Do we like them?

Do we like Caetano Veloso?

Our score: 7 out of 10. Decades of standing up to authoritarians and a recent Grammy, with one contested comment on identity politics and one old stain that still draws criticism.

Caetano is the grand old man of Brazilian music, and his politics were forged in prison. In his 2026 interview with Spanish paper El País he spoke of being jailed, confined and sent into exile, and said it changed how he sees the world. He still says out loud that it is intolerable to hear people wish the military dictatorship back.

The recent news is a stoush on two fronts. He and producer Paula Lavigne called a pro-Lula rally on the Copacabana waterfront on 18 October, with Djavan, Simone and Ivan Lins on the bill. Ten days later a Rio judge ordered a video by Lucas Pavanato, a PL federal deputy-elect, taken down, finding it went beyond political criticism. Veloso is also seeking R$50,000 in damages, and that part is still undecided.

The harm check is where the asterisk comes from. In the June El País interview he said he once urged the left to pay more attention to race, sexuality and behaviour, but now sees an excess of racialisation, sexualisation and emphasis on gender, which he said creates confusion. Plenty of LGBTQ+ readers will wince at that. It is one contested opinion, not a campaign against anyone's rights, and nothing else in what I read shows him pushing harm.

The old stain is the start of his long partnership with Lavigne. In 2017 Alexandre Frota and the MBL movement publicly accused him of pedophilia, and Frota said Lavigne lost her virginity to him at 13 when he was 40. The report links that to a 1998 Playboy interview in which Lavigne said she lost her virginity to him at 13. Veloso and Lavigne sued over those accusations, and a court later ordered Olavo de Carvalho to pay him damages for keeping similar posts online. Whatever you make of the ethics of the age gap, the ugly pile-on from far-right figures is not his fault, and judge him on the relationship itself.

The good stuff is real. He and sister Maria Bethânia won the 2026 Grammy for Best Global Music Album with their live record, his third Grammy win. In 2012 the Latin Recording Academy made him Person of the Year, and part of that gala's proceeds went to Fundación Viva Cazuza, which works on HIV prevention and care for young people.

Gaps: I found no court losses where he was the defendant, and nothing on climate or on his own treatment of staff, so the good-person call rests on his public record. Brazilian outlets carried almost all of it, and some of the lawsuit coverage was only visible as headlines, so I left those cases out.