‘Pop music can be so scared to offend': Ca7riel and Paco Amoroso, the Argentine duo subverting machismo

The Guardian

9 hours ago

Over impeccable jazz-funk arrangements and Latin percussion, a man in a furry blue trapper hat raps like he's inhaled a Benson & Hedges multipack, while his partner brings lip-curling, hair-twirling attitude to his own lyrical delivery. This is Ca7riel and Paco Amoroso's Tiny Desk Concert, an online performance that turned the two Argentine vocalists into global sensations almost overnight after it came out last October. It has now racked up 36m views and Rolling Stone has called them 'the future of music'.
Some eyebrows were raised, though, by the English translations of their lyrics: crude, daft, often hilarious tales of parties, sex and girls – even, accidentally, goes one punchline, the same one. 'We're always having fun and trying to confuse people,' Amoroso explains on a video call from Madrid, during a 53-date tour that includes London, Glastonbury and Japan's Fuji Rock. 'Yesss, confuse!' his co-pilot pipes up, impishly. 'Our life is like a TV show and we change in every episode. We have our meloso [schmaltz], our punky side, our rapper side.'
The duo revel in 'honesty, absurdity and contradiction', they say. Some new fans lured in by their viral moment were surprised to hear that their 2024 major label debut, Baño María, was far more electronic, with Charli xcx-rivalling electro-house, airy reggaeton, and – on La Que Puede Puede – a bolshy mix of dubstep, EDM and trap. In a South America still dominated by reggaeton, Ca7riel and Paco Amoroso are proudly, even subversively, unclassifiable.
That genre-hopping spirit goes way back: the pair, now both 31, met at primary school, realised they had similar surnames (Ca7riel is Catriel Guerreiro; Paco Amoroso, Ulises Guerriero) and pursued music. Ca7riel became a guitar teacher