← Cannonball with Wesley Morris
Cannonball with Wesley Morris
Bad Bunny and the Art of Protest
00:37:46
“We’re living in protest-y times! Where are all the protest songs?” That was a question that Wesley Morris was asking in the time leading up to Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl LX halftime show. He thinks the scarcity of direct protest art in this moment contributed to the intense speculation and anticipation about what Bad Bunny would do on that stage. Would it be a protest? And if so, what kind of protest? Well, now the show’s over. So what did it turn out to be? To discuss, Wesley Morris sits back down with his friend Sasha Weiss, culture editor at The New York Times Magazine. They also think about the role of protest music more broadly. When does a song need to hit us over the head? And when is subtlety useful — or called for?
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- [00:00]
Narrator/Announcer
Nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor. Winner of two Golden Globes, the Secret Agent is the most acclaimed international film of the year. Wagner Mora gives the year's best performance as a hunted man on the run trying to reunite with his child during Brazil's notorious military dictatorship. Director Kleber Mendonza Figlio crafts the political thriller of the year, an empowering epic steeped in history, a love for cinema, and a tribute to all forms of resistance against authoritarian regimes.
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Wesley Morris
European.
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Narrator/Announcer
You will never forget the Secret Agent.
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Wesley Morris
I'm Wesley Morris, and this is Cannonball Today. Bonito. Bonito. Bonito. Even before Bad Bunny took the stage at the Super Bowl, I was thinking a lot about what a protest is doing in this moment. Protest art. And I think a lot of it has been afraid to take things on, to be explicit about what is being protested or that there is even a protest occurring at all in some of this work. And I think that's why there was so much suspense, anticipation, excitement, fear. Will he or won't he? In the lead up to Bad Bunny's performance, on the one hand, how could the maybe the most famous Puerto Rican on Earth, one of the biggest singers, musicians on earth, not just go there? On the other hand, it's the super bowl, and this thing is speaking to a huge American audience that is just. That claims it's just here to watch some football. And, you know, they don't want to be told how to feel about important things. Well, he did it. And I think people. Some people are a little confused. Like, was what. He did a protest or not? So I asked my friend Sasha Weiss to come back on the show so we could think through, I mean, what really did happen? What did he do? And then we're gonna talk about protest music more broadly. The, like, punch you in the face kind of songs, and then, you know, the more subtle ones. But I'm not gonna be subtle now, because here comes the cannonball. Hi, Sasha.
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Sasha Weiss
Hi, Wesley.
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Wesley Morris
Okay, so is what happened on Sunday, was it an act of protest? Did we just watch Bad Bunny just run around and say, oh, go away, Ice.
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Bruce Springsteen
Get out of here?
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Sasha Weiss
I think it. It was an act of protest, but I think it was in some ways totally overt one and in some ways actually a really subtle one. And I think if it was an act of protest, it was kind of protest in the form of invitation into my worldview, into my way of doing things, into a kind of humanism that is counter programming.
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Wesley Morris
I. You know, I think that inherently all that. You were correct I mean, I think that I loved the shrinking of the field to just some sugar cane. Yes. A extremely powerful historical stretch of swath of greenery.
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Sasha Weiss
Yes.
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Wesley Morris
Yes. People, your sugar starts in a field. And for a long time, people were not paid money to harvest it. Some of the people, some of the descendants of those people were on that football field for 13 minutes.
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Sasha Weiss
Yes. And he's definitely evoking that historical violence that is still very much with us.
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Wesley Morris
Well, he has the guys in the beachcomber hats actually doing the work.
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Sasha Weiss
Right.
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Wesley Morris
He's having us confront that being explicitly evoked here.
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Sasha Weiss
He's having America confront that. But then he really turns it and something else happens. The mood shifts and time shifts, in.
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Wesley Morris
A sense, if I'm right, about what we're actually witnessing here. And.
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Sasha Weiss
A party starts.
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Wesley Morris
Right, Right.
