SEVILLE, SPAIN – NOVEMBER 03: Pabllo Vittar attends the MTV EMAs 2019 at FIBES Conference and … [+]
2019 Tristan Fewings/MTV 2019
In the mid-2010s, as the influence of Latin music began to swing back into the mainstream, an army of fresh faces emerged that has since transformed Spanish-language music from a niche market in the United States to one that competes alongside its English-speaking counterparts. The historic achievements of artists like Bad Bunny signal the arrival of a new generation of artists leading the second “Latin boom,” and who aren’t afraid to tear down societal norms in Latin America and beyond in the process.
Still, the conversation around Latin music has more or less revolved around Spanish-language material, effectively relegating non-Hispanophone artists to a separate sub-genre, despite their contributions dating back decades. (The Latin Grammys, for example, award Portuguese-language music and artists separate categories, only opening a handful of its other categories to Portuguese entries.) While some younger Lusophones like Anitta have been able to step into the “mainstream” Latin sphere through collaborations with prominent Spanish-speaking figures, few have made a concerted effort to record and release music in their non-native tongue.
Yet that’s precisely the step in her career that Brazilian drag sensation Pabllo Vittar is taking. Her third studio album 111, released last month, is Vittar’s first truly multilingual effort, and the superstar’s biggest step yet into a linguistic space in music for which there is little precedent to look towards. The move, she says, was rooted in love for her fans more than anything else, rather than a personal desire to become a trilingual pop star.
“When I first started my career in Latin America, I always loved seeing my fans sing along to my songs,” Vittar tells Forbes. “My second album didn’t have much music in Spanish but they still sang all my songs, and so I wanted to sing my own music in their language.” The same holds true for 111’s English portions, made apparent from the get-go when the Charli XCX collab “Flash Pose” was released as the album’s lead single last summer. “I wanted to show North America as well that I want all of us to sing together,” Vittar giggles.
While she may not be the first Latin American artist to release music in different languages, she certainly is the first artist of her kind to do so: in just three years, Pabllo Vittar has built her own musical and cultural empire that transcends borders and boxes, uniting music fans across the Americas and arguably becoming the most popular drag queen in the world while doing it. In both the U.S. and Brazil, drag queens are by and large seen as sources of superficial entertainment rather than hardworking artists with deep dedications to their craft; those who do embark on a music career are often laughed back out of it.
Vittar’s vocal talent would be undeniable whether she wore a dress or not. The fact that she performs in drag and identifies as genderfluid is merely a component—albeit a crucial one—that complements her high-flying vocals and makes Pabllo Vittar the worldwide superstar that she’s become in just a few short years. Her outspokenness in the face of a “proudly” homophobic president and unwillingness to change her aesthetics based on the world around her has made her a leader for LGBTQ+ youth around the world: last year, as part of the festivities for the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, Vittar branded the North American leg of her Não Para Não tour as a “Pride Tour,” performing at seven different Pride celebrations across the continent throughout the month of June.
The 111 album comes after the release of a 111 EP last fall that contained four of the nine songs featured on the full-length record. The staggered release—and the hectic recording schedule that made it happen—was in part a result of what has become an increasingly evolving balancing act in Vittar’s career. “I was filming videos, doing lots of photoshoots, and preparing for Carnaval, and in the midst of all that I was recording the album,” she says. In the lead-up to the LP’s release, Vittar teamed up with the one of Latin music’s most influential figures for the album’s primary Spanish single: Mexican singer and telenovela actress Thalía.
“I remember recording ‘Tímida’ because I’ve always loved her music, and she’s an incredible artist,” Vittar recalls fondly. “It was much more incredible than I ever could’ve imagined.” As someone who’s collaborated in recent years with the likes of Maluma, Natti Natasha, and Prince Royce, Thalía is familiar with this next generation of pop stars. Her party with Pabllo, then, was much more than just a musical meeting of the minds: it was as if Vittar had received an official blessing from the undisputed “Queen of Latin Pop,” making “Tímida” a ceremonious welcome for Vittar into the Spanish-language market.
Pabllo Vittar
Ernna Cost
In spite of this, however, Vittar mostly keeps from venturing into popular Latin sounds like bachata and reggaeton; her Brazilian identity is at the core of who she is as an artist, and on 111, she shows the world the sounds of her native country using her audience’s native tongues. “I think that Brazilian music and Latin music are both very incredible,” Vittar says, “and they’re both very much rooted in their own communities. Everything varies by region, and even if the sounds are different depending on where you are, we’re both a part of the same house.”
In her own music, Vittar has historically brought a Latin pop sensibility to her take on rasteirinha, a branch of electronic music that emerged in Rio’s favelas after EDM’s explosion in the early 2010s. Rasteirinha fuses the high-energy instrumentation of Afro-Brazilian genres like samba and axé with the hip hop swagger of reggaeton and baile funk; Omulu, one of the genre’s pioneers, likens it to a “Brazilian dembow.” Pabllo Vittar approaches rasteirinha with a Latin pop sensibility—and the high energy both on and off stage associated with many of its stars.
Getting to work with a Brazilian icon like Ivete Sangalo, then, was a “full-circle moment” for Vittar. “Ivete Sangalo is someone who I’ve loved for a long time,” she says, “so it was an honor just to work with her.” A beloved singer known across the Lusophone world for her pop-like take on axé, Sangalo makes a natural partner for Pabllo on “Lovezinho,” the album’s most laidback outing—relatively speaking, of course.
For the time being, Vittar is limited to online performances as her tour dates in support of 111 have been postponed. To most artists, not being able to tour shortly after the release of a major album would be enough reason to delay its release entirely. Vittar chose to give her fans the gift of her long-awaited trilingual album anyway, believing in the longevity of the music—and more importantly, her fans’ dedication in the meantime.