However, and taking into account the explosion of heartbreak songs by artists in recent months, TWP wanted to ask ourselves about the links and relationships in this present in which the digital is diluted with the real, and the market with the intimate, or in other words, a present in which the difference between public and private is increasingly lost.

This article is then an appreciation if one could say more philosophical, as the analysis of some of the latest songs that have come out by Karol G and Shakira are pertinent even more as it can be associated with the work of the Polish-British sociologist, philosopher, and essayist Zygmunt Bauman.

What this author proposes is that in this era, which he calls ‘liquid modernity’, there is also a ‘liquid love’ characterized by being aligned with the logic of the market, and capitalism, and in a context where fragility and vulnerability are not compatible with the social models that all the time advertise successful, beautiful, strong men and women who do not go along with human beings with problems, tragedies, and situations where they are vulnerable.

What is liquid love?

When Zygmunt Bauman refers to ‘liquidity’ he is doing an exercise that could well be metaphorical of the social reality in which instability and uncertainty predominate in almost all aspects, including the sentimental, and this in turn leads to market and cultural logics such as the flight to commitment and a kind of social exchanges that Bauman describes as connections that are easily discarded and that enter into the logic of like, dislike, blocking.

In a little piece of TQG o Te quedó grande , Karol G says:

‘Haciendo dinero como deporte

Llenando la cuenta, los shows, el parking, el pasaporte

Estoy más dura dicen los reportes’

Translation:

Making money as a sport

Filling the bill, the shows, the parking, the passport.

I’m tougher say the reports’

Here Karol G exalts money, materialism, and consumerism in a society that Bauman would describe as one that too often values the fleeting, punctual consumerism that satisfies a momentary need and then is discarded. And in which, in addition, a woman who can do anything is exalted, taking it to extreme cases, inquires into the pressure of having to be beautiful, successful, a millionaire, etc.

Pa tipos como tú collaboration of Shakira and BZRP opened the debate against the intimate and public as the lyrics alluded very literally to her former relationship with Gerald Piqué and the new partner of this clear.

Here I would like to allude to the video of ‘Monotonia‘ co-directed by Jaume de la Iguana and the singer in which Shakira is seen in a supermarket doing her shopping and someone arrives with a bazooka, opens her chest and expels her heart, the video continues with her walking with her heart in her hands, in the middle of the city, and there it falls, they step on it and squeeze it until she decides to put it in a safe. This indicates a double meaning and is how she decides to no longer give importance to her heart and emotions.

These lyrics undoubtedly see love in the best stock market style, love as an investment where there is always a win-win situation, and power and competitive relationships predominate between individuals who should rather cooperate.

Pa tipos como tú:

Sorry, baby, hace rato

Que yo debí botar ese gato

Una loba como yo no está pa’ novato’

Una loba como yo no está pa’ tipos como tú, uh, uh, uh, uh

Pa’ tipos como tú, uh, uh, uh, uh

Translation:

For guys like you:

Sorry, baby, it’s been a while

I should have thrown that cat out

A she-wolf like me ain’t for rookies

A she-wolf like me ain’t fit for guys like you, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh

For guys like you, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh

These discourses encourage individualism and deprivation and if you will the privatization of emotions that makes it more profitable in social terms, to treat sensitiveness with pharmacological treatments, or therapies of all kinds, since interpersonal networks that may be increasing as likes in social networks, end up being only connections and not deep bonds. ‘Te creíste que me heriste y me volviste más dura

‘Las mujeres ya no lloran, las mujeres facturan’

Translation:

‘Women no longer cry, women bill’.

‘Pocket relationships’ are the very embodiment of the instantaneous and the disposable. This perverse logic reduces the other to a thing that can be consumed.

Being connected’ is less costly than ‘being committed’, but it is also considerably less productive in terms of building and maintaining ties. From this perspective, forming a family, and having children, are real obstacles to the freedom demanded by liquid subjects, they are not consistent with the idea of disposable bonds: “the lei motiv of homo consumers is not to accumulate goods, but to use them and discard them quickly to make room for new goods” (Bauman. 72)