KAROL G

One Liner: Very popular Reggaeton artist singing in Spanish.

Wikipedia Genre: Urbano, reggaeton
Home: Columbia

Poster Position: Later Addition, but she would have been towards the top
Both Weekends.

Sunday at 6:30 on the Honda Stage.

Thoughts:  I know that streaming numbers are likely not as important as they were ten years ago, but I still tend to think of a song with a billion streams as a big deal.  Karol has one of those, and another with 864 million.  Those are freaking insane numbers for something I have literally never heard of (or I'm insane for thinking I still know anything about popular music!).

This is "Tusa," with 1.069 billion streams, and an English language feature from Nicki Minaj.

Huh.  Entirely unremarkable track.  I mean, an okay beat, and okay vocal, an okay Minaj rap.  Nothing in there screams to me that this should have been streamed over a billion times.  Do the lyrics solve the question to life, the universe, and everything?  The word "tusa" is apparently slang for heartache.  Billboard says: "In the song, the Colombian artist sings about a girl who thinks she’s over her ex but gets really sad whenever she hears the song that reminds her of him. Nicki’s rap verses, on the other hand, assures the ex that it’s his loss and now she’s moved on."  I guess that is a universal experience, but no clue why that song is so popular.

Carolina Giraldo Navarro is her real name, and she won the Latin Grammy for best new artist in 2018.  She grew up in Medellin, Columbia, and then moved to New York to work in the music industry.  Since then, she has blown up as the queen lady on the reggaeton scene.  Three albums, 2017's Unstoppable, 2019's OCEAN, and 2021's KG0516.  Most of her top songs are from that newest album.  Except for "China," a 2019 single that exploded with more than a billion YouTube views.  864 million streams on Spotify too.

The interesting thing about those subtitles is that some of the translated words still aren't English.  Also, those sunglasses are hideous.  The tune is stealing Shaggy's "It Wasn't Me," but its in Spanish so I have no clue what they are saying.  Hahaha, at one point, the subtitles just said "and you pee again and again."  Is that legit?  Is this song about peeing too much?  

And "LEYENDAS" steals the sounds from The Eurythmics "Sweet Dreams," although I can't tell if they are singing the same lyrics or not.  Or why a song called "China" would interpolate Shaggy's song about cheating.  On that song, like many of the songs in this catalog, she has a pile of guests.  "China" features Anuel AA, Daddy Yankee, Ozuna, and J. Balvin.  Even though I have no clue what is happening in the song, it's a fun, danceable jam.  I can get why this is good party music.  "LOCATION" also sounds like they are grabbing some other song that I can't recall.

I wouldn't go see this.  I can understand the attraction, but not being able to understand would limit the appeal for me.