Latest news with #SeAmabaAsí
Yahoo
19 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Buscabulla's LP ‘Se Amaba Así' Feels Like a Couple's Therapy Session — and They Want You to Hear It All
Before the Puerto Rican duo Buscabulla made their new album Se Amaba Así, they'd gone through a whirlwind period of ups and downs. Back in 2020, they released their breakthrough LP Regresa, a gorgeous rumination of life in their native Puerto Rico, where they moved in 2017 from New York. Regresa was met with tons of critical acclaim and attention — and then the world shut down. Buscabulla, made up of artistic and romantic partners Luis Alfredo Del Valle and Raquel Berrios, who have been together for a decade, managed to do a lot during the pandemic, releasing stunning videos and visual concepts for Regresa. But the fact that they couldn't go out and tour the record made their career progress really difficult. 'We felt this lull of not being able to promote the album and we were hitting a weird point of, 'Damn, we have to make another project now,'' Berrios explains. 'But we hadn't seen any sort of substantial gains because it was the whole pandemic. Luis and I were feeling like, 'Are we going to have to do something else?' Things were so bleak.' More from Rolling Stone Bad Bunny on Puerto Rico: 'It's Not Always Paradise, But ... I Don't Want to Leave' Bad Bunny Slams 'Sons of Bitches' ICE Officers in Puerto Rico Rauw Alejandro's 'Cosa Nuestra' Shows Brought New York's Salsa Era to Puerto Rico 'You put so much work into a record and then it comes out in this the weirdest environment,' Del Valle adds. 'And then, like, a year goes by and you're still kind of in your house. So it was like, 'I don't know, maybe we gotta try something else.'' However, in April 2021, right on Easter, they got an unexpected call: It was Bad Bunny. 'I always tell the story, like 'The Bunny called on Easter Sunday,'' Berrios says with a laugh. 'What's wild is that he said, 'You know, all I did was listen to your record while I was like an isolation.'' Bad Bunny shared that Regresa had touched him deeply, and eventually, he asked the duo join him on a song called 'Andrea,' from his record-breaking album Un Verano Sin Ti. So much of the dreamy track, about a woman finding her own autonomy in Puerto Rico, gets its breeziness from Berrios' hushed vocals, and it struck a chord at a time when the island has grappled with femicides and violence against women. 'Andrea' became an emotional favorite on Un Verano Sin Ti, and it currently has 550 million streams on Spotify. The gates crashed open for Buscabulla. 'All of a sudden, this explosion came,' Berrios recalls. 'We got the opportunity to really play, and we played everywhere: We did a U.S. tour, we played in Colombia, we did a lot.' Yet all of it — the rollercoaster highs and lows, the touring, the hectic boom-and-bust cycles of music — began tugging at the seams of their tight-knit partnership. 'I think that with a lot of the craziness that was happening, Luis and I were all also feeling it in our own relationship. I mean, we've been doing this now for more than 10 years, our band and being in a relationship. And it was just a lot. It really took a toll on us, and we just decided to write about it.' What started pouring out became Se Amaba Así, a profoundly personal portrait of their romance and their relationship as artists, partners, and parents. (They have an 11-year-old daughter together.) It's far more intense and intimate than any of Buscabulla's past work, while still remaining sonically adventurous and unexpected. 'It's a record about us,' Del Valle says. 'It's a record about our struggles as people to stay together. And it's one of these things where you have all this anxiety because you're really putting yourself on the line in a very real way.' Berrios was interested in looking at all the ways love and connection have morphed in today, with constant distractions and digital overload. 'We live in a post-romantic era — I think it's the overflow of information and everything being so transparent that has sort of killed mystery and the danger of love and romance,' she says. To really interrogate love today, the band went back in time to examine these concepts over the generations. 