Earlier this month, in the midst of touring her Tropicoquetta album, Colombian superstar Karol G unexpectedly released No Me Arrepiento de Sentir Tanto, which translates to I Don’t Regret Feeling So Much. The title is an almost perfect thesis for the album: moody, raw, and unfiltered. There are melancholic ballads, including “Después de Ti,” her collaboration with Greg Gonzales of the pop band Cigarettes After Sex, alongside more unruly anthems like “Matadora,” or “Killer.”
Fans had reason to suspect something new was coming. Months before the surprise album’s release, Karol began dropping beauty-related hints (unsurprising, as she’s someone known for playing with her hair colors and nails). In January, she posted a carousel on Instagram—including an image of herself wearing rhinestones across her forehead and a baby-blue manicure— captioned: “Unfocused But SparkLYYYY.” It was easy to write it off, as she was in the midst of building the world around her album Tropicoquetta. And in April, at the end of her historic Coachella set, Karol announced she was taking Tropicoquetta on the road. The resulting tour, Viajando Por El Mundo—or Traveling Around the World—seemed poised to continue the same visual language: flowers, fiery colors, and plenty of tropical extravagance.
But there was another clue for both her new album and “sentimental-blue” era. In one of the promotional videos for the tour, Karol opens a suitcase. Sparkles spill out. She looks at them and says, “No, I’m not packing that one yet.” It was a blink-and-you-miss-it moment, but it now feels like a preview of what was coming.
The aesthetic of No Me Arrepiento de Sentir Tanto could hardly be more different from Tropicoquetta. One is fluorescent, maximalist, and celebratory; the other is somber, introspective, and stripped back. On the album cover, Karol appears almost makeup-free and bathed in a cool blue hue—giving the image a nostalgic vibe reminiscent of Britney Spears 2003 album, In The Zone.
For Karol, color has always been part of the storytelling, according to Duván Foronda, her makeup artist of nearly a decade. “She is someone who puts color to everything; for her, a song has a color; for her, a feeling has a color.”
When they were creating Tropicoquetta, that feeling was happiness. “She said, ‘I want an album that’s really tropical, that feels really happy.’ And to her, the color that expressed that was orange,” Foronda recounts. The beauty followed suit. “That album had a really defined aesthetic,” he says. “In terms of the makeup, we did a lot of red lips, brown lip liner, and orange tinted cheeks.”
