Karol G Reveals the Inspiration Behind Her New Album

3 min read

Onstage at the Rogers Stadium in Toronto Wednesday night, Colombian pop superstar Karol G announced the release of her upcoming album No Me Arrepiento de Sentir Tanto, which is due August 7. In English, the album’s title translates to I Don’t Regret Feeling So Much. In our conversation for her ELLE cover story, Karol elaborated on the album’s direction, hinting at a readiness to plant her flag in a moodier, more alternative realm that she’s rarely dared to tread in her storied career.

“My biggest struggle is that I like to give too much in every aspect of my life,” the 35-year-old said, explaining the album title. On its baby-blue-washed cover, she poses with a pout, with the album title scrawled in glitter pen, wrapping her body. “I cry a lot. I’m super sentimental and I’ve hated myself a lot for that,” she told me. “But at the same time, I’d rather suffer because I lived too much—because I loved too much, because I had too much fun—than to not have had those experiences, you know? I’m inviting everyone to be a little more dramatic, a little more extra.”

Stacked with vibrant songs from her previous album, a 2025 sampler of Pan-American sounds she named Tropicoqueta, Karol’s landmark Coachella performance in April represented her vision of a multicultural dream world in panorama. But in the making of her new record, the Grammy-winning artist is shrinking the aperture to represent just herself in her most private and introspective moments.

“In making this album, I put a lot into being alone,” she said. “Everything started when I went to Hawaii [last November]. I did a lot of hiking alone. I would climb the mountains alone. I would stand there gazing at the sky. I learned a lot about enjoying my solitude in this industry—we are really, really lonely. Compared to the rest of the world, you’re very isolated.”

Karol G and her dancers on stage at Rogers Stadium in Toronto Wednesday night.

Ever so quick to correct herself, Karol said with a laugh, “Though sometimes you’re in your room, and there are a 100 people outside waiting for you to go out [and wave from] the balcony. But you’re still alone.”

Karol dropped the album’s latest single, a man-eating reggaeton anthem titled “Matadora,” last Friday in Chicago, during the opening night of her massive world stadium tour, Viajando Por El Mundo Tropitour. Produced by Puerto Rican mixmaster Tainy (who’s previously fashioned hits with Bad Bunny and Selena Gomez), the song finds Karol reveling in the shadow side of her sensuality, singing hungrily in Spanish: “Let’s drop the small talk/Clothes don’t strip themselves off.”

The lusty fare of “Matadora” is a far cry from her previous single, the guitar-laden indie ballad “Despues De Ti,” which she wrote and recorded with Greg Gonzalez of Cigarettes After Sex. (“Her lyrics are often deeply romantic, but also a bit dangerous at times,” says Gonzalez—who adds that he was first compelled by the “sweet sadness” of her voice in her 2023 single “Provenza.”)

Karol left her recording session with Gonzalez eager to venture toward new and different sonic horizons, while maintaining her famously hard-won sense of woman power, which she’s exemplified in past songs like “Mi Cama,” “Bichota,” and “Latina Foreva.”

“When I did the Playboy photoshoot this year, they asked me: ‘What don’t people know about you?’” she told me. “I said, ‘People know everything about me.’ I’m a public figure, and that’s just how it is. I share a lot. But we all keep something that is only ours and that exists in our room at night, lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to music. Just existing.”

“My fans gave me the confidence I needed to keep betting on this truth of mine,” she continued. “So I’m trying to be increasingly honest with myself, and thus with the people who listen to me. This is an album that opens a door for my fans to a more intimate Carolina—in my room, I have a ritual: I put up little lights, I burn candles and incense. I want people to listen to this new album that’s coming, in their own rooms, and see what comes up for them.”