You're listening AdFree on Amazon Music.

Hey, Hit Parade listeners, this is Chris Malanfi.

This month's episode was recorded from my home office in Brooklyn, New York, which explains the slightly different audio quality.

With the coronavirus pandemic and social distancing in full force, creating this episode was a special challenge for my team.

But we offer it to you in the hopes that it provides a brief respite from the extraordinary circumstances we are all facing.

Music is a balm to me in tough times, as I'm sure it is

for many of you. So let's put pandemics in their place, and please enjoy this month's

episode of Hit Parade.

Music Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of Pop Chart History from Slate magazine, about the hits from coast to coast.

I'm Chris Malanfi, chart analyst, pop critic, and writer of Slate's Why Is This

Song Number One series. On today's show, maybe it seems like forever ago now, but if you watched

the halftime show at this year's Super Bowl, just eight weeks ago, you caught a rather culturally historic event,

the first ever halftime devoted exclusively to music by Latin American performers.

Led off by Colombian superstar Shakira and headlined by Puerto Rican American singer,

dancer, and actress Jennifer Lopez, the spectacle was a proud celebration of Latin heritage.

At one point, the woman who is now mainly known as J-Lo even waved a Puerto Rican flag.

Of course, the halftime performance was packed with hits.

The two superstars had a wealth to draw upon, including

former number ones by Shakira, and by Jailo, and even some songs that were not hits for either Lopez or Shakira.

The ladies were representing for an entire Pan-Latin culture.

That's a heavy responsibility to carry for a frothy televised spectacle.

But Lopez and Shakira both remember how two decades ago, it still seemed novel for

...