'In our album, we really look at our own history, our parents, our culture, and the sort of conditioning of how romance works in Puerto Rico and in Latin America.' That shaped a sonic tapestry that defies specific genres or time periods. Songs like 'Mi Marido' and the title track 'Se Amaba Así' capture the high-drama and theatrics of past balladeers in Latin music history without ever feeling obvious. (Berrios shares that the over-the-top Eighties brother-sister duo Pimpinela was a major inspiration.) 'Te Fuiste,' with its skittering electronic spirit, and 'El Camino,' the first single that stews and slowly builds, are refreshingly modern and hard to pin down. At one point, the band considered making Se Amaba Así a two-sided LP, with six songs chronicling Del Valle's experiences and six songs detailing Berrios'. Del Valle shied away from the idea a bit: 'I was like, 'I don't want to have a couple's argument on the record!' he says with a laugh. The project ended up being much more of a seamless conversation, but still full of moments of open-hearted vulnerability that focus on each perspective. On 'El Empuje,' for example, Del Valle moves into the forefront, stepping from his usual position as a producer and instrumentalist to take the mic. Through aching vocals, he sings about the push-and-pull in the relationship, describing acute pain: 'With all your anger and all your wounds, You want to suffer and make me suffer.' Del Valle admits it wasn't easy to put it all out there. 'I felt that hesitation, for sure, because at least on my end, I don't feel like I've exposed myself in that way before,' he explains. 'But I admire artists who are honest, and I have to give credit to Raquel, because she was ballsy enough to say, 'Let's do this.'' Berrios remembers being floored by 'El Empuje': 'It's saying, 'This is hard. I can't take the push.' And I'm here sort of witnessing what he's going through,' she says. 'I love that song so much, and it stings, but at the same time, I'm like, 'Man you wrote a really good song.'' Ultimately, the process of so much honesty, exposure, and bloodletting in front of the world led to catharsis, even as Buscabulla navigates what's next for them. But what they hope is that Se Amaba Así opens a conversation for people grappling with their own complex feelings and understandings of love and connection. 'When I think about this record, at first, I was like, 'Why are you going to be so risky? And why do you want to talk about something so intimate?'' Berrios says. 'But then I felt like, 'Maybe we can help people.' Maybe it's through our own experience that people can really see themselves. The focus of this record is really kind of healing — and I hope people really reflect on how they love.' Best of Rolling Stone Sly and the Family Stone: 20 Essential Songs The 50 Greatest Eminem Songs All 274 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked
Los Angeles Times
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Buscabulla gets real about love in lush new LP, ‘Se Amaba Así'
Buscabulla members Raquel Berrios and Luis Del Valle have been lovers for well over a decade. Now, they're baring the most intimate and challenging aspects of maintaining a romantic and creative partnership. On Friday, June 13, the Puerto Rican synth-pop duo released its sophomore album, 'Se Amaba Así,' a 10-track collection of atmospheric, Caribbean-inflected grooves that reveal the inner workings of their evolving love. It marks a new era for the pair, who five years ago received high praise for their debut album, 'Regresa,' a melancholic LP that documented their return to Puerto Rico from New York in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. The duo then teamed up with hitmaker Bad Bunny on the evocative ballad 'Andrea,' a track from his critically-acclaimed 2022 album, 'Un Verano Sin Ti,' which alluded to the growing rate of gender-based violence on the island. The couple's career gains came along with a series of disruptive life changes, including the death of Berrios' father, as well as a forced move to San Juan due to rent hikes in their hometown of Aguadilla. The couple, who are also raising a preteen daughter, together had to reckon with the intensity of the past few years and the toll it took on their romantic relationship. 'It's hard to know when work stopped and when the relationship was there,' says singer and keyboardist Berrios in a video call. 