One song, twenty accents: writing pop in Spanish from Spain to the Americas

I write from Madrid, but when I finish a lyric I picture someone reading it aloud in Caracas, in Seville, in Lima or in Monterrey. I don't always pull it off. But it's a test I set myself, because the Spanish I speak at home isn't the only Spanish that will hear my songs, and it isn't even the majority one.

That sounds obvious. In practice it's painstaking work, word by word, that almost nobody sees.

The words that don't travel well

Some words are innocent in Spain and a bombshell elsewhere. Everyone knows the example of «coger», which in Spain is what you do with a bus and in much of Latin America is what you do with someone in bed. But there are many more, less famous ones. A «pibe» in Argentina, a «guagua» in the Canary Islands and the Caribbean, a «piso» that elsewhere is a «departamento» or an «apartamento».

When I write, I keep a sort of mental list of words in quarantine. They're not banned. It's just that before I use one, I ask myself whether the line still works for someone who understands it differently. Sometimes the double meaning suits me, because in a funny song a misunderstanding can be the best joke. Other times it wrecks a line I wanted to be tender.

Gay slang works the same way. Every country has its own vocabulary, sometimes affectionate, sometimes insulting, sometimes both depending on who's talking. What's a joke between friends in Madrid can sound harsh in Bogotá. And vice versa. There I'd rather stick to words understood everywhere, even if I lose some local colour.

The rhyme that changes depending on where you live

This is what took me longest to understand, and it still catches me out. In much of Spain, «s» is pronounced differently from «z» and soft «c»: «casa» (house) and «caza» (hunt) sound different. In the Americas, the Canary Islands and parts of Andalusia, they don't. For most Spanish speakers, «cerveza» rhymes perfectly with «mesa». To me, in my Madrid head, not quite.

It sounds like a technicality. To me it's almost political. If I only rhyme the way people speak in the centre of the peninsula, I'm writing for a minority and treating everyone else as if they pronounced things wrong. And they don't. They pronounce the way hundreds of millions of people do.

So I've stopped being afraid of those rhymes. If they don't quite match in my ear but do in nearly everyone else's, the rhyme stands.

When I produce with artificial intelligence tools, I listen to how each word lands in the version I'm trying out. Sometimes a pronunciation surprises me and I end up choosing it, because it gives the line a melody I hadn't foreseen. Other times I throw out the whole version because a single word sounds odd. It's part of directing: deciding what accent I want a song to have, or whether I want it to have none you'd notice.

Vosotros, ustedes and saying «tú»

Another decision that looks small. In Spain we say «vosotros» for "you all"; in the Americas, «ustedes». If a song speaks to a group, I have to choose. And whatever I choose, half the listeners will notice it isn't how they'd naturally speak.

My solution, nearly always, is to speak to one person. The informal «tú» works everywhere, with nuances, but it's understood. A song that says «tú» to an ex lands the same for a girl in Valencia as for a boy in Guayaquil. The Argentine or Central American «vos» is gorgeous and sometimes I'm tempted to use it, but it would be put on in my mouth. I'd rather not fake an accent on the page that I don't have.

There's a title in my catalogue I love for thinking about all this: «Mitad Venezuela, mitad Pakistán» (Half Venezuela, half Pakistan). Just reading it, you've crossed two continents and, along the way, been reminded that Spanish is also lived mixed in with other languages and other families. I won't tell you what it's about. But that title says something I always try to do: make the listener's map bigger than mine.

Then there's the opposite case. «Mi novio de Albacete» (My boyfriend from Albacete) is the most local title I have. A city in La Mancha that plenty of people in the Americas couldn't place. And yet I think it works, because everyone has their own Albacete: that provincial town which, in your country, sounds a bit like a joke and a bit like tenderness. The specific, if well chosen, travels better than the generic. That's another of my contradictions: I try to write in a Spanish that works for everyone, and at the same time I know the songs people remember most tend to be the most specific.

The same goes for «Tan Cateto» (Such a bumpkin). «Cateto» is a very Spain word. Other countries have their own words for the same thing, and still it's the song a lot of people found me through on TikTok. I suspect context sometimes explains a word without any need for a dictionary.

Who I write for

My audience is mainly in Europe and Latin America. That forces me to think about a listener I can't see, don't know, and who speaks my language differently. I don't find that limiting. I find it lucky. Writing for many accents makes me more careful, and humbler too: Spanish doesn't belong to anyone in particular.

I built the website in Spanish and English, and every song has its own page with the full lyrics. That helps, because if a word doesn't make sense first time round, you can read it calmly and look it up.

All the lyrics are at mikesaintlouis.com.