti, became the first Spanish-language album to be nominated for Album of the Year at this year's Grammys.
Harry Styles ultimately took home the award (which became another hotly debated topic).
Bad Bunny also performed a mash-up of the Spanish-language songs “El Apagón” and “Después de la Playa” at the event, in which both songs are sung in Spanish — but instead of providing proper closed captions for the performance, the live broadcast captioned his singing as “[SPEAKING NON-ENGLISH]” and “[SINGING IN NON-ENGLISH].”
Ok #Grammys inviting Bad Bunny and not getting a bilingual CC transcriber that just typed SPEAKING/SINGING NON-ENGLISH pic.twitter.com/u9DqcsD3EH
— Armando Tinoco (@armietinoco) February 6, 2023
Rep. Robert Garcia of California addressed the incident with Variety and spoke about how Bad Bunny's performance and speech were supposed to "highlight a point of historic inclusivity" but instead, the lack of properly closed captions was a "disappointing failure" on the network's end.
Bad Bunny also took home Best Música Urbana Album at the 2023 Grammys.
It was a fiasco. (Even 50 Cent gave his thoughts.)
“The Grammys need to be check about this. Fvcking Bad Bunny bigger than everybody right now and you can’t pay for close caption. Wtf is this speaking Non-English”. — 50 Cent on Instagram. pic.twitter.com/NtZRmXZumX
— Access Bad Bunny (@AccessBadBunny) February 9, 2023
Twitter: @AccessBadBunny Gary Gershoff/WireImage