The Grammy nominated artist is making Latinx music mainstream, while expanding what it can be.
Once again, Bad Bunny is breaking records. His latest album, Un Verano Sin Ti, is the first Spanish-language album to ever receive a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year. The feat in and of itself is huge — acknowledging the sheer growth and dominance of Latin music in the American mainstream in the last decade, regardless of whether he wins Sunday night.
It’s a nomination well deserved, after what can only be described as a blockbuster year for the Latin trap artist. Bad Bunny kicked off 2022 wrapping up a stadium tour for his previous album, followed straightaway by launching Un Verano Sin Ti with a sold-out world tour. He then co-starred alongside Brad Pitt in Bullet Train, and won a Video Music Award, becoming the first non-English language performer to become Artist of the Year. He accepted his award moments after smooching a male and female dancer during a livestream performance of his song “Tití Me Preguntó” at Yankee Stadium.
“I always knew that I could become a huge artist without changing my culture, my slang, and my language,” he told the audience in Spanish. “I am Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, from Puerto Rico to the world.”
Generating more than 4 billion US streams across several platforms last year, Un Verano Sin Ti (A Summer Without You) was arguably the biggest album of the year. Globally, that’s true, too, according to Spotify. The ambitious album boasts 23 tracks, spanning electronic dance and reggaetón, dembow and indie pop. It’s banger, after banger, after banger. There’s a reason it catapulted Bad Bunny to global stardom after years of steady, genre-defying work: the vibes are immaculate. It feels like getting ready for a party on a hot August night, after spending all day toasting on the beach. You can feel it even if you don’t entirely understand what Bad Bunny’s singing about (depending on the song: heartbreak and partying, gender violence, or Puerto Rico’s political problems).
But the album wasn’t nominated for a Grammy because it has the right energy (although that’s certainly a part of it). Un Verano Sin Ti is a historic heavyweight — it refuses to pull punches or dumb itself down for English listeners. As Bad Bunny has declared in the past, he’s going to do whatever he wants. That goes for sticking to Spanish, as well as rejecting the misogyny and homophobia that’s rife within reggaetón and Latin trap. His unapologetic politics, sonically experimental approach to genre, and dedication to making music for Puerto Ricans and Puerto Ricans alone defied cultural norms. At first, it made him generationally divisive. Now, his music is popular internationally because he has playfully transgressed against the crutch of machismo and the burdens of the American imagination — in a way no other Latin artist has been able to achieve.
“These political and feminist narratives split him from the rest of the pack, making him a more palatable artist for global consumption because he’s not necessarily pigeonholed like all the other reggaetón artists,” said Carlos Chirinos, director of the NYU Music and Social Change Lab. “He stands out.”
Who is Bad Bunny, explained
Bad Bunny’s rise to stardom is folkloric in the way that most modern musicians these days are: he got his start on SoundCloud. Growing up in the projects in the Almirante Sur barrio of Vega Baja, Benito was very much a child of the late ’90s and early 2000s, witnessing the crossover of reggaetón into American markets courtesy of Daddy Yankee’s iconic “Gasolina” and the birth of Latin trap into the 2010s. Being in the periphery informed his fluid style, which had started to form by the time he started college at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo, where he studied communications. He dropped “Diles” — the sexy trap track that grabbed the attention of record label Hear This Music — in 2016 while he bagged groceries at ECONO.
His first few songs and features, “Soy Peor,” “Te Boté (Remix),” and “I Like It” acquainted both Spanish and English-language audiences to his heady, slurred vocals. He racked up even more features, ditched his label, and finally released his debut album in 2018: X 100Pre (“Por Siempre” or “Forever”). It’s a bombastic entry in conversation with the rest of the diaspora, with tinges of hip hop, reggaetón, dembow, and even a little pop punk. (Latin trap, of course, is a direct progeny of Atlanta’s trap music scene.) X 100Pre’s raw melancholia superimposed over dreamy drone synths also flirts with tradition before spinning it on its head.
In doing so, Bad Bunny became perfectly positioned to be a trailblazer in Latin trap. Not only is his music offering an emotional and technical complexity to the genre, he successfully brings English-language artists (Diplo, Drake) into Spanish, instead of the other way around. It doesn’t hurt that Benito opts to sing about loneliness and centering female pleasure in a deeply relatable way that braggadocio alone couldn’t support. It makes for perfect Gen Z and young millennial bait.
Given Latin trap’s vulgar lyrics around sex and drugs, it’s not always easy, radio-friendly listening. Reggaetón, too, is still pretty sexual, but it’s softened a bit since moving out of the underground and into the international spotlight. Both genres, however, have treated women horribly with objectification, disdain, and sometimes even violence. (It’d be remiss to not mention the women reggaetón artists, like Ivy Queen, who challenged sexism and highlighted the contradictions within urbano music.)
