Becky G is back at Genius to discuss her new song “CRIES IN SPANISH,” which has been streamed over four million times on Spotify to date. The song features DannyLux and off Becky’s third album ESQUINAS. On today’s episode of Verified, find out how the dope collab came about and what else the singer does in Spanish.
“I do so much more than speak in Spanish.”
“I do so much more than speak in Spanish.”
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MusicTranscript
00:00 I do so much more than speak in Spanish.
00:02 I love in Spanish, I work in Spanish, I eat in Spanish, I drink in Spanish, and I damn
00:09 sure cry in Spanish.
00:11 I was in the studio working on "Cries in Spanish" before it was called "Cries in Spanish"
00:21 and I was like, "Dude, Danny would be perfect on this."
00:24 And so we're texting back and forth and I'm low-key hella nervous to send him the song
00:28 because I'm like, "What if he's like, 'Nah, I'll pass.'"
00:30 That happens, you know?
00:31 He listens to it, he tells me he loves it, and so I sent him the "Crying in Spanish"
00:36 meme and that just stuck with me.
00:39 And then he sent me a bunch of little meme gifts back.
00:44 And so it was just this conversation with gifts and memes.
00:46 And then we decided to name it "Cries in Spanish" because I was like, "This was the birthing
00:49 place of this collaboration."
00:51 "A veces me imagino que tuvimos el final que los dos queríamos.
01:02 Si aún fuera tu mora, ¿qué no haríamos?
01:05 Ay, cómo sería si tú y yo seríamos."
01:11 I think out the gate, "Te da melocolia," it makes you feel so many different emotions.
01:16 You're like, "This kind of sounds like a happy song and it's very simple," but then you're
01:21 hit with these heavy lyrics.
01:22 I think it goes to say that this is a very straightforward, conversational back and forth
01:47 that's happening between two people who had an idea of what that end goal was.
01:54 But you change, things change, and sometimes we get so attached to that that we're not
02:00 willing to leave space for something else.
02:02 And so it's definitely this push and pull that's already happening in the first verse.
02:07 "Según yo era tu droga, todo para ti.
02:14 Según no vivías un día sin mí.
02:19 Si eso era así, dime por qué no estás aquí."
02:26 The specific line to "Droga" was key for me just because it was drawing inspiration from
02:32 a situation that I wasn't in but had seen play out.
02:36 And it was very sad because there was two people who loved each other so deeply, but
02:41 there was someone who was really battling, I guess you could say bigger demons.
02:47 When you think, "Oh, I can't live without this person," but you're also not willing to
02:50 give up what's hurting you, where does that leave the other person?
02:54 Where does that leave you?
02:55 "Según yo era tu vida, te hacía feliz.
03:00 Según te quedabas conmigo hasta el fin.
03:05 Si eso era así, dime por qué no estás aquí."
03:12 When someone hits you with this concept, heavy concept of, "I can't live without you."
03:18 No, life does go on.
03:20 Clearly it does because you're over there, I'm over here, and things are fine.
03:24 It's not amazing, it's not what we thought it was going to be, but it's fine.
03:28 I'm alive, you're alive.
03:30 But I think there's also this stubbornness of, "So tell me, why aren't you here?"
03:34 A scripted show, we know how it ends, but we didn't get to see it all the way through.
03:50 It could also be a non-scripted series.
03:53 We don't know how this ends, and I really want to find out, and that's really hard to
03:56 let go of.
03:57 It's those little distinctions of, "That's how we speak to one another, our terms of
04:15 endearment, our terms of honesty, on the real though."
04:21 That's how we express ourselves, so that's where it was coming from.
04:24 We were joking, I was like, "Okay, what's the equivalent to, on the real though?"
04:29 It's like, "No, it would be, 'La neta?'
04:32 La neta."
04:46 So when you listen to the melody of the second verse, and it just continues almost on the
04:51 same wave, but it starts to expand this way, vocally, with all of the backgrounds and the
04:57 harmonies and then the moments we're singing together.
05:00 It's almost like I can't even catch my breath.
05:02 You're having this honest conversation, right?
05:04 And the realization starts hitting you, and it's just going, and it's a run-on sentence.
05:08 And by the end of it, you're like, "Wow, that's really how I feel."
05:11 That feeling of understanding that this can't be no more, and although I love you so much,
05:17 I know that I have to let you go.
05:20 I know that this can no longer be the way that it was.
05:23 Yeah, it was very powerful.
05:24 I remember when we sang it live together for the first time.
05:27 It was such a dope moment, because it was just flowing.
05:30 That second verse just flows so nicely.
05:32 I remember when I sang it two years ago, I was like, "Damn, this is hitting really heavy."
05:38 And then fast forward, the album's out, and it's everybody's favorite song.
05:41 We started performing it live on the tour, even before it came out.
05:44 And there was nights where the song's not out, and people were singing it.
05:47 I'm like, "Damn, little did I know this was going to be that one that everybody's like,
05:52 'Ooh, this is my song.'"
05:53 "Esquinas" is my pride and joy.
05:57 It's my third album.
05:58 And it's crazy to think about, because there was definitely a time in my life where I thought
06:02 I would never be allowed to release an album.
06:06 I'd been signed for so long, since I was 14 years old.
06:09 And when the first one finally came, it kind of took that pressure off of me and made me
06:14 feel like, "Okay, I'm only going to get better from this point."
06:17 And then the second album came, and it was a genre-bending style album where I was really
06:23 allowed to be more myself in the sonics of the music.
06:26 And by "Esquinas," it was like, "There she is."