The text came the morning after. Four words: You were well chosen. Miguel had been my direct line for the eight weeks before, and he isn't given to overstatement. Two months of work, hundreds of decisions, thirty-plus versions of a thirteen-minute show, and the line I keep going back to is that four-word text.
Miguel Gandelman called me back in December. He shared that he was about to sign a contract and wanted to make sure I was available. Of course my interest was piqued, and I asked who the artist was. That is when he dropped the punchline. Bad Bunny. Super Bowl performance. He was going to serve as the music director and wanted me to bring the vision to life in the mix. We have worked together plenty in the past, but this was an iconic first. There was absolutely no hesitation in my voice. I accepted immediately. This was going to be awesome... but more importantly, it was going to be significant.
We had roughly eight weeks to make it all come together.
The production audio side of the chain was mine. That meant every piece of the music Bad Bunny would perform to: all the underlying instrumentation, the prerecorded background vocals, the sound design, the risers, the deep impacts, the connective material that bridged one moment into the next. Everything underneath the lead vocal that the world would eventually hear on broadcast. The lead vocal itself, on the day, was a separate engineer's job.
What I built was the bed everything else sat on top of.
The work started immediately and didn't stop. Stems came in. Arrangements changed week over week. New songs got built from scratch. Old songs got pulled apart and reassembled. I had Sharaf Entwistle assisting on session management, which is its own kind of heroic work when the sessions are this big and the version count keeps climbing.
Building 13 Minutes
By the end I'd delivered over thirty distinct mixes of the show. Each one was a complete attempt at a thirteen-minute statement that would have to land in the stadium and on a phone and everywhere in between.
The source material came from across Bad Bunny's catalog. Stems from his recent albums, but rarely the way they exist on record. Sections cut. Sections extended. Sections rebuilt with new instruments and percussion layered in to fit the emotional arc of the show. New tracks recorded specifically for the halftime in Chile and Puerto Rico. A completely new studio recording for a song with Lady Gaga, made for this single performance. And huge amounts of brand new connective material built from scratch: risers, transitions, pads, percussion, sub drops, sound design. The glue that made it feel like one continuous piece of music instead of a medley. Every song was fully remixed from the ground up to live in the same sonic world as everything around it. Hundreds of stems, perfectly timed to lighting cues, video, pyro. One song, thirteen movements.
"We did over 30 mixes for this show. Countless revisions on timing, song choices, and sound design. That volume of work is what it takes to create something iconic."
When the show jumped from a song the audience knew to something they'd never heard, the jump had to feel like the next bar in the same song, not a new track. That seam-hiding work is the part nobody notices when it lands and everyone notices when it doesn't.
You can't let off the gas on something like this. Changes come right up until the last moment, and the willingness to throw out a mix you were proud of yesterday because today's version of the show needs something different is what separates a show people remember from one they don't. Iconic isn't just a vibe. It's the result of toiling over something until it is right.
The Gaga Salsa
"Die With a Smile" was originally a Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga power ballad. Voices and piano. Slow and intimate. Miguel flipped it into salsa. Real clave. Real horns. A full Caribbean rhythm bed under a song that started as a duet at a piano.
It had to stay a secret. The arrangement was worked on for weeks without anyone outside the team knowing what was coming. That kind of secrecy is its own kind of pressure on a session. Every backup, every shared link, every conversation has to be tight.
I spent my college years at CCNY surrounded by salsa — on the train uptown, in friends' apartments, in the bodega on the corner, on the radio in cabs. It was the soundtrack of those years for me. Twenty-something years later, those old synapses were firing again, pulled out of storage to help bring Lady Gaga's performance into the world of Latin music.
Show Day
The show aired on February 8th. I anxiously waited to see it broadcast at home with my family.
We were all floored. The showmanship, the artistry, the visuals... all new to me. The sound is what I knew, and this coming together on this world stage was monumental. It was inspiring. I was also relieved, listening for what had survived the broadcast chain and what had gotten lost between my room and theirs. To my relief, the integrity of what I helped create was still there.
And then, the next morning, the four words.
128 Million People
It's hard to fathom when the music you have been a part of for months touches so many people. The kind of reactions I was witnessing around America was inspiring. The sheer number of viewers and people absorbing on social media was jaw-dropping. Not only was this significant, this was historic... and the people recognized it.
128 million people in the United States watched it live. 4.8 million of those watched on Telemundo, the most-watched Spanish-language Super Bowl halftime broadcast in history, and the largest NFL audience Telemundo has ever had. Social platforms logged four billion views in the first 24 hours, an NFL record and a 137 percent jump year over year. By Monday morning, Spotify streams of Bad Bunny's catalog had risen 470 percent in the United States, and he held the top six spots on the US Daily Top Songs. DtMF, the closer, re-entered the Billboard Hot 100 at number ten. He became the first Latin artist ever to cross 100 million monthly Spotify listeners.
"The most impressively conceived and executed Super Bowl halftime production I've ever seen." — The Hollywood Reporter
"An exuberant act of resistance." — TIME
The history books will record: First Latino solo headliner of a Super Bowl Halftime Show. First halftime show performed almost entirely in Spanish. Ricky Martin, who joined Bad Bunny on stage for "Lo Que Le Pasó a Hawaii," became the first openly gay male halftime performer. And the whole thing landed one week after Bad Bunny took Album of the Year at the Grammys for DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, the first all-Spanish-language album to ever win that category.
Grammy stage one Sunday, Super Bowl stage the next. There are nights that pass through television. This one moved through the culture.
What It Meant
The show meant something. It carried weight for the people of Puerto Rico, whose island and culture and history were woven through the whole performance, from the casita on the field to the plena horns on "Café con Ron." It carried weight for the millions of Latino people in this country who got to see themselves represented in their own language at the center of the biggest cultural event on the American calendar. And it carried weight at a moment when so many of us in this country are pulled apart from each other, when unity itself is the thing we're asked to defend.
Bad Bunny closed the show with a message on the screen: the only thing more powerful than hate is love. I believe that.
"I want people to remember this as a moment where love triumphs over hate."
I was honored to play a small role in shaping the sound of that night. Music has a unique ability to bring people together, and I feel that on every project. This one just made it front and center. What this kind of work affirms for me is that my work can be both entertainment and a significant social statement. My work is more than sound… and I love that.
We all have a part to play in building the world we want to see. Mine just happens to be sound.
Credits
- Artist: Bad Bunny
- Music Director: Miguel Gandelman
- Production Audio Mix (band, synths, prerecorded background vocals, sound design): Jon Rezin — completed prior to showtime
- Assistant Engineer: Sharaf Entwistle
- Studio Monitoring: ATC SCM45a mains + SVS SB-5000 R|Evolution subs
- Network: CBS / Paramount+
- Event: Super Bowl LX Halftime Show, February 8, 2026
A longer-form interview with more on monitoring choices, low-end philosophy, and the show itself is available at SVS's Artist Spotlight feature.