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Sasha Weiss
And it's a neighborhood party. And it's a party with a lot of specificity. Suddenly you're in a very specific place with kind of signifiers that are also familiar to New Yorkers, by the way. Right. There's a bodega with an EBT sign. There are food carts and a bar. And he's kind of a maestro of the scene. I really thought about musical theater. I was like, this is Lin Manuel Miranda's in the Heights. I mean, immediately we are in a place, we are in a mood. And that mood is fellowship.
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Wesley Morris
It is joy, and to be among and inside this culture. And something is being shared with us. By invitation, right? By invitation. And, you know, it's funny you mentioned Lin Manuel Miranda. Do you know what I was thinking about?
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Sasha Weiss
What were you thinking about?
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Wesley Morris
I was thinking about Sesame Street. I love that there's a kind of directness that is really important for how messages get put across on that show. I think that I always think of Sesame street as being outside. It's a completely al fresco experience. Education, cultural, entertainment experience. And I just feel like there, you know, part of the. Of the way that we learn is by a kind of direct transfer, transference of not the ABCs or like how to count, but just personhood. And seeing that there are many different people in a place sharing spaces, sharing.
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Sasha Weiss
Also the intergenerational nature of who was on stage. I mean, you don't that often see a Super bowl halftime show where there are a bunch of old people on stage and a bunch of kids on stage.
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Wesley Morris
Old musicians.
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Sasha Weiss
Old musicians.
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Wesley Morris
Old dancers. Older dancers. Yeah.
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Sasha Weiss
An older woman serving him the drink.
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Wesley Morris
Yeah.
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Sasha Weiss
Like, these are the people in my neighborhood. There's a kind of, you know, there's a Breadth. And there's a generational exchange that's happening. You can also learn from these other people.
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Wesley Morris
It's interesting to think about the environment in which this performance takes place.
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Sasha Weiss
Yes.
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Wesley Morris
I don't know that it is. I mean, there is a protest element, obviously, coursing through it. The fact of it is protest, but I think it actually is counter protest. Right. Because I think, you know, we are living under a government that is protesting a reality in order to construct an alternative reality. And this performance, to me, was a protest. A counter protest to that protest.
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Sasha Weiss
Yes. And the reality that it's constructing has a cultural specificity, a kind of deep musical history, the deep history of a place and an intimacy. I mean, it's kind of incredible, the intimacy. He creates a small space within this huge hyper American space that is very particular. It's his reality, and he's inviting us inside of that. There's a moment that I really, really loved in this performance where he whispers, I love that. You know?
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Wesley Morris
Yeah.
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Sasha Weiss
He. I think it's actually the moment. Right. Maybe we should watch it. I mean, it's a great moment, I think, where he's introducing himself to us. And he. He doesn't call himself Bad Bunny in this movie. No.
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Wesley Morris
I mean, the great thing about this whole performance, to me, is that it is presented by one Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio.
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Sasha Weiss
And Bad Bunny given name.
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Wesley Morris
Right. He's an idea. Bad Bunny. Bad Bunny is like a. Like a concept now. And this show is. You are being invited into Benito's house.
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Sasha Weiss
Yes. The camera closes in on him in close up, and he's saying, I'm here because I never stop believing in myself. And you also should never stop believing in yourself. Trust me.
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Wesley Morris
The look on his face as he says it, too, it's just like clarity in his face. I don't know. I think he's simultaneously really aware of what it means to be in San Francisco doing the halftime show. He knows that people are like, asking Donald Trump and Mike Johnson and, you know, he knows what the politicians are saying about the show and the fact that it was going to be. It was rumored, but in all likelihood going to be conducted entirely in Spanish.
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Sasha Weiss
Sure.
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Wesley Morris
But it's the way that he's thinking through and presenting an opportunity for whoever is skeptical about what it is he's going to do to be disarmed.
