Lorna
Papi Chulo... Te Traigo el Mmmm

THE REVIEW

The story of Lorna has always blown my mind, ever since I've known it.

It's 2003, she's a barely twenty-year-old Panamanian, breaking into the magical world of the music business at her first attempt with the notorious hit single Papi Chulo, conquering the charts worldwide (thanks to the lingering wave of the late '90s Latin American boom) and essentially leaving behind one of the very first global reggaeton hits, a good year before the lethal Gasolina would arrive to change the history of music forever. Moreover: Papi Chulo, in countries where it's successful, becomes a media phenomenon, a kind of proto-Despacito, dominating TV programs and consequently, the collective imagination, where it still remains, whether we like it or not. Then, the unexpected tragedy: a rumor spreads uncontrollably that Lorna died of an overdose. It's not true, but it's too late for her.

The news is so plausible that nobody, nobody bothers to check if it's true or not. I mean: a young Latina runaway makes a lot of money with a silly song, can finally do drugs as much as she's always dreamed, two months pass and she kicks the bucket. Sad, but nothing absurd, if you want to be cynical. Add that at the time "fake news" was a concept from X-Files, the internet hadn't yet penetrated so deeply into everyone's life and add again, the final blow, that in the end, who cares, we're talking about a young girl destined to return to oblivion and the barrio once her fifteen minutes of fame are over, not Paul McCartney.

The reality is more complex: Lorna suffers from stage fright. The worst crime for an aspiring pop star. The record label, not wanting to give up on riding the success of Papi Chulo, sidelines her and sends an anonymous backup singer to hold the concerts and give interviews; the truth comes out after the Zorozaurre festival, when a press release is issued admitting that no, that's not the real Lorna, the real Lorna is on a break due to "health problems". Here, the unthinkable happens: someone resurrects a two-year-old news story about the overdose death of a certain "Lorna", actually a namesake student, someone else slaps the two things together with spit, and voilà: Lorna died of an overdose, and nothing and nobody can prevent the urban legend from spreading and being accepted as true by practically everyone, even today after 17 years. In the end, the same singer seems to care little about the success and the price it entails. In summary, we're talking about a mind-blowing intersection between Nick Drake and Tonio Cartonio with a reggaeton twist.

Her career ended practically on the spot, like a billion other meteors since pop music has existed, then the usual script: silence for five years, a couple of albums that went completely unnoticed, Dancing with the Stars, then nothing for ten years, until she was rediscovered first by 2000s trash nights and then by TikTok. Personally, this story of misfortune and lies has always fascinated me, for reasons I can't even explain well, and I hope that sooner or later someone skilled will make a great biopic out of it.