But Bad Bunny is among the first men to embrace a more progressive approach in Latin trap. In X 100Pre, he’s rocking nail polish and crooning about how women belong to no one. Most of his songs remain sexual and explicit, but challenging to the norms present. His style of gender presentation and defiant music became a source of controversy within Latin media, making him especially controversial among older people. He didn’t start his career with such a feminist and quasi-queer perspective, but his growth is parallel with the political bubblings in Puerto Rico over the years.
“What we’re seeing is the evolution of an artist as he’s growing up with us,” said Vanessa Díaz, a Chicano/a studies professor at Loyola Marymount University. She’s currently teaching a class on Bad Bunny and political resistance in Puerto Rico. “What’s so appealing about him is his refusal to accommodate. It’s not as if he’s out there saying, ‘I’m an out queer man.’ He’s not identifying as such. But we are getting an openness, a flexibility, a fluidity. I don’t think that it’s about shock value. It’s actually about the refusal to be confined.”
Come 2019, Bad Bunny is much more active politically. He’s moved past broad, feel-good proclamations that American audiences tend to expect from musicians. At his core, Puerto Rico is what’s important to him. The island, post-Hurricane Maria, had become mired in another political scandal. Gov. Ricky Rosselló’s Telegram group chat leaked, revealing his disdain for hurricane victims and sparking protests across the island. Bad Bunny was one of the few Puerto Rican celebrities who were in the streets. He released a song with Residente and iLe — “Afilando Los Cuchillos” or “Sharpening The Knives” — calling for the governor’s resignation. Rosselló stepped down within 15 days. Soon after, Bad Bunny began speaking out against femicides and transphobia that plague Puerto Rico.
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Eric Rojas/AFP via Getty Images
“There was a particular audience consuming this and it was divided along generational lines,” said Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, a Caribbean historian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who is penning an article for the Bad Bunny Enigma, an academic journal analyzing the star. “It’s really interesting how Bad Bunny became this global superstar while in conversation with things that were happening in the archipelago. He was basically making music for people in the archipelago, referencing things that only Puerto Ricans would understand.”
Then Bad Bunny does something absolutely phenomenal: drop three albums in a year. And not just any year. Just before lockdowns in early 2020, Benito released YHLQMDLG (A Spanish acronym for “I do whatever I want”). It’s a garage-y, nostalgic ode to early reggaetón and hip hop with powerhouse features from Daddy Yankee, Anuel AA, Arcángel, and more. In May, Bad Bunny followed up with Las que no iban a salir, a compilation album of unreleased songs as well as ones written during quarantine. Finally, he dropped El Último Tour Del Mundo, a Latin trap-rock baby.
The songs from YHLQMDLG and El Último Tour are stronger conceptually than his first album, reflecting that political and personal growth. “Yo Perreo Sola” — an anthem for women everywhere telling men to fuck off when they’re dancing — features Benito in drag with body prosthetics, to much acclaim and controversy. “Maldita Pobreza” chronicles the struggle of wanting to shower your lover with expensive gifts, but not being able to. El Último Tour became the first all-Spanish album to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.
“Bad Bunny is one of those phenomena that contributes to changing culture because it challenges stereotypes,” Chirinos, the NYU music professor, said. “It creates a body of work that’s genius in the way he raps, the way he sings. It’s also the simplicity of his music. His music is very elaborate in terms of production, his performance is very simple — that’s why people connect with it so much.”
The strategic brilliance of Un Verano Sin Ti
Everyone loves a summer album, and 2022’s Un Verano Sin Ti proves it on an international scale. Right as travel became a more viable option globally in early May, Bad Bunny drops Un Verano Sin Ti with immersive 360-degree visualizers on YouTube. The first track, “Moscow Mule,” opens with gulls cawing, atmospheric synths, and an undeniably tropical beat. You know instantly this album is going to be played on beaches everywhere.
From the infectious electronic mambo of “Después de la Playa” to the breathy bittersweetness and indie pop sensibilities of “Otro Atardecer,” there’s something for everyone. If you couldn’t gel with Bad Bunny before, it’d be hard to find something you couldn’t vibe with on the 23-track album. It bridged the generational gap that eluded him before. “You know, I was a bit resistant to Bad Bunny — I’m an old Latino man,” said Chirinos. “At the very beginning, I was like, ‘I don’t know. I don’t get this guy.’ I didn’t know why people were so crazy about him until I listened to Un Verano Sin Ti. It became my number one album last year by far. There are some songs that I think are some of the best songs not just on the album, but ever.”
