From Rosalía’s confession booth to Bad Bunny’s ‘casita’: Why every tour needs celebrity cameos

Which celebrity will we see in Bad Bunny’s casita? That question has been asked ever since it was announced that the DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOTos tour would stop in Spain. Anyone with an internet connection knows that the casita — a replica of a traditional Puerto Rican home, one of the live-stage settings designed by Mayna Magruder Oriz — is usually full of familiar faces. Influencers, athletes, actresses, and other public figures parade in and around the residence, which holds about 30 people (the roof supports 20) and contains sofas, a kitchen converted into a bar, screens showing what’s happening at the concert, and artworks by artists such as Lorenzo Omar and Alexis Díaz.

Although Bad Bunny enters the casita during the show, the audience waiting for social-media content is more interested in what happens outside, on the porches. Every concert, Bad Bunny has a different person say: “Acho, PR es otra cosa!” (Man, Puerto Rico is on another level!), typically before performing the song Voy a llevarte pa’ PR. Spanish actress Penélope Cruz said the line in August.

Other stars to appear in the casita between Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show and his Puerto Rican residence include Karol G., Ricky Martin, Ana de Armas, Bad Gyal, Javier Bardem, Lionel Messi, Paco León, Kylian Mbappé, LeBron James, Salma Hayek, Pedro Pascal passed through — and Jon Hamm, who was seen so happy and playful in bermuda shorts, a Hawaiian shirt and a fisherman’s cap that the internet nicknamed him “Jon Jamón.”

Who would be in Bad Bunny’s shows in Barcelona and Madrid? At Friday’s first concert, the crowd was made up largely of FC Barcelona players. With the exception of TV host Marc Giró — who kept a low profile, leaning quietly against a wall — the small house saw a steady parade from sunset onward: Lamine Yamal, accompanied by his partner, influencer Inés García, along with other Barça players such as Robert Lewandowski, Gavi, Pau Cubarsí, Dani Olmo, João Cancelo and Eric García.

But Bad Bunny is not the only one to invite VIPs. The major tours of recent years have added a new unwritten rule to their playbook: all concerts must have a celebrity moment that goes viral.

Rosalía knows this well, which is why she devised the confession booth segment on the LUX Tour. The moment comes right before she sings La perla, when she invites familiar faces to rant about their exes. Everyone from Lyas — the influencer who inaugurated the bit in Lyon — to all kinds of celebrities have stepped into that booth, each tailored to different bubbles and algorithmic niches.

Those who have taken a turn airing out past heartbreaks include YouTuber Esty Quesada and singer Aitana (Spain); model Cara Delevingne and singer Lola Young (London); and Najwa Nimri (Berlin). That cleverly staged roast has only confirmed the obvious: surprise celebrity cameos have become a standardized trend designed to keep audiences glued to the world’s biggest tours.

How do you keep a months‑long tour — where every show is practically identical on the inside — generating headlines, and how do you stop people from getting tired of talking about it? By creating a viral moment in every port of call. Once all the tricks of the show have been revealed on opening night, artists are no longer competing only for the best stadium production, but for the best moment: the one that will dominate Instagram or TikTok feeds for hours, replicated to exhaustion, fighting for the day’s attention through sheer surprise value.

On the Brat tour, Charli XCX picked her “Apple Girls” from the VIP section at each show, bringing them up on the screens to perform the choreography to the song of the same name. (Chappell Roan, another rising pop diva, did it in Barcelona — to the absolute delight of last year’s Primavera Sound crowd.)

Just before singing Juno, Sabrina Carpenter has been “arresting” a celebrity who is “too attractive” at every stop of Short n’ Sweet, and she has already slapped the cuffs on Nicole Kidman, Anne Hathaway, Gigi Hadid, sisters Elle and Dakota Fanning, Salma Hayek, and Millie Bobby Brown, among others.

And all of TikTok has been wondering who the next “Sally” will be. Ever since he released his hit Sally, When the Wine Runs Out, Role Model — also known as Tucker Pillsbury, the 28‑year‑old musician who is currently dating actress Dakota Johnson — has been inviting one audience member onstage at every show to dance as that night’s Sally. It doesn’t matter whether they know any of his songs or not: the internet has been flooded with clips of Natalie Portman, Kate Hudson, and Olivia Rodrigo up onstage dancing to the track alongside him.

“The music industry is exploiting a mechanism well known in show business: the morbid curiosity of seeing stars,” says sociologist and musician Hans Laguna. “The point is to make people feel involved, in some way, in that superior and unattainable realm where celebrities live,” explains the author of the recent book Yo siendo yo. El teatro de la autenticidad de las estrellas pop (Just Being Myself: The Theater of Pop Stars’ Authenticity).

Laguna sees Bad Bunny’s casita as a narrative leap from other surprise formulas that have been wildly popular in recent years.

“With C. Tangana and the El madrileño tour— a record that leaned heavily, even brazenly, on the device of guest‑star collaborations — the intrigue centered on which famous faces would show up onstage to perform the songs, because the stage itself was conceived as a grand party of illustrious characters. What Bad Bunny has done is take it a step further: now they’re not even artists connected to his music or people he has worked with, but celebrities in general,” he explains.

The battle for post-show conversation, on social media or over the office coffee, is so fierce that it goes beyond placing famous people onstage. The need to generate content that will become TikTok’s favorite candy the next day has expanded into every possible format: Zara Larsson’s Lush Life has enjoyed a second life thanks to the choreography she created onstage with fans. Dua Lipa performs traditional songs from each tour stop — she sang Bésame mucho in Mexico, Enrique Iglesias’s Héroe in Spain, and Highway to Hell in Australia — and Drake hands out gifts to fans at every show.

All that effort in pursuit of fleeting spikes of attention can also backfire. Just ask the adulterers caught by Coldplay’s Kiss Cam. Not everyone is eager to become the next viral clip on whatever tour is trending.

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