Karol G has Madrid at her feet, the Bichota has conquered Spain, she has filled four Bernabéus stadiums, it is total madness. The headlines about Karol G (Medellín, 1991) are coming to life in different Spanish media, they are being celebrated, they are being felt in the streets of the Spanish capital, which these days seems pink, with the aesthetics of the Colombian singer who broke attendance records and left Coldplay and even Taylor Swift behind, the Taylor phenomenon and her two Bernabéus stadiums. What is it, how can the “Karol G phenomenon” be explained? Questions that hover in different conversations that cross the Atlantic.
Whether you are one of those who like Bichota’s music or one of the uninitiated, below, after the songs, are some explanations from fans and experts about what the phenomenon means:
Bichota
TQG, Karol G and Shakira
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Provence
Tomorrow will be nice
It triggers the nostalgia of a generation raised on pop
We could start with the last point: Karol G brought Amaia Montero, one of the stars of Spanish music who had been out of shows for two years due to severe depression, up on stage at one of her concerts in Spain. Trembling, Montero sang in front of an audience that Karol G gave her with obvious love. Some call it sorority; others say it’s a way of believing in those who, like many, have had downturns in life. It’s not the first time Karol G has done it. In Mexico, she also invited Anahí (Rebelde, eleven years off the stage) on stage, and once again she activated the nostalgia of millions of people whose sentimental education was forged through pop radio.
This is what Laura Robles, a Bichota (the name given to the singer’s fans), said: “On the last tour I saw Karol G sing A sleepy little bear and Forget her with Centeno and Celedón. There she said that she grew up listening to vallenato. Today I see her singing this classic with Amaia Montero. Karol G was a Radio Tiempo girl like me. It feels strange and beautiful to imagine her without this fame.”
Karol G herself said it in 2022 at the Arena México when introducing Anahí: “She represented everything I felt, I would lie in bed and cry because I thought I wouldn’t have the opportunity to meet her. I went to her first concert in Medellín, she touched me up there, but I went and sang them all,” she said excitedly in front of thousands of girls, teenagers and adults, some mothers (because they go together) who listened to her there, far away in the stadium stands. Karol G’s triumph then feels like the shared triumph of a girl who always wanted to meet her singers. And she did.
Not to mention her collaboration with Shakira in TQG (Te queda grande), where they both sang about the infidelities they suffered from Pique and Anuel AA.
Music of spite with a new dress
Now, as Chuki García, music journalist and concert organizer, explains in this article from EL PAÍS, her success is also based on music of heartbreak. “She tells stories where the protagonist has his heart ripped out and goes to the bar to forget that love. Karol G adapts this style very well with lyrics that many women identify with.”
And something similar is explained by Andrea Jiménez, another Bichota consulted. “I think her success is that she sings reggaeton for us women, who shout her songs like Ana Gabriel’s (another reference to spite in Latin America). The new generation’s heartbreaks need reggaeton, because it’s the new sound.” In other words, she says, “she put the dress of the new generation on her.”
Of course, behind her is a powerful record company that has also understood the business of reggaeton sung by women. However, Karol G’s first contact with record companies was not the best and faced her with a harsh world. As she said in this interview, when she was barely 18, a producer had promised to sign her first album, but when he saw her alone he proposed something else. “Hey, you could be my dad,” she told him and left the studio. Since then, he is her father, Guillermo Giraldo or Papá G, the same one who put her in piano and guitar classes as a child and the one who supported her when she was rejected from Factor X.
As the person in charge of the Billboard, Leila Cobo, in this note by Carlos Marcos in Culture, Karol G has a sustained work that “brings together two generations”, in addition to having “internalized the concept of friend”“There aren’t that many artists in music who have that mix of stardom and accessibility. As a fan, you feel like you can sit down with them for a drink, go to the gym or go to the movies. Taylor Swift does that, too. They’re both super glamorous, but you feel like you can sit down and have a conversation with them.”
Finally, with Karol G she has also claimed an aesthetic of the voluptuous woman (she complained when GQ magazine wanted to make her slimmer) and a language that she explained to Pablo de Llano in this fun interview: bellaquear (to flirt); twerkear (to twerk), gistro (a thong); qué chimba (“in Colombian when we say that something is very chimba it is because it is incredible, wow, the best”) and, of course, Bichota: “An empowered woman who works, who is self-sufficient and who is strong in difficult situations”. Let’s see if the RAE ends up picking it up. It would be the complete reconquest.
Other stories
ANDRES GALEANO (THE COUNTRY)
This week we recommend the following texts on our EL PAÍS América Colombia page:
This analysis by Juan Diego Quesada on the beginning of the legislative year and the most ambitious of his presidency.
Interview with Juan Fernando Cristo, Petro’s new Interior Minister, who insists that political reform that strengthens the parties is the only way to end clientelism and corruption.
The return of Betty La Fea, which returns to television with a new season on Amazon Prime.
This interview with writer Ricardo Silva Romero for his new book ‘Alpe d’Huez’, which recounts the queen stage of the 1984 Tour de France, in which the Colombian cyclist triumphed and which was a balm for a country that was entering into its labyrinth of violence.
And this report by Santiago Triana about a stateless baby that rekindles the debate on surrogacy in Colombia. Regarding a ruling by the Constitutional Court that orders the granting of nationality to the girl, born in the country to a Ukrainian father, in a decision that widens the controversy over surrogacy.
until next time.
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