The album, easily, is a love letter to the music of the Caribbean. It pulls from bachata, bomba, merengue, dembow, reggae, cumbia, and bossa nova with electricity. It features reggaetón greats like Tony Dize and Plan B’s Chencho Corleone while also advancing the next generation of Latinx music makers, like The Marías, Buscabulla, and Bomba Estereo. (Bad Bunny probably could have put more effort in featuring Afro-Latinos, given how heavy their influence is here.) The breadth of genre and interplay in Un Verano Sin Ti was sonically familiar globally — after all, who hasn’t felt the irresistible tug of bachata drums, begging you to dance?
“You can hear the Dominican Republic, the Lesser Antilles, and of course, Puerto Rico,” Meléndez-Badillo said. “Although he is paying a tribute or an homage to the Caribbean, particularly summers in the Caribbean, it’s a record that did not have a particular listening audience. That is why it made it such a huge deal when it came out.”
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Kevin Winter/Getty Images
It’s a funny paradox: Un Verano Sin Ti is simultaneously Bad Bunny’s most global album and his most Puerto Rican. While the music clearly brings in influences from elsewhere that can attract listeners from around the globe, lyrically Bad Bunny is singing to the specifics of the Puerto Rican experience. In “Andrea,” he sings alongside Buscabulla’s Raquel Berríos about a woman who wants to live her life free from societal pressure. The album’s star song, though, is “El Apagón,” a lively EDM track where Benito champions the beauty of Puerto Rico and critiques the gentrification and regular blackouts happening on the island. “I don’t want to leave / let them go,” sings Gabriela Berlingeri (Benito’s partner) in Spanish. “This is my beach / this is my sun / this my land / this is me.”
Authenticity like that can’t be manufactured. The music video for “El Apagón” could have been a cute little dance number, but is instead a 22-minute documentary explaining the context behind the song. When he launched his sold-out world tour, Bad Bunny started in Puerto Rico with affordable tickets and streamed the first of three nights on public television. No matter where you were, it was a massive party.
“He is making music for the people of Puerto Rico, and if other people enjoy it, then wonderful,” Díaz, the professor teaching a course on Bad Bunny, said. “But the music is for them. And guess what? Other people have enjoyed it. It’s this really beautiful example of the fact that you can create for a particular people, you can create for your nation, you can create with this particular kind of purpose. You can deal with it or not. And everyone is dealing with it and loving it.”
The rise and rise of Latin music
Bad Bunny does not need the American Grammys. For all intents and purposes, he is already at the top of the charts, has a burgeoning film career, and moonlights as a WWE wrestler when he finds the time. His two tours last year combine for the highest gross earnings for an artist in a calendar year at a slick $435 million. And he’ll be headlining at Coachella this year. He will be fine whether or not he wins. But what Un Verano Sin Ti means for the future of music consumption cannot be ignored.
If Luis Fonsi’s “Despacito” remix with Justin Bieber and Daddy Yankee cracked open the nutshell of American markets, Un Verano Sin Ti might absolutely pulverize it. “Despacito” was the first Spanish-language song to be nominated for Song and Record of the Year in 2018, but lost to Bruno Mars on both counts. You might be thinking: Okay, who cares, the Latin Pop and Latin Urban categories are there, too. But language shouldn’t be siloed, when you can sing any song in any language. If Shakira sang “Hips Don’t Lie” in Spanish, she wouldn’t have been nominated for Best Pop Collaboration in the 00s. It’s historic that Bad Bunny’s album has the honor of going up against Beyoncé.
The nomination also signals a readiness and openness for American audiences to embrace non-English music. We’re already seeing this happen with Pharrell singing in Spanish and the proliferation of K-pop with BTS (although K-pop stars do tend to incorporate English). Bad Bunny sticking with Spanish is exciting, and indicative of a cultural shift. “We might start seeing other folks who are artists who don’t speak or don’t want to speak English in their music getting huge at this global level,” Díaz said. “He’s setting a completely new precedent that actually is going to change the trajectory of global music.”
According to data from music tracker Luminate, consumption of Latin music grew by 28 percent in 2022, and Bad Bunny’s responsible for the top four albums in the genre. That’s only expected to grow as Latinx populations grow in the next few decades, says Chirinos. Latin genres are spreading far and wide, with streaming only increasing the possibilities in genre fusion and exploration.
“Reggaetón is becoming, in a way, a dominant pop music format, or a format that many international artists would probably choose to use because it appeals to international audiences,” Chirinos said. “Streaming is opening the doors that were perhaps closed before in Latin America. Right now, one of the largest markets for streaming music consumption is Mexico. Another one is Brazil. And these are markets poised to grow. It’s an appealing idea for the music industry, looking at Latin America as well as Africa, as the emerging markets for music consumption. That’s where young people are being born.”