'It's ironic because what drew me to Luis was that he loved making music.' In 'Se Amaba Así,' they detangle the threads that held their love together for all those years, in search of a deeper clarity. The LP begins with the cinematic 'El Camino,' in which Berrios names her feelings of aimlessness amid the meandering swirls of electric synth; and it ends with 'De Lejito,' a progressive take on a salsa ballad, in which Berrios stresses the importance of personal space in partnership. Also unique to this album is the voice of guitarist Del Valle, which had never before been heard in Buscabulla's catalog. His breathy vocals glide effortlessly through salsa tracks like 'El Empuje' and the thrilling rock rhythm of 'Mortal.' 'It's a profound thing to explore,' says Del Valle. 'What is love's utility today? 'No relationship is perfect and being in a band is really hard,' adds Berrios. 'It was liberating to confront these feelings, now I feel a lot lighter. It's alchemy to me.' Buscabulla will kick off a month-long U.S. tour in Miami on June 19, then touch down at the Belasco in Los Angeles on July 3. This interview has been edited and shortened for clarity. You dive deep into your own romantic relationship with this latest album. Were there any hesitations heading there? Del Valle: Personally from my end, I've never felt very comfortable divulging my intimacy to the masses. Historically it's Raquel's point of view. It's looking toward the outside world, perhaps inner turmoil as well, but it's never been us talking to each other on that record, which is what this one is. She really pushed for it and all the artists I like do that, they're vulnerable. How did the theme for the album come out? Why was there a need to tell this love story through music?Berrios: Our last album came out five years ago. We released it in the middle of the pandemic without really knowing [how it would do]. We weren't really able to tour until a year and a half later, after it came out. Those first years were a bit bleak for us in our career. Then post-pandemic we were in this 'What are we going to do now?' moment. The Bad Bunny collab happened and then it was like 'Bam!' It was an intensity of zero to a 100, both beautiful and validating. A lot of people discovered us through it, but it was also intense. Then after that, my father passed away, and it made me reflect on my own life and relationships. We had to move from the west side of the island because it got gentrified. There were all these changes that were affecting our relationship at the time. When I started writing songs on the piano, those were the songs that were coming out. You're both romantic partners and music partners, how has that dynamic shifted with this new album? Del Valle: There's this push and pull, creatively. I think we are both passionate people. It makes for tension-filled situations to be [more] common. Berrios: It's a unique thing — at least it makes for good art. We were inspired by the sibling duo Pimpinela, ABBA, Fleetwood Mac — any sort of band situation where there were relationships. We wanted to channel a similar thing, but for the modern era. What song was the hardest for y'all to write or sing? Berrios: 'Incrédula' was a hard song to write. It's a song about being in denial about loss. It was a hard song to put words to. Del Valle: Both 'El Empuje' and 'Mortal' were super hard. I had never really sang on the project or written a song from my perspective. It was cool and uncomfortable to speak and bear your heart with the other person in the room saying, 'Yes, that's good.' Berrios: For example, 'Mi Marido' challenges the idea of marriage and whether [the] institution matters for a relationship. Conceptually it was hard to put into words my thoughts and feelings about it, and also, using words that were catchy and worked for a song. There are social critiques in the namesake track, 'Se Amaba Así,' that pick at what people assume love is. Why was it important for you to highlight this? Berrios: If you can't have a good relationship, it's probably tied to unresolved feelings about love in your life. This is the turning point in the record. Through the death of my father and going to therapy, I realized all the stuff that I carried. I had not recognized patterns [in my parents' relationship] that I was repeating. Toward the end of the song you hear our daughter's voice, so it [comes] full circle. How have you changed because of this new album? Berrios: This album made me grow up a lot — it was a lot of inner work and confronting your shadows. I feel way lighter. Del Valle: It was very empowering to be able to give my side to the story and set a counterweight in our work. Before this, I would've never dared to sing and write on a record, but it felt like the right moment.