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Sasha Weiss
Exactly. Like, I mean, and this is what I love about that moment, because he's just like, come with me. Step into my house. I mean, he, you know, he. He has literally his house, you Know, he's saying, come in. And not saying, this isn't for you. He's saying, this is for you, it's for me. You know, come on in.
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Wesley Morris
It's everybody's. And also, it doesn't have to be alienating that you don't know every word. Just look, just let the production tell you what is going on here. What is, what is, what are we afraid of here?
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Sasha Weiss
The other thing about Benito that I admire, and he always has this quality, but it really was on display here. He's like, I dare you of accusing me of staging a protest. Like, I am hosting a party here. And he has such a kind of nonchalant, unbothered air about him. He is unstressed. He is. He's not even that excitable. You know, he's kind of moving through this.
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Wesley Morris
Not in this mode of himself, not.
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Sasha Weiss
In this mode of himself, not in this mode of himself. With this kind of ease and grace and modeling that kind of ease and grace. And like, in that way, to me, it's like a very subversive form of protest, right? It's a protest that recognizes these encroaching forces and is not really gonna acknowledge them because he's built a different kind of world.
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Wesley Morris
But I feel like the production here takes real advantage of this being a dusk oriented or dusk hour halftime show. And to me, all of the joyousness and Sesame street and in the Heights, all of the.
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Sasha Weiss
And inclusivity and invitation and Lady Gaga.
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Wesley Morris
Being the wedding singer at an actual wedding, because two people get married during this show. Then, like, there's a shift. And some of it is that you notice that the sun is setting. And so with the light changing, is this sort of ingeniously produced. There are these, like, strobe lights that start going off during El Apagon, which.
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Sasha Weiss
Is a song about the blackout in Puerto Rico and kind of noting the conditions that. I mean, there's a party in that song too. But he is talking about the neglect and the mismanagement of the post Hurricane Maria world in Puerto Rico.
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Wesley Morris
And then suddenly you see these dancers who are the same, who are dressed the same as the sugarcane guys, right? The guys with the machetes hacking the sugar cane. They're up on these utility poles, climbing up, getting shocked, like, you know, bungeeing down, then climbing back up and having the same thing happen again. And there is like a shock effect happening with that strobe. And I don't know, I mean, the energy kind of changed.
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Sasha Weiss
Yeah.
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Wesley Morris
It gets a little darker. It's literally getting darker. But also the performance sort of takes a turn into a kind of darkness.
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Sasha Weiss
Yeah. And maybe into a more overt form of protest. I mean, I do think the protest or the counter protest, as you, I think, really smartly identified, is in an alternative world, an alternative mood, a kind of, you know, creating your own rules and your own. Like, his nonchalance to me is like. It's like there's a Teflon quality.
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Wesley Morris
Right.
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Sasha Weiss
But at the end of the performance, God bless America, something happens.
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Wesley Morris
So the stakes, to me, like, I mean. And some of this could just be what we're bringing to this event. And it's just like, this was also part of the situation. But there's this exuberant moment, like, as the flags are coming toward the. I don't know exactly where he's going. The tunnel, where he's going to, like, go back to his locker room. But there's a look of urgency on some of what I would describe as the security people's faces. I don't know if they're bodyguards, they're suited people. And there's a photographer there snapping pictures. And he bumps into the camera almost. But as he's saying mas photos, he's, like, ripping out his earpiece. Yeah. This is something he could have done in, quote, his locker room, unquote. But, like, he does it there, so it just creates this urgency. Like, he is being censored in some.
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Sasha Weiss
Way, or he's gotta get off or being threatened or. You know, like, I had a moment watching it where I was like, is something going on?
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Wesley Morris
And then it ends.
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Narrator/Announcer
Right.
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Wesley Morris
You go right to that wide shot of the stadium. And so it did sort of then, like, politicize him in some way. Like, he actually was taking a risk. This show was a risk.
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Sasha Weiss
Yeah.