Latin music or culture can’t be ignored in a world where Bad Bunny is a superstar, which is true regardless of how the Grammys shake out. He’s an artist who’s helping to explode the reach of his genres, while simultaneously exploding what the genres have to offer. That kind of expansion, it can’t be denied.
“We can’t take that for granted or underestimate the long-term cultural value of the moment,” Díaz said. “All of these things create this really important cultural opening. On a Puerto Rican level, on an American level, on a global level.”
Our panel of experts discusses whether last year’s surprise breakout can win it all on Hollywood’s big night.
Everything Everywhere All at Once, from the directing duo known as the “Daniels” (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert), has turned out to be one of 2022’s biggest success stories. It’s a quirky, non-franchise film with a wholly original plot about a Chinese immigrant mother who owns a laundromat with her husband, has a tense relationship with her daughter, and is hurtled into a fantastical plan to destroy the multiverse. Not your typical Oscar fare.
It has netted a whopping 11 Oscar nominations, and two of its stars — Ke Huy Quan and Michelle Yeoh — have been feted all awards season. Could this little film that became a sensation have a chance on Hollywood’s big night?
To discuss why the film was such a success, why it tugged at audiences’ heartstrings, and what it would mean if it won Best Picture, we gathered Vox culture reporters Alissa Wilkinson, Alex Abad-Santos, and Aja Romano, along with politics reporter Li Zhou, for a discussion around a (virtual) roundtable.
Alissa Wilkinson: Everything Everywhere All at Once (EEAAO) turned out to be a bona fide sensation, and I confess I was a little surprised. Maybe I’m just brain-poisoned from years of seeing only franchise films top the charts, but I thought this kooky, frenetic, big-hearted, wild-imagination film might be too much for audiences. Yet it really turned out to be the little movie that could. It opened modestly and never really exploded, but it played in theaters for months (which most movies don’t get to do these days) and ended up making a very healthy amount of money: over $70 million in the US, and over $100 million worldwide, the magic number that turns a movie from a “modest success” to a hit. All that with a modest budget of around $25 million, and without a Marvel star or preexisting IP in sight. And those numbers tell a story — in this case, that the main ingredient in its success was word-of-mouth buzz.
People who saw it liked it, and they grabbed their friends by the shoulders and yelled, “You too must see this!” and went back a second and maybe a third time to see it again. That’s the way movies used to be, but few get that chance anymore. So I want to ask: In your estimation, what accounts for that success? What about it grabbed people enough that they had to grab their friends? What’s the secret sauce? Why did you see it?
Alex Abad-Santos: Throughout EEAAO’s theatrical run, one of the big explanations of why it was doing so well was word of mouth — basically that people who saw the movie went and told everyone how great it was. The funny thing about that is that this movie is impossible to explain. No amount of description — alternate timelines, jumps, existential crises, moms, hot dog fingers, butt plugs, etc. — could ever accurately describe what’s happening at any given moment during this maximalist fantasia. And if you tried to describe all those things, I don’t think that would sell the movie.
I think what I ended up doing was that I would tell someone, “Go see this movie.” Then that person sees it, and you can finally talk to them about how absolutely bonkers everything is. You can say, “THE ROCKS!” and the other person will say, “THE ROCKS!” and then you both say, “THE ROCKS!” and it’s like speaking a secret language, which I think all points to how the Daniels, Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, and that incredible cast pulled it off.
Aja Romano: When we think about the why, I think there are a couple of factors. One is the sheer popular appeal of a movie produced by the guys behind Stranger Things, made by the guys who did the “Turn Down For What” video, with a cast that includes a martial arts movie legend, a horror scream queen, and an ‘80s action movie child star. It’s a storyline about a multiverse with an entire subplot dedicated to homaging Ratatouille. This film’s geek cred is almost as stuffed and randomized as its plot.
But the other thing is that the film’s utter absurdism functions like a yell in response to the present age. We live in an era where our foremost Black rapper is a white supremacist, where Florida bans math books for teaching kids about their feelings, where chatbots are learning to generate gigantic-chested fake girls with missing fingers and extra eyelids. Reality seems more overwhelmingly surreal by the day, so why not make a movie that combats existential despair using positive absurdism, where Jamie Lee Curtis may have hot dogs for hands. Even people with hot dogs for hands can have epic multiverse-spanning love stories, and that’s beautiful.
Because the other thing about this movie is not just that it got incredible word-of-mouth, but that everyone also told you to bring tissues: that this was not just a fun, zany, chaotic brain-buster of a movie, but one that would shred your heart in the best way.
Li Zhou: Yes! It’s that combination of tenderness and spectacle that ultimately got me. The quiet moments that the film sets up between its main characters including Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh) and Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) amid the literal chaos that everyone has alluded to, are such an artful contrast and respite.
