El castigo más duro: seven years wiped from the cloud

The words won't come out, they have spikes and they tear things apart. El castigo más duro (The Harshest Punishment) begins with an image straight out of a horror film: the mouth bleeds so much that passers-by think they're seeing a vampire crying under the moon.

I like that the song isn't afraid of exaggeration. The pain in the chest won't let you breathe, you have to wait a while. And there are words that, if they came out all at once, would trigger the mask from the Saw saga, full uncensored version. It's black humour to talk about something that really hurts.

Deleting seven years

One of the most recognisable moments is the decision to stop insisting and delete seven years in one go: from the iPhone, from Google Photos, from the Movistar cloud, from OneDrive, and switch on face lock. That list of services feels very much of our time. You used to burn the letters; now you have to go app by app.

Then comes a spoken section I love for its surrealism. When someone asks about the handsome dark-haired guy from those seven years, the answer will be that he was a hologram, that I got fired and couldn't pay for it, and that he's now a block of cement. If you've got the cash, they'll reactivate him, and while you're at it, demand sex at least once a week. It's a way of laughing at the void someone leaves by turning them into a broken-down appliance.

But, nonsense aside, as the lyrics themselves say, the centre of the song is serious. The narrator cries because he doesn't understand anything. He stopped loving overnight, and it wasn't easy, because at the same time he could see it didn't affect the other one at all. And that's where the definition that gives the track its title appears: the harshest punishment a narcissist can apply is making you believe «que no vales nada» (that you're worth nothing), that you're not worth even a message, that you're nothing to anyone.

That phrase, repeated, weighs heavily. And that's why I think the song works: it makes you laugh with the hologram and then leaves you silent.

It's for anyone in the middle of a photo clean-out, finger hovering over the delete button. Listen, delete and breathe.

The full lyrics are below. Listen on Spotify