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Wesley Morris
And, like, I didn't. I didn't perform that for most of my 13 minutes, but in these final seconds, I'm going to exit with a kind of urgency that suggests that there had been a risk, that there had.
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Sasha Weiss
Been some kind of danger, or that there is danger. And where the edges of his very carefully constructed world suddenly bleed out into the outside world.
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Wesley Morris
Right.
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Sasha Weiss
Or the outside world encroaches on that world. And it's real. There's some way in which he's letting a suggestion of current events, a suggestion of danger, a suggestion of, like, maybe you're not going to get out of here unscathed. Enter in a way that feels like, all the more powerful. It's chilling for not having been kind of admitted into the main event.
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Wesley Morris
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We're going to take a break.
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Sasha Weiss
Okay, great.
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Wesley Morris
We'll take a break and we'll be right back.
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Sponsor Voice
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- [16:54]
Narrator/Announcer
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Sasha Weiss
I am a subscriber to the New York Times, but my husband isn't. And it would be really nice to be able to share a recipe or an article or compete with him in wordle or connections. Thank you, Dana.
- [17:46]
Wesley Morris
We heard you introducing the New York Times Family subscription. One subscription, up to four separate logins for anyone in your life. Find out more@nytimes.com family. Um, okay, we're back. It's crazy. Cause we just had this whole Bad Bunny conversation about his super bowl halftime show. And you and I had already been thinking, because we knew, we suspected that he would do something interesting or like just the fact of him at the super bowl halftime show doing it is a form of protest.
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Sasha Weiss
Yes. Yes.
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Wesley Morris
So it got us thinking about, like, why is Bad Bunny the only person doing this work?
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Sasha Weiss
Where are the protest songs?
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Wesley Morris
Where are the protest songs? So what happened?
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Sasha Weiss
It came down like manna from the heavens.
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Wesley Morris
Bruce Springsteen.
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Sasha Weiss
Bruce Springsteen. The very night we were asking, where's the Protestant song?
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Wesley Morris
Where's the protest songs? The Boss came through, writes a song called Streets of Minneapolis and releases it. What did he say?
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Bruce Springsteen
So I write this song and I.
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Wesley Morris
Record it the next day, got mad on Wednesday, wrote on Thursday, recorded on the studio, recorded on Friday, released on Saturday. Here we go.
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Sasha Weiss
And the song has that quality of hot off presses.
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Wesley Morris
I don't even think he drank a glass of water to sing it.
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Bruce Springsteen
Nuance is wonderful, but sometimes you have.
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Wesley Morris
To kick them in the teeth.
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Sasha Weiss
Well, let's get into why it works as a protest song.
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Wesley Morris
I think it's. The thing that you identified one thing, is that it's. It feels like it just leapt out of his heart.
- [19:57]
Sasha Weiss
Yes.
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Wesley Morris
Right.
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Sasha Weiss
Yes. It's a beautiful way of putting it.
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Wesley Morris
This song has. I mean, you know, I have the lyrics with me.
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Sasha Weiss
Should we, like, listen to the first part of it?
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Wesley Morris
All right, let's just listen.
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Sasha Weiss
Let's just like to listen to it.
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Bruce Springsteen
Through the winter's ice and cold Down Nicolette Avenue A city of flame Fought fire and ice Neath an occupier's boots King Trump's private.
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Wesley Morris
King Trump.
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Sasha Weiss
King Trump, I love.
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Wesley Morris
Well, start with Nicollet Avenue.
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Narrator/Announcer
Right.
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Sasha Weiss
Nicollet Avenue.
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Wesley Morris
He is putting us in a place.
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Sasha Weiss
Yeah.
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Wesley Morris
He is like, you know, through the winter's ice and cold so automatically, here we are.
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Sasha Weiss
Place and time through the winter's ice.
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Wesley Morris
And cold Down Nicollet Avenue A city of flame Fought fire and ice Neath an occupier's boots I mean. All right.
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Sasha Weiss
I love the way he says the next line.