The now-iconic line about laundry and taxes, for example, is so emblematic of how the movie is part pandemonium and part raw emotion. In the end, EEAAO has got cooking raccoons, martial arts battles, and BDSM interludes, as well as this mushy and warmhearted core that’s captivating in its own right.
Alissa: Among the movie’s many virtues — and we all agree, it has many — is the way it deals with some potentially thorny or tricky subjects in the form of a multi-universe melodrama/comedy. It’s about parents saying they’re sorry, about quantum physics, about regretting your past, about depression and anxiety, and about the experience of a family in which the parents are Asian immigrants and the daughter was raised in America. Which of these — or any other — struck a chord with you as you watched? And how well do you think the movie handled them?
Alex: Being that my parents immigrated to America in the ’80s and I’m a first-generation Asian American who just happens to be a flagrant homosexual who loves Michelle Yeoh (ever since Crouching Tiger), there were moments in this movie that hit close to home. Like, yes, a scene about how difficult it is for immigrant parents to fully understand their kids’ lives (and vice versa) is going to strike a nerve! At the same time, Yeoh’s Evelyn and Hsu’s Joy felt like distinct characters with unique journeys that I wanted to see more of and was refreshed by.
I do find it wickedly funny that a few years ago, the buzz was about Crazy Rich Asians and what its success meant for Asian American representation in Hollywood movies. At the time, I tepidly joked that hopefully we would get to the point where Asian people didn’t have to be rich or glamorous to warrant a movie being made about them, that maybe true equality and representation would mean that “crazy poor Asians” would get to have stories too. And, well, Parasite won Best Picture in 2020, and three years later we have a story about a depressed Asian American immigrant mom and her existentially crisis-afflicted daughter in the running for another top award.
Aja: A lot has been written about Joy’s monster as a metaphor for her depression, and I think the movie handled that so well, but it was Evelyn’s anxiety that also really spoke to me, personally — she had this sense of feeling overwhelmed with every small thing she had to do just to get through daily living. With Joy, my feeling was closer to, “Is she depressed or just living in 2022?”
But also the dynamic between them was so rich and painfully real — the barbs they exchanged landed every time. Certainly every queer kid can relate to the horror of one’s parents trying to mitigate the way they introduce their significant other to relatives who might be less than charitable. The deep hurt and tension laced throughout those scenes was a stellar example of how this movie shows you its taut intergenerational conflicts without spelling them out. Such disparate 2022 movies as Turning Red and the horror film Umma also prominently featured Asian diaspora protagonists working through a lot of trauma as immigrants and reconciling with their parents across generational and cultural conflicts. As with both of those films, I found this one extremely universally relatable on all these fronts.
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Li: To Alex’s point, the fact that this film, and multiple others that have garnered acclaim in recent years, like Minari, are about the stories of different Asian American families without relying on dated tropes or the qualifier of being “crazy rich” is pretty moving and feels significant.
And I especially loved how Yeoh described this film in her Golden Globes speech as centering a “very ordinary immigrant Asian woman, mother, daughter, who was trying to do her audit.”
One of the relationships that stood out to me in the movie was also the one between Evelyn and her father, who’s referred to as Gong Gong (James Hong). As a child of immigrants, I’ve definitely witnessed the fracturing between different generations of family members that can be part of the immigrant experience, and the film does a really admirable job capturing the enduring nature of that pain. Relatedly, I thought James Hong’s performance — in addition to those of the other leads — was phenomenal and should be getting more hype.
Alissa: There’s one other big part of this movie that seems hot right now: Like many a recent blockbuster (we are looking at you, MCU), it’s about the multiverse. More specifically, it uses the idea of many universes coexisting to plumb something that feels very true about love, relationships, regret, and empathy.
It’s interesting to me to see multiverse concepts employed in this manner — it’s a little like what actually does happen in the MCU, but instead of being focused on the action, it’s focused on the emotion. Why do you think this concept resonates so much with filmmakers and audiences right now?
Aja: I think it goes back to that feeling of being overwhelmed that I spoke of earlier. Reality is just so much lately, and it’s partly in response to that feeling that we’ve seen an increase in a kind of performative nihilism — everything from edgelord meme culture to shitposting to billionaire bunkers and covid fatalism. We see that reflected in the film: Joy’s — er, Jobu Tupaki’s reason for trying to destroy the multiverse is that “nothing matters.”
And when you’re faced with that kind of argument, the only possible answer a hopeful human being can really provide, if we want to not be crushed beneath the weight of the alternate possibility, is: “No, everything matters.”
What better way to show that than through a multiverse where everything, every act and choice, even tiny gestures of humanity or inhumanity, has a ripple effect — not just across lives but across dimensions? Everything, everywhere, all at once, matters.