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Buscabulla teases summer U.S. tour and new album, 'Se Amaba Así'
Puerto Rican indie-pop act Buscabulla is entering a new era. Nearly five years after the release of its critically acclaimed debut album, 'Regresa,' the duo has announced an upcoming U.S. tour and new album. On Tuesday, Buscabulla dropped a teaser trailer for sophomore album 'Se Amaba Así.' The 52-second clip shows two playful dogs that fade into the side profiles of married couple Luis Alfredo Del Valle and Raquel Berrios, who met in 2011 and later formed Buscabulla. Appearing toward the end of the clip is the phrase 'Se Amaba Así' and a parting note that reads: 'Pronto.' Buscabulla also announced its headlining U.S. tour of the same name. The tour will kick off in Miami on June 19 and includes a stop in Los Angeles, where the band will perform at the Belasco on July 3. 'You have a purpose, and you have to fulfill it,' said lead singer Berrios in a recent press release. 'That's what this new era is about.' Known for its experimental rhythms and tropical beats, the band made waves with its 2020 debut, 'Regresa.' A blend of whispering salsa, R&B and trippy pop, the album chronicled the duo's complicated return to Puerto Rico from New York following the devastation of Hurricane Maria. The album was named one of NPR's 50 best albums of 2020 for its 'complex and shifting ideas of home,' and Berrios' 'soft, sweetly approachable vocals.' Buscabulla's last release was an angel number-inspired single titled '11:11,' which came out in June 2024. The band previously collaborated with hitmaker Bad Bunny on the 2022 song 'Andrea,' a haunting ballad from his landmark album 'Un Verano Sin Ti' that addresses misogyny and intimate partner violence. The band appeared with the singer on his world tour later that year. Tickets to Buscabulla's upcoming tour are available for presale beginning Wednesday, March 26 at 10 a.m. PST, with general sales on Friday, March 28 at 10 a.m. PST. Buscabulla Summer Tour Dates JUNE 19 – Miami, FL – ZeyZey20 – Orlando, FL – The Social21 – Atlanta, GA – Masquerade (Altar)23 – Washington, D.C. – Songbyrd24 – Philadelphia, PA – The Foundry26 – Brooklyn, NY – TBA28 – Chicago, IL – Lincoln Hall JULY 1 – San Francisco, CA – Bimbo's 365 Club3 – Los Angeles, CA – The Belasco5 – San Diego, CA – Quartyard6 – Phoenix, AZ – Crescent Ballroom9 – San Antonio, TX – Paper Tiger10 – Austin, TX – Antone's Nightclub11 – Dallas, TX – Tulips FTW12 – Houston, TX – White Oak Music Hall (Upstairs) Get our Latinx Files newsletter for stories that capture the complexity of our communities. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
26-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Buscabulla teases summer U.S. tour and new album, ‘Se Amaba Así'
Puerto Rican indie-pop act Buscabulla is entering a new era. Nearly five years after the release of its critically acclaimed debut album, 'Regresa,' the duo has announced an upcoming U.S. tour and new album. On Tuesday, Buscabulla dropped a teaser trailer for sophomore album 'Se Amaba Así.' The 52-second clip shows two playful dogs that fade into the side profiles of married couple Luis Alfredo Del Valle and Raquel Berrios, who met in 2011 and later formed Buscabulla. Appearing toward the end of the clip is the phrase 'Se Amaba Así' and a parting note that reads: 'Pronto.' Buscabulla also announced its headlining U.S. tour of the same name. The tour will kick off in Miami on June 19 and includes a stop in Los Angeles, where the band will perform at the Belasco on July 3. 'You have a purpose, and you have to fulfill it,' said lead singer Berrios in a recent press release. 'That's what this new era is about.' Known for its experimental rhythms and tropical beats, the band made waves with its 2020 debut, 'Regresa.' A blend of whispering salsa, R&B and trippy pop, the album chronicled the duo's complicated return to Puerto Rico from New York following the devastation of Hurricane Maria. The album was named one of NPR's 50 best albums of 2020 for its 'complex and shifting ideas of home,' and Berrios' 'soft, sweetly approachable vocals.' Buscabulla's last release was an angel number-inspired single titled '11:11,' which came out in June 2024. The band previously collaborated with hitmaker Bad Bunny on the 2022 song 'Andrea,' a haunting ballad from his landmark album 'Un Verano Sin Ti' that addresses misogyny and intimate partner violence. The band appeared with the singer on his world tour later that year. Tickets to Buscabulla's upcoming tour are available for presale beginning Wednesday, March 26 at 10 a.m. PST, with general sales on Friday, March 28 at 10 a.m. PST. Buscabulla Summer Tour Dates JUNE 19 – Miami, FL – ZeyZey20 – Orlando, FL – The Social21 – Atlanta, GA – Masquerade (Altar)23 – Washington, D.C. – Songbyrd24 – Philadelphia, PA – The Foundry26 – Brooklyn, NY – TBA28 – Chicago, IL – Lincoln Hall JULY 1 – San Francisco, CA – Bimbo's 365 Club3 – Los Angeles, CA – The Belasco5 – San Diego, CA – Quartyard6 – Phoenix, AZ – Crescent Ballroom9 – San Antonio, TX – Paper Tiger10 – Austin, TX – Antone's Nightclub11 – Dallas, TX – Tulips FTW12 – Houston, TX – White Oak Music Hall (Upstairs)