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Bruce Springsteen
Came to Minneapolis to enforce the law. Or so their story goes.
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Sasha Weiss
Like, it's so. It's a really vintage Bruce kind of passionate utterance and insinuation and a kind of snarl. I mean, you really feel his anger, the way he sings that line. I like the refrain. I like, in the winter of 26.
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Wesley Morris
Oh, talk to me about that.
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Sasha Weiss
Well, protest songs are keepers of the record. Protest songs are analogous to what we do, Right? Like, they're works of journalism. But also, it's a marking for the future, right? Like, kind of giving it this sort of grand.
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Wesley Morris
It's a timestamp.
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Sasha Weiss
It's a timestamp, but it's also like imagining a future when we look back on the winter of 26 and name it and remember it. And it's challenging us to remember it, you know?
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Wesley Morris
You know what's crazy? I. Every time I hear that lyric, I'm like, What happened in 1926? What happened in 26? Oh, shit. We are now in a period that folk songs are gonna be reborn.
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Sasha Weiss
Exactly. Exactly.
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Wesley Morris
I was like, oh, boy.
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Sasha Weiss
Exactly. Like, the way that it. The way that. It's like a palimpsest of the past and the now and the future, you know, that's what I think. Good protest songs often have that quality that they're kind of like squishing time altogether.
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Wesley Morris
But this song was the first song I ever heard where I was like.
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Sasha Weiss
What year are we in? I also like the Kind of high lyricism.
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Bruce Springsteen
And there were bloody footprints where mercy should have stood.
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Sasha Weiss
Bloody footprints where mercy should have stood. You know, there's a kind of, you know, folky, poetic, high register. But then he's also naming names.
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Wesley Morris
He is naming names in here.
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Sasha Weiss
He's calling out Stephen Miller and Kristi Gnome, and he. I mean, he's writing history right now.
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Bruce Springsteen
Trump's federal thugs.
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Wesley Morris
Trump's federal thugs beat up on his face and his chest.
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Bruce Springsteen
Then we heard the gunshots, and Alex, pretty late in the snow.
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Wesley Morris
This is all. This is all urgency.
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Sasha Weiss
Yeah.
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Wesley Morris
This is all, like, shooting out of.
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Bruce Springsteen
Streets of Minneapolis.
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Wesley Morris
But, you know, the thing about this song that's also interesting to think through as I listen to it is just what is making it effective. Right. It's the details, the anger, the specificity, the timing. And cannot be afraid. It has to be. There's no. There is very little simile or metaphor in this song. It is just.
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Sasha Weiss
It's very direct.
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Wesley Morris
It's a bulletin.
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Sasha Weiss
It's very direct.
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Wesley Morris
But it also is, like, who is this song to, like, who. That's another thing about protest songs. They're an address.
- [24:39]
Sasha Weiss
Yes, they're an address.
- [24:40]
Wesley Morris
They're either an address to the protesters or they're an address to the authorities. But this, to me, has a very kind of town crier.
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Sasha Weiss
I feel like it's an address to the American people.
- [24:55]
Wesley Morris
Everybody else. Everybody else.
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Sasha Weiss
I feel like it. I also feel like it's a letter to the future. Right. Like, I mean, I feel like it's a kind of. Like, this is an inflection point. How do you want to be remembered? How do you want to be seen from the vantage point of a future where the winner of 26 is far away? How do you want to be remembered? And I think it's a kind of challenge. I'm curious when you think about your canon of protest songs. I mean, you know a lot about protest songs. Like, where does this fit? And, like, what is the role of directness in a protest song? What's the importance of directness in a protest song for you? When is that important so far?
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Wesley Morris
I mean, a protest song should be willing to break your nose, like, punch me in the face. Do it. But they didn't always start that way. I mean, we can start with, you know, spirituals.
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Narrator/Announcer
Right.
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Wesley Morris
The church. And that was music that was written to get, you know, enslaved people, for instance. I mean, enslaved people, period through. Through life, through daily life.
