Harry Styles was just awarded Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards, and I was disappointed. I wanted Bad Bunny, “Benito,” to win; I wanted it to be the “we’ve made it” moment of Latin music that I feel like it deserves to be, that the impact Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti” album has had on me and so many others around the world, an impact shown in numbers, in streams, and felt deep and in the heart, in the way I know so many people feel about musicians and music they love. It’s just that it was this album; it was this moment.
In Styles’ acceptance speech (and I do adore and appreciate him as an artist, I will say!) he said, “We all know there is no best in music.” And that is so beautiful, so important to note, and so true. All art that is meaningful, beautiful, created out of love, in passion, out of necessity, for contribution, as a gift. I texted it to a friend, and she responded, “No favorites.” Because I’ve had this thing for some time now of saying I don’t believe in a “favorite,” a “best”; when everything fulfills, fills and inspires me in such different and special ways. I’ll often get asked what my “favorite” travel destination is/was when people find out I was a travel journalist. How to answer that? There are places I’ve met in different states and ways; places that have met me, suprised me, challenged me, changed me. So much of it was about who I was at that moment, too.
There is no best (a supremacist concept), and I choose not to play favorites. We do our best, which is always changing, to be our best, which is always changing, in every moment. I choose not to play favorites, and instead appreciate each moment for what it gives, for what it is.
Dedicated to Bad Bunny and “Un Verano Sin Ti,” my Album of the Year