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Alex: I have to agree with Aja. One of the more popular refrains of the last few years is that we are all living in the stupidest timeline. And we do! There are so many heinously daft things happening in all of our lives right now that sometimes you cannot help but laugh at it all! The hope and possibility that there’s a version of me living a better, more fun, more hilarious life than me right now is such a joy to think about, and I think that — in large part — is what makes the movie feel so nourishing.
Li: One of the other functions of the multiverse that felt particularly special in Everything Everywhere All at Once is how this concept enabled the actors to take on different versions of their characters. The toggling back and forth between the various Waymonds, Evelyns, Joys, and Gong Gongs was both impressive to witness and an approach that was constantly pushing the audience to reconsider its perception of various characters.
The contrast between Alpha Waymond and Regular Waymond, for instance, offered this really interesting commentary on masculinity, and how the value of kindness, playfulness, and optimism, is often overlooked.
Alissa: So now I guess it’s time to address the googly-eyed rock in the room: Can this movie win Best Picture? I vacillate wildly between thinking it’s a slam-dunk and a long shot. Maybe it’s both. And if you don’t care to venture a guess at the mind of the Academy, what would it mean for a movie like this to win at the Oscars?
Alex: I have a tip that gives me peace of mind, and it is that awards don’t matter. These awards don’t reward quality or ingenuity or feats! They’re mostly popularity contests and the result of who campaigned the best! And I usually stick to that worldview unless, of course, something (the 2009 movie An Education) or someone (Rihanna, Beyoncé, Carly Rae Jepsen) I deeply admire wins, because then, of course, awards do matter and the correct person or movie or album won!
In this case, I think EEAAO has enough things that the Academy likes — a story about America, an under-appreciated star lead in Michelle Yeoh, a great Jamie Lee Curtis performance, etc. — that it can win. I feel like the real story is Yeoh’s shot at Best Actress, as it will be the Academy’s chance to play a part in a feel-good story about feeling seen and people finally recognizing Yeoh’s talent. But again, we don’t need the Oscars to tell us that Yeoh always brings a dignity and sparkling thrill to every character she plays.
Aja: I do think Ke Huy Quan is almost certainly a lock for Supporting Actor, and it seems like his comeback story is destined to be one of the more storied Hollywood glow-ups. If Michelle Yeoh wins, it will be a welcome sign of the Academy’s ongoing shift toward a broader appreciation of a diversity of experience and range of talent; it would be a huge feat to pull off a win over Cate Blanchett in the year of Tár, but if anyone can do it, it’s Yeoh.
Li: There is something kind of delightful to think about how this incredibly imaginative — and at times truly wild — film could win in an awards show that’s been known for being pretty stuffy in the past.
I’m also keeping a close eye on the long-overdue acting awards, while echoing the caveat that Yeoh and Quan don’t need any such recognition to validate their incredible performances. My secret hope is that the actors would perhaps go even further in calling Hollywood out if they win, though fully admire just how gracious they were at the Globes and beyond.
Alissa: I couldn’t agree more. I’ve been lucky enough to hear Quan give several speeches (including at the awards gala for my own critics’ group awards!) and he fits the comeback narrative perfectly — and on top of it, it would be a delight to see him win. But mostly, I’d take an Everything Everywhere All at Once win as a sign that something — taste, proclivities, signs of what’s “best” — has shifted in the Academy along with the demographic changes.
Whatever the case, though, when I get down about the state of Hollywood (and I do, pretty often), I look at movies like this one as a sign of hope. Even if it wasn’t your favorite film of the year — and it wasn’t for me! — it’s a warm-hearted burst of creativity that’s not quite like anything the business usually churns out, and I’m so glad to see it make it into awards conversations. Like these!
Everything Everywhere All at Once has returned to theaters in advance of the Oscars. It’s also available to stream on Paramount+ or rent or purchase on digital platforms.
A jury found the Tesla CEO not liable in a shareholder lawsuit, but the case revealed a lot about Musk’s refusal to back down.
Elon Musk and Tesla were found not liable for investors’ losses after Musk tweeted in 2018 that funding had been secured to take Tesla private, in a class-action lawsuit that was much watched because of its high-profile defendant. It marked the second time in recent months that Musk appeared in court to defend himself as CEO of Tesla, at a time when the company’s investors have increasingly expressed concerns about Musk’s leadership.
The verdict proved yet another twist in a months-long public debate about the billionaire’s impetuous, often contentious behavior, especially on Twitter. The trial, in the end, revealed as much about how he views his Twitter habits as it did about how he ran the EV company.
For the past several weeks, Musk has defended himself against the lawsuit over a tweet he posted on August 7, 2018: “Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.” The stock price, which had hovered above $340 when the markets opened that day, swung up as shareholders envisioned a tidy profit when the buyout was complete. A little more than a week later, when Musk said going private was a no-go in a New York Times interview, the price fell.