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Sasha Weiss
Yeah.
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Wesley Morris
And some of it was. Was offered as. It was an. It was a promise that like whatever is happening here on this terrestrial situation, there is something better waiting for you up there. And so it's a protest against condition, right? And that the ethos of the spiritual kind of makes its way into, you know, more modern ideas of protest music, right? Things that people can sing while they march. You know, the most interesting thing to me about a song like We Shall Overcome.
- [26:52]
Bruce Springsteen
We Shall Overcome.
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Wesley Morris
You know, like a civil rights. A song that was used as an anthem, a source of like real communal congealment during the civil rights movement. Like, the great note in that song is someday, you know, And like depending on who's singing it, they will sing the fuck out of that song. Especially when it's a group of people like you, people who can sing. Oh my God, it just gets chills. Because that someday can go up. It mostly goes up, but I've heard it go down sometimes. And that is also chilling. But then sometimes you gotta get punched in the nose. And one of my favorite nose punches is Stevie Wonder just doing a song that's so punch you in the nose. It's called It's Wrong. Apartheid. Streets of Minneapolis. That could be about the ice cream shop on the corner of Nicolette Avenue.
- [28:14]
Sasha Weiss
There's no mistaking, there's no mistaking song as apartheid.
- [28:18]
Wesley Morris
It's wrong.
- [28:22]
Bruce Springsteen
Will come to seize you at last.
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Wesley Morris
And this is a almost seven minute song that is just him enumerating the ways in which apartheid is wrong. At this point, Mandela is in prison and it is the beginning of a real discussion about this event happening in South Africa as being like a human rights catastrophe.
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Bruce Springsteen
Like slavery was wrong.
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Wesley Morris
Like slavery was wrong.
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Bruce Springsteen
Like the Holocaust was wrong.
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Wesley Morris
Like the Holocaust was wrong.
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Bruce Springsteen
Apartheid is wrong.
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Wesley Morris
Apartheid is wrong. And then he's got these Isi Josha background singers, like accompanying him. So it's a call and response.
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Narrator/Announcer
Wrong.
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Wesley Morris
Ka Wrong. Ka Wrong. By the way, all my South African homies don't come at me. I'm doing my best. But basically it just means like, there's nothing more to say. That's what the ka there is doing. It's only. The word is only or just. But here in this song, it's like there is nothing more to say. It is wrong. I mean, it's interesting because I think that Streets of Minneapolis is, I think the place that it flies out of. Bruce Springsteen, the thing that induces its flight is that the state is denying a thing that he saw with his own eyes. And I think this song is providing a reality song, a musical index, right? That this thing is true versus The Stevie Wonder song, which also is an interesting index because he actually isn't that specific. Right. This.
- [30:28]
Sasha Weiss
Well, he's specific about the morality.
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Wesley Morris
Right, the morality. But that is an abstract enough concept that it can be applied to any Apartheid. Right. Apartheid isn't just a thing that happened in South Africa. You could take this to Gaza right now. You could play this on the streets in Gaza, all over town, and people would get it. But this is a song you could take to all kinds of places.
- [30:55]
Sasha Weiss
It gets to the function of protest songs as a kind of tool.
- [30:59]
Narrator/Announcer
Right.
- [30:59]
Sasha Weiss
Like Bruce is kind of entering something into the archives. Maybe someone will take it out.
- [31:04]
Wesley Morris
Yeah, I like that. Oh, I love that. I love that.
- [31:06]
Sasha Weiss
But Stevie is actually giving us something to live with and maybe to use and think with.
- [31:12]
Wesley Morris
This is timeless. This is timeless.
- [31:14]
Sasha Weiss
And I'm really interested in protest songs. I mean, when we started to talk about this, like, the songs that I started to think about, actually, none of them are actually overt protest songs.
- [31:24]
Wesley Morris
Oh, that's a whole other thing. I love that.
