Bad Bunny wins Album of the Year at the 68th Grammy Awards
The Puerto Rican superstar made history, as Kendrick Lamar and SZA took Record of the Year in a landmark night.
Bad Bunny won the coveted Album of the Year prize at the 68th Grammy Awards, a landmark victory that crowned one of the most successful artists in the world and underscored the global ascendancy of Latin and Spanish-language music, on a night that also saw Kendrick Lamar and SZA take Record of the Year.
The win for the Puerto Rican superstar, who records almost entirely in Spanish, marked a significant milestone in the recognition of Latin music at the music industry's most prestigious awards, and it capped a period of extraordinary commercial and cultural dominance for an artist who had repeatedly broken barriers on the global stage.
Kendrick Lamar and SZA's Record of the Year victory reflected the enormous impact of their collaborative work, extending a remarkable run for Lamar, who had dominated the previous year with a blockbuster feud and a landmark Super Bowl halftime performance. Billie Eilish was among the other major winners on the night.
The ceremony celebrated what many in the industry hailed as a landmark year in music, with a diverse field of nominees spanning pop, hip-hop, Latin, rock and more, reflecting the increasingly global and genre-fluid nature of popular music.
The awards, long criticised in some quarters over questions of recognition and relevance, drew wide attention, and the top prizes going to a Spanish-language album and a hip-hop record were seen as significant markers of how the center of gravity in popular music had shifted.
Bad Bunny's triumph, in particular, resonated far beyond the ceremony, a vivid symbol of a music culture in which an artist from Puerto Rico singing in Spanish could stand at the very summit of the industry's recognition, and a fitting acknowledgment of one of the defining artists of the era.