Singer Brandi Carlile is opening up about why she — as an openly gay artist — decided to sing “America the Beautiful” at Super Bowl LX despite the country’s turbulent and divisive political times.
“I have my own moral code, my own moral imperative, that I have to answer to at the end of the day, as a wife and a mother, and I believe in my ability and responsibility to do this, and that’s why I’m here,” Carlile, 44, told Variety in an interview published on Saturday, February 7.
“And the throughline to being queer and being representative of a marginalized community and being put on the largest stage in America to acknowledge the fraught and tender hope that this country is based on, it’s something you don’t say no to,” she added. “You do it.”
The Grammy and Emmy award-winning singer-songwriter is set to perform “America the Beautiful” ahead of Super Bowl 60 between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots on Sunday, February 8, at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California.
Carlile will perform as part of a jam-packed pre-game lineup, featuring Green Day and a rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” by Charlie Pluth, before Bad Bunny takes the 2026 Super Bowl Halftime stage.
While there’s sure to be plenty of drama on the field, Bad Bunny and the controversy surrounding his upcoming performance has been dominating headlines after conservatives, Republican politicians — including President Donald Trump — and pundits have chastised the NFL for choosing a Puerto Rican artist who performs in Spanish to headline.
(Despite claims from many conservatives, Bad Bunny, real name Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, is an American as Puerto Rico is an American territory.)
Brandi Carlile Getty Images
“You may not know this, but I’m doing the Super Bowl halftime show,” Bad Bunny told the audience while hosting Saturday Night Live in October 2025, addressing the controversy head-on. “I’m very happy and I think everyone is very happy about it! Even Fox News…”
He added, “Really, I’m very excited to be doing the Super Bowl and I know people all around the world who love my music are also happy.”
Bad Bunny then spoke in Spanish, before again addressing the audience and viewers in English.
“If you didn’t understand now what I just said, you have four months to learn!”
While speaking to Variety, Carlile also addressed the divisiveness surrounding the upcoming Super Bowl.
“It shouldn’t be. It shouldn’t be,” Carlile told the publication of how controversial the halftime show has become. “It looks exactly like America! It looks exactly like the United States. It looks like the layers on the field, and it looks like the people that are watching the sport. And that’s how it should be, with a lot of demographics represented, and a lot of enthusiastic people excited to celebrate a huge game on a unifying day.”
Brandi Carlile and her wife, Catherine Shepherd, first struck up a relationship over the phone — but it wasn’t long before they hit it off in person as well. The Grammy winner and the U.K. native met in 2009 while Shepherd was working for Paul McCartney, coordinating his charity work. Carlile and her future wife spoke […]
She continued, “And I think that the folks that put together the entertainment portion of the Super Bowl this year just did a bang-up job. It’s really good. Bad Bunny’s incredible — an incredible spirit and performer. It’s gonna be a fabulous halftime show.”
The award-winning singer also spoke to how important it was for her to perform a song penned by Katharine Lee Bates, who is believed to have been gay.
“You know, I feel called to a long line of contemplative and struggling people. I feel motivated by the fact that she was very likely gay, and a woman relying on her intellect in a time when that was difficult for women to do so, and living with a partner who was doing the same thing,” she explained. “And still choosing — even in that total oppression; even not being able to be married; even not being able to say that she was gay, or to be elevated to the heights that she probably deserved to be elevated to in politics — and, during those times, to still love America and to still believe that it could get to a place of goodness.”
She added, “I won’t say greatness, because that feels a little, you know, patriarchal. But goodness. And I believe the same thing. And I have a sliver of the struggle ahead of and behind me that she was facing in her day. So, you know, this is an interesting song. And it’s an interesting decision that I’m making. I definitely don’t want to be seen as a neoliberal or as someone who’s glossing over the problems that we have in this country. I want to be seen as one of the people that’s helping.”