- [31:26]
Sasha Weiss
But they share in this quality of giving us something to think with and to live with. And I feel like that's a really important function of protest songs in American life that, like, they can prepare you for the long struggle, and they can do interior work and. And kind of put you in a mindset to withstand, you know, which takes us back to their roots in, as you were saying, you know, in churches, in times of enslavement. I mean, I think that's the deep root of protest music in this country, which is about how you get through. Right. How you endure.
- [32:07]
Wesley Morris
I mean, I'm so interested in the.
- [32:09]
Sasha Weiss
Songs that do that.
- [32:10]
Wesley Morris
Yeah. To use a gospel concept, like how you get over. How you get over how you get from one side to the other side.
- [32:19]
Sasha Weiss
Can I share a song with you that I've been thinking about, Which I've been thinking about? I mean, it is a classic protest song, but it's also not a protest song. It's Feeling Good, as rendered by Ms. Nina Simone.
- [32:30]
Bruce Springsteen
Birds flying high, you know how I feel. Sun in the sky, you know how I feel.
- [32:41]
Sasha Weiss
So she did not write this song.
- [32:44]
Wesley Morris
Right.
- [32:44]
Sasha Weiss
It had been around in the culture for a couple of years.
- [32:46]
Wesley Morris
She's written other protest songs.
- [32:48]
Sasha Weiss
She's written other protest songs, but this is not one. It's covered by Coltrane. It was covered by Sammy Davis Jr. But it was when Nina Simone sang it and recorded it in 1965 that it really started to take on its life.
- [33:00]
Wesley Morris
Yeah. No, I mean, 65 this is a hugely turbulent year in the civil rights movement. This is. I mean, Edmund Pettus Bridge. You know, Selma's happening, essentially. Um, we're talking about, like, getting a Voting Rights act passed into law. Um, the end of the story is.
- [33:22]
Sasha Weiss
Is yet to be read.
- [33:23]
Wesley Morris
It's unfolding.
- [33:24]
Sasha Weiss
It's unfolding. But there's something in the way she sings the song. I mean, the beginning of the song is a cappella.
- [33:31]
Wesley Morris
Yes.
- [33:32]
Sasha Weiss
I think there's a kind of, like, interior logic happening. Like, can I feel it? I mean, at the end of the song, she says, I know how I feel. Right. The beginning of the song, she's saying, you know how I feel. Right. She's working her way into the feeling of freedom that she's talking about. And I think it's really important that she starts down here.
- [33:54]
Bruce Springsteen
It's a new dawn. It's a new day. It's a new life for me. Yeah, It's a new dawn. It's a new day.
- [34:06]
Sasha Weiss
Like, she's going in.
- [34:07]
Wesley Morris
She's blue. It's blue.
- [34:09]
Sasha Weiss
It's really blue.
- [34:12]
Bruce Springsteen
And I'm feeling good.
- [34:18]
Sasha Weiss
Is she feeling good?
- [34:21]
Wesley Morris
I mean, these horns say no, honestly.
- [34:28]
Sasha Weiss
She's talking to herself. You know, at least she's kind of bringing. She's speaking a feeling into being. You know, she's having to urge herself on here. And then the music comes in, and then I think the song gets more declarative and she's owning it more.
- [34:46]
Wesley Morris
The strings show up. Right. And the strings are kind of, like, pulling her up with. Right into the sky. Yeah.
- [35:03]
Sasha Weiss
To me, this is an existential protest song. Right. Like, sure. What does it take to inhabit the song? And she's convincing herself to inhabit the song while she's singing it. You know, she's bringing a new reality into being within herself, while also, like, really acknowledging with her voice, with her kind of hesitancy, with her walking into the song, like the undertow of the harsh reality that she lives with. Right. But she. She vanquishes it through the course of the song.
- [35:32]
Wesley Morris
Yes, yes.
