Green Day, Bad Bunny, and the Super Bowl Stage as America’s New Political Arena

San Francisco —

When the National Football League announced that Green Day would perform during the opening ceremony of Super Bowl LX at Levi’s Stadium, the news traveled quickly beyond the sports pages. Within hours, it had ignited a familiar cultural flashpoint—one that now seems inseparable from major American spectacles: politics, identity, and the meaning of patriotism itself.

For Green Day, the East Bay punk band that rose to fame in the 1990s and later became an unlikely chronicler of American disillusionment, the moment was less a departure than a continuation. For nearly two decades, the band—led by frontman Billie Joe Armstrong—has used its platform to challenge conservative power, first during the George W. Bush era and more forcefully during the rise of Donald Trump. Their presence at the Super Bowl, alongside the announcement that Bad Bunny would headline the halftime show, has transformed the nation’s most-watched sporting event into a cultural referendum.

Punk Rock Meets the NFL

The NFL framed Green Day’s appearance as a celebration of “generations of the game’s most valuable players,” an attempt to bridge nostalgia with modern relevance. The band is expected to perform a medley of its best-known songs, drawing from albums like Dookie and American Idiot, both of which remain fixtures in American pop culture.

Yet few observers believe the performance will be politically neutral. Armstrong has never concealed his views, and Green Day’s concerts in recent years have frequently included lyric changes, pointed commentary, and symbolic gestures aimed at Trump and the broader MAGA movement. During a recent California performance, the band revisited “Holiday,” a song originally written as a protest against the Iraq War, reframing it to reflect contemporary political anxieties.

“This song is anti-fascist,” Armstrong told the crowd, echoing a message he has delivered repeatedly since 2016.

Such statements have circulated widely on social media, where clips of the performance were shared millions of times across X, TikTok, and Instagram. Supporters praised the band for consistency and moral clarity; critics accused it of politicizing entertainment.

A Longstanding Feud With Trumpism

Green Day’s opposition to Trump predates his presidency. In a 2016 interview that resurfaced online this week, Armstrong warned that Trump’s rhetoric carried “fascist overtones” and criticized the media for treating the campaign like a reality television spectacle rather than a serious political reckoning. At the time, those comments were controversial. Nearly a decade later, they are often cited by fans as prescient.

The band’s critics, particularly within conservative media circles, argue that Green Day embodies what they see as Hollywood and elite disdain for working-class Trump voters. Armstrong has pushed back on that framing, frequently noting his own lack of formal education and crediting punk music—not institutions—with shaping his worldview.

“I don’t have a high school diploma,” he said in a widely shared interview. “Punk rock was my education.”

That nuance has not stopped backlash. During the opening show of Green Day’s recent Saviors tour in Washington, D.C., a Donald Trump mask with the word “idiot” written across the forehead was thrown on stage. Armstrong briefly held it aloft, prompting online outrage from some commentators who accused the band of crossing a line. Others dismissed the criticism as performative, pointing to Green Day’s decades-long use of satire and provocation.

Bad Bunny and the Halftime Divide

If Green Day’s announcement unsettled conservative audiences, the selection of Bad Bunny as the Super Bowl halftime headliner sent them into open revolt.

Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican global superstar and one of the most-streamed artists in the world, has become a lightning rod for debates over immigration, language, and American identity. Conservative commentators questioned his patriotism, his use of Spanish, and his past criticism of U.S. immigration enforcement. Some went further, calling his selection “un-American”—a claim that prompted swift backlash.

Puerto Rico, of course, is part of the United States, a fact frequently noted by critics of the criticism.

Earlier this year, Bad Bunny announced that he would exclude the continental United States from a tour, citing concerns over immigration raids. The decision resonated with immigrant communities and civil rights advocates, while drawing condemnation from right-wing media. When Homeland Security officials publicly stated that ICE would have a presence at the Super Bowl, the controversy escalated.

Bad Bunny responded in characteristically understated fashion. Appearing on Saturday Night Live, he joked about the backlash and addressed the audience in Spanish. “If you didn’t understand what I just said,” he quipped, “you have four months to learn.”

The line quickly became a meme.

The Super Bowl as Cultural Battleground

The NFL has long insisted that the Super Bowl is apolitical, yet history suggests otherwise. From Beyoncé’s Black Panther-inspired performance to Colin Kaepernick’s absence from the league, football’s biggest stage has repeatedly intersected with the country’s deepest divisions.

What feels different this year is the convergence. Green Day’s explicit anti-Trump stance and Bad Bunny’s unapologetic embrace of Latino identity are not incidental to their appeal; they are central to it. Together, they reflect a broader cultural shift in which artists no longer attempt to sidestep politics but instead incorporate it into their public personas.

Polling suggests that while Donald Trump remains a dominant figure among Republican voters, his approval ratings nationally have declined. At the same time, surveys show increasing skepticism toward aggressive immigration enforcement and growing acceptance of multicultural representation in mainstream media. Whether those trends will be visible on Super Bowl Sunday remains to be seen.

What is almost certain is that the event will be watched—by more than 100 million viewers—and debated in real time across every major platform.

Beyond the Scoreboard

For the NFL, the calculation is straightforward: controversy drives attention. For the artists, the stakes are more personal. Green Day has spent a career insisting that music should confront power, not flatter it. Bad Bunny has used his success to elevate conversations about language, colonial history, and migration.

In that sense, the Super Bowl is not merely a backdrop but a stage large enough to reflect the country back to itself—fractured, noisy, and deeply contested.

When kickoff arrives in February, one team will win the Lombardi Trophy. But long after the final whistle, the performances may be what linger most: punk rock anthems echoing through a corporate spectacle, Spanish lyrics cutting through a traditionally English-speaking broadcast, and an America once again arguing over who belongs, who speaks, and who gets to define the national story.

Whether that argument represents decline or democracy depends, as ever, on who is watching—and what they are willing to hear.