Shareholders quickly sued Musk, Tesla, and company directors for securities fraud, alleging that Musk had known his tweets were false and that they had cost them billions of dollars. The lawsuit alleged that Musk had not discussed a specific $420-per-share price with would-be buyers. During the trial, which began in the Northern District of California on January 17, Musk and Tesla argued that the tweets had not been false, merely incomprehensive — and that Musk, at the time, had fully believed investors that would fund the move would pull through.
A nine-person jury in a California courtroom reached the verdict in just a few hours. The jury had been asked to find whether Musk and Tesla managed to prove their claims separately. If any of the defendants were found liable, they also would have had to determine how much Tesla’s stock price had been artificially inflated on each day between August 7 and August 17. In the end, jurors determined neither the mercurial billionaire nor the electric car company owed investors a dime.
The 2018 tweet had already proven troublesome for Musk and Tesla. The Securities and Exchange Commission sued Musk for securities fraud in connection with the missive in 2018; he and Tesla settled and were ordered to pay a $40 million penalty, and Musk was required to step down as chair of the Tesla board for three years. His SEC settlement didn’t just come with a monetary penalty — he agreed that his tweets about Tesla would be internally reviewed going forward. Musk, who has treated the SEC with contempt, says he was coerced into agreeing to this particular leash. Last year, his lawyer wrote in a court filing that the order existed to “chill his exercise of First Amendment rights.”
The lead plaintiff representing shareholders was Glen Littleton, a 71-year-old Missouri investor who says he bought Tesla stock after the “funding secured” tweet under the belief that the price would go up. But when the take-private didn’t happen, Littleton argued, he lost millions. An expert witness for the plaintiffs estimated that Tesla investors — not just those who bought or sold Tesla securities between August 7 and August 17 — lost $12 billion in the 10 days between the tweet and the revelation that the deal would not be taking place. The lawsuit sought damages reported to be in the billions. The plaintiffs argued not only that Elon Musk was liable for making fraudulent tweets, but that Tesla as well as its then-board directors (a group that includes Musk’s brother Kimbal and James Murdoch, son of Fox News media mogul Rupert) were also liable for failing to stop Musk from disseminating false information that harmed shareholders.
The lawsuit was a test of whether Musk would be held accountable for making statements that potentially impact markets on Twitter — a platform he now owns, which he has championed for its importance as a free speech haven. After the verdict, Musk tweeted, “Thank goodness, the wisdom of the people has prevailed!”
“Funding secured” — or was it?
During his multi-day court testimony, Musk maintained that what he had tweeted had been the truth, and that he had essentially been thrown under the bus by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), which he said was prepared to provide funding for a buyout. The deal was all but inked, he argued, when he tweeted in August 2018 that the only remaining hurdle was a shareholder vote. He also told the court that he wanted to get ahead of a Financial Times article reporting that the Saudi fund would acquire a 3 to 5 percent stake in Tesla. Deepak Ahuja, former chief financial officer at Tesla, testified that both he and Musk believed the Saudi PIF would fund the entire buyout. “If they say they’re going to do something, they do it,” Musk said in court. The PIF, he argued, had backed out of the deal.
Part of Musk’s defense was also that what’s said on Twitter is often taken with a grain of salt. His argument was that people who read his “funding secured” tweet would have understood the context of the medium — “that this is a very brief statement on Twitter that can’t be fully explained [and that] nobody believes what they read on Twitter exactly,” explained Ann Lipton, a law professor at Tulane University.
“Just because I tweet something doesn’t mean people believe it or act accordingly,” Musk — new CEO of Twitter, longtime CEO of Tesla and SpaceX — told the courtroom in late January. His testimony downplayed the reach and power his words have on the site that he paid $44 billion to own, where he has over 127 million followers.
In the SEC’s 2018 complaint against Musk, the agency contended that he hadn’t specifically discussed price with potential investors. In court, Musk said that though there was no written agreement, he didn’t need one to be confident about funding. When asked whether he had set a specific price with the Saudi representatives, Musk said he had not. A court motion filed in April 2022 revealed that Musk had one conversation with the Saudi PIF before the August 7 tweet. Making the case even more difficult to parse, the governor of the Saudi fund, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, refused to testify in the case. Musk’s lawyers attempted to subpoena him, but the PIF’s lawyers argued that Al-Rumayyan isn’t legally obligated to testify in the California court.
Musk tweeted, and Tesla prices shot up
Musk and his legal team argued that it is hard to say whether his tweets had caused wild swings in Tesla’s stock value, because market behavior can be “counterintuitive.”
