It is easy to understand why Bad Bunny’s most recent album, Debí Tirar Más Fotos, has remained in the top 40 of the Billboard Hot 200 album charts for over a year. And it’s not just the publicity from the Super Bowl. 

At first, I found myself enjoying all of the songs on this album on a purely instrumental level. However, after learning what some of them mean, I determined that it definitely helps to read into the lyrics as they complement the music well.

For instance, based on an English translation from Genius, “La Mudanza” is a song about Bad Bunny’s pride for his country despite how people around him despise it, for instance stating in Spanish that “people [get] killed for raising the [Puerto Rican] flag”. This explains why he is using salsa music from decades past as a backing track — instead of the more synthy and reverbed sound from most of the other tracks like in “Velda” or “Kloufrens.” The instrumental enhances what Bad Bunny says. 

Tracks like “Turista” give the listener a time to slow down from the more upbeat tracks about love and heartbreak. They feel a lot more impactful as a result. Given it’s a track about how the narrator wasn’t able to show his love and get help through his suffering — either that, or about people who don’t actually take the time to get to know people, places or anything else in general and move on to the next thing, as Bad Bunny revealed in an interview for the “El Búho Loco” podcast — it makes sense to slow down the track in order to boost (or juxtapose) the meaning. 

Throughout my second listen through some of the tracks I noticed I was going through something similar. Instead of taking the time to get to know what the songs mean, I took the album as simply muzak. But after reading some of the lyrics and relistening to the songs closely, I learned that although Bad Bunny’s lyrics are easy to understand, he definitely shows off his songwriting chops throughout the album.

If you end up being recommended one of the songs from Debí Tirar Más Fotos on a streaming service — or happen to find a copy of it in a record shop — please give this a listen. Find translations of the songs. The instruments and vocals go together like peanut butter and jelly: Learn what they’re about, whether it be about the love of his country or the broken love he’s experienced throughout his life. 

I give this album 8 endangered frogs from Puerto Rico out of 10 chairs on the beach.