Amaia Montero and Karol G, the surprise that nobody expected and that paid a historic debt | Culture

On Sunday night, Amaia Montero made a surprise appearance at Karol G’s second concert at the Bernabéu in Madrid. The Colombian artist interrupted the setlist He then went on to say, “Today I have a little person there who hasn’t been on stage for two years and is nervous, but they are going to give her one of the best nights of her life.” The expectation was total among the more than 60,000 people who will fill the stadium for four consecutive nights. One of the fans’ favorite pastimes (regardless of who they worship) is to build theories about the surprises their artists can give them during a concert. These days, the bets were Shakira, Young Miko, Quevedo, Tiesto… all collaborators on her latest album. Tomorrow will be nice. What nobody expected a priori was that Montero would be the guest and that she would also sing Rosasa song from 2003, when she was still the singer of La Oreja de Van Gogh, the band that is part of the sentimental education of millennials.

What happened on the flower-shaped central stage was an example of sisterhood between two pop stars. Karol G, the current leader of global pop that reggaeton has become, gave up her space to Amaia Montero, the Spanish diva who in the late nineties and early 2000s led the band that sold more than six million copies of her albums and became the soundtrack of a country. The Colombian stood to one side, raised and lowered her arms encouraging the Bernabéu audience, sang Rosas as did those thousands of people, sometimes with the microphone in front of his mouth, but for most of the song he gave that prominence to his partner.

Those young women, now in their thirties, who filled the Bernabéu these four nights, shouted excitedly when they heard the name of the artist. They knew the lyrics of the song by heart. Rosas Because no matter how many years go by, neurons melt and attention wanes, there are some songs that become anthems and remain fixed somewhere in the brain forever.

Montero was very excited. It was evident in her trembling hands. In that glassy gaze. She looked up in search of an end to those seemingly endless stands of the new Bernabéu. The lights on the bracelets of the attendees lit up as she sang: “On one of these days that I usually think about / Today is going to be the least expected day.” And indeed it was.

Like many users on social media, Yeray S. Iborra, a professor, music journalist and pop culture expert, first thought that it was a marketing strategy by the artist’s record label after two years of silence. “The formula of bringing together two divas already sounds a bit old, like mothballed musical purism and a carpeted office from a powerful label, which I think is working less and less,” says the author of Taylor Swift phenomenon. “In the end, artists collaborate as they please and sometimes they are motivated by pure emotion,” she adds. EL PAÍS has contacted Universal and Sony, the record companies of the two artists, and has not received a response.

“La Oreja de Van Gogh and, specifically, Amaia, have gone from being meme material to being claimed by fans,” Iborra continues. “They are part of that cultural engine called nostalgia.” Karol G has said that La Oreja de Van Gogh’s music has been very important to her since she was a child. The San Sebastian band was so successful that they did several tours in Latin America when the band was born. streaming It was still of no use for shortening distances.

The less thought day

Sunday, July 21, 2024 was the day that Amaia Montero would least expect to reappear after two years off the stage. She left in 2022 after publishing these messages on her social networks: “If hope is the last thing to die and I haven’t lost it yet, what’s the use of life to me?” “I need to heal.” Shortly after, her family made public that the singer was suffering from “severe stress and anxiety” that led her to be admitted to a clinic specializing in mental health. “She had a very tyrannical time, especially regarding mental health, that debate was still in its infancy, not like now,” Iborra recalls.

Since 2018, controversy had followed Montero. She had already been on a solo career for years after splitting from La Oreja de Van Gogh in 2007. Once that ordeal had passed, she began to release albums. She continued to sell millions of copies, but it seemed that it was not enough. She was insulted for her physical appearance, her weight gains and losses, and the changes in her face were scrutinized. The singer’s words remain in memory: “He called me fat and that’s it,” after Malú assured in an interview, after being asked, that Montero was not thin.

Then came the punishments for mistakes in concerts with comments as lapidary as: “cock recital”, “embarrassing” or “pathetic”. On one occasion, she forgot the lyrics of a song in a live performance. All these problems always received the same response: “she is a drunk”, “she likes alcohol a lot”. Montero endured the storms as best she could. She came out to defend herself and described all these judgments as “sexist”. “I feel more like crying than anything else”, she confessed on one occasion. Until in 2022 she could no longer bear it and retired. “All that pressure instead of being an outstretched hand on what later turned out to be a mental health problem became a way of ridiculing”, says Iborra.

There is some justice in this comeback that Montero herself let slip when she finished singing, approached Karol G and, still trembling, said: “In such an important and shocking moment, after so much time without stepping on a stage and, above all, after so much time thinking that I would never step on a stage again… That’s why it’s an incredible day for me, and it’s been with Karol. I will keep this moment in my heart and in my soul.”

Do we owe Amaia Montero something? “The same as we owe to all those who have ever put excessive pressure on their physical appearance and their way of acting,” Iborra responds. The day after her appearance, Montero, at the airport, still with the excitement of the night before, announced that “relatively soon” she will return to solo music. This newspaper has contacted her representative and they refer to the artist’s words. “Maybe now there is a niche to do a little justice to her outside of the patriarchy,” the music expert suggests. When this album arrives, Montero will continue to accumulate more than two decades of career and the challenge of channeling a stellar appearance alongside one of the queens of current pop.