A report prepared by one of the plaintiffs’ expert witnesses, economic consultant Michael Hartzmark, noted that Tesla’s value shot up by almost 11 percent on August 7, the day of the “funding secured” tweet. Hartzmark’s report said that this was an abnormal return of statistical significance. A day after the Times interview with Musk, on August 17, Tesla’s closing price was just under 9 percent lower than the previous day’s close. Third-party analysts have also observed that immediately after Musk’s tweet, Tesla’s trading volume increased tenfold — and trading was temporarily halted.
“If these investors purchased the stock at a price that was too high, which eventually did come back down in the near term, and then sold, then that purchase was made on false information,” said Josh White, a Vanderbilt University finance professor and former SEC economist.
Experts, however, told Vox that it was extremely unusual for a class-action securities case to go to trial. When it does, it’s usually because the plaintiffs’ case is extremely weak and the defendant is confident they can win — otherwise, companies almost always settle. The fact that Musk and Tesla chose to take their chances in court is itself remarkable.
“I’m sure he has many reasons for going to trial — although it’s really, really rare,” said David Rosenfeld, a securities law professor at Northern Illinois University. But being able to defend his 2018 tweets was likely one major benefit. “He’s using this, basically, as a public forum to vindicate himself.”
And Musk has insisted the information in this case was legitimate. “The tweets are truthful,” he said in his testimony, contending that he was merely unable to be comprehensive in his tweets given the character limit.
Musk’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, argued that the tweets contained only “technical inaccuracies.”
What does “technically inaccurate” mean?
A slightly more credible argument, Lipton told Vox, was that any inaccuracies in Musk’s tweets didn’t really matter.
Before the trial began, the court had already ruled that Musk’s August 7 tweets were false and made recklessly. This was important, because in a fraud case, the plaintiff has to show either that the defendant intentionally committed fraud or that they acted recklessly. It was a leg up for the plaintiffs in this case that the jury was instructed to accept as fact that Musk had tweeted falsely and recklessly.
“Musk’s chief defense is ‘All right, it might have been technically false but spiritually true,’” said Lipton. And the plaintiffs weren’t attempting to prove whether Musk’s tweets were false — the court had already established that they were — but that what the tweets misstated was directly tied to the shareholders’ losses. The defense’s argument is that “the undisclosed facts — that is, what the market did not know about this arrangement — were immaterial,” explained Lipton. They would have lost money anyway, or so the argument goes.
Tesla investors to CEO: Please stop tweeting
A central facet of the trial wasn’t just the “funding secured” tweet, but Musk’s well-documented habit of tweeting impulsively and without restraint. Plaintiffs’ lawyers argued that his past Twitter statements have revealed information that should not have been public, affected markets, and harmed shareholders. Several Tesla shareholders and others involved with the company testified that they had attempted to get him to stop tweeting (requests that he ignored).
His manner of communicating brusquely became evident during his testimony, too. He occasionally gave defiant answers to the plaintiffs’ lawyers, resisting offering a yes or a no. At times his responses were stricken from the court record for being irrelevant or inappropriate. Nicholas Porritt, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, for example, asked whether Musk would agree that he had lost money for an investor who had bought Tesla stock on August 8 believing in the truth of Musk’s tweets, only for the price to fall when it was revealed that funding wasn’t secured.
“Your question contains falsehoods,” Musk replied.
Musk has made it abundantly clear that he believes his personal Twitter account is a place where he should be able to express himself freely. Musk’s MO on Twitter often blurs the line between earnestness and shitposting. At times, what he says on the site is to be taken seriously — it’s a direct line of communication between Musk and anyone who wants to keep up with him and his companies. He shares updates and rebuts news reports via Twitter. More recently, Musk has extolled Twitter’s ability to be a better source of news than “old-school media” with less bias. “Twitter is arguably already the least wrong source of truth on the Internet, but we obviously still have a long way to go,” Musk tweeted recently.
Yet Musk also sometimes insists that his own tweets shouldn’t be taken at face value. In a defamation lawsuit in which a diver involved in the 2018 Thai cave rescue sued Musk for calling him a “pedo guy” on Twitter, his lawyers argued that Twitter is hyperbolic and no reasonable person would rely on it as a source of facts.
Shades of that argument appeared in this trial as well, highlighting Musk’s tricky, tangled relationship with the social media site, where he’s been a prolific tweeter for more than a decade, and where he has sowed chaos over the past several months through mass firings and haphazard changes that have led to an exodus of advertisers and a rise in hate speech. On the one hand, Twitter has provided a handy platform for Musk to share his views and news about his companies; his off-the-cuff Twitter persona helped grow his fan base, which has bolstered Tesla’s popularity and stock value. On the other hand, Musk’s habit of impulsive tweeting keeps landing him in hot water.
Despite these legal troubles, Musk has continued to tweet.