- [35:33]
Sasha Weiss
And listen to this final exhalation of feeling good. It's so triumphant and sorrowful at the same time. So it's funny to think of it as a protest song because in a way, it's so personal. Right. And the trip she goes on in this song is so personal. But to me, I think that there are protest songs that really do function for the we and for all Americans. And I feel like this song is, like, inviting us to do, like, whatever work we have to do. Inside to kind of get ourselves ready.
- [36:16]
Wesley Morris
Yeah. I think the protests, I mean, we're still talking about modes of address, right? Like which person the Stevie Wonder song is addressed to. The racists. Right. Like, this is for all the people who don't think this is a problem. Enough with the not saying of the thing. Just saying it, saying it, saying it. And then there's what she's doing, what Nina Simone is doing in this song, and it's just I'm addressing myself. This song is me talking to me. And you can hear, dear listener, what you want. You can make this song be you talking to you too. Right. You can take what you're hearing and go out and, like, start your day. Whatever it is that you need to feel, you need to work yourself into feeling good about. This is for you.
- [37:17]
Sasha Weiss
That was so beautiful. And actually, in a funny way takes me back to the part of our conversation that was about Bad Bunny. I feel like Bad Bunny is also inviting us to leave that stage with, like, some kind of pleasure in the self and what's possible, you know, And. And even though he kind of darkens it, as we talked about, like, there's something kind of, like, irrefutable and irreducible about the pleasure that he is taking and offering.
- [37:47]
Wesley Morris
Yeah, yeah, I agree. I agree.
- [37:49]
Sasha Weiss
And that is protest too.
- [37:57]
Wesley Morris
Sasha, thanks for coming back.
- [38:00]
Sasha Weiss
Thank you for having me.
- [38:02]
Wesley Morris
We did it again.
- [38:27]
Dan
I'm opening up crossplay. I've been playing against Dan, my colleague at the New York Times. I'm going to play stup, S, T, u, p, e across a triple word multiplier square.
- [38:35]
Cats
Cats played another move.
- [38:37]
Narrator/Announcer
Ugh.
- [38:38]
Cats
And she did have an S. She played Stoop for 36 points.
- [38:41]
Dan
I've got a Z, which is 10 points. If I can put my X over there, I can make box.
- [38:47]
Cats
I have two A's, N's, and T's. I'm guessing Tenga is not a word. Let's see. Tenga is a word.
- [38:53]
Dan
Oh, don't know what tenga means, so I'm gonna press down on the word and. Oh, Definition popped up. Former monetary unit of Tajikistan. Learn something. Every time I play this game, even.
- [39:04]
Cats
Though I'm about 50 points ahead, one thing I've learned in crossplay is that the game is never over.
- [39:09]
Dan
I just got a notification, and Dan played his last turn. Let's see who won. It's so close.
- [39:14]
Wesley Morris
Close.
- [39:15]
Sasha Weiss
But I did win Crossplay, the first two player word game from New York Times Games. Download it for free today.
- [39:22]
Cats
It's devastating when you see a game that you could have won.
- [39:28]
Wesley Morris
This episode of Cannonball was produced by John White, Austin Mitchell, Elissa Dudley and Janelle Anderson. It was edited by Lisa Tobin. Daniel Ramirez engineered this episode. Matty Masiello, Kyle Grandillo and Nick Pittman recorded it. Dan Powell and Diane Wong did the original music. Our theme music, as always, is by Justin Ellington. Bobby Doherty, he took the photo art for our show. Our video team is Brooke Minters and Felice Leon. This episode was filmed by Alfredo Chiarappa, Andrew Smith, Lauren Pruitt and Luke Piotrowski. Jeremy Rocklin and Jamie Henry edited it. We're on YouTube. We always are. Please subscribe next week. Next week. Bad dreams in the night they told me I was gonna lose the fight Leave behind Wuthering, wuthering, Wuthering High teeth Cliff, it's me. I'm Kathy. I've come home. I'm so cold. Let me into your window thanks for listening, everybody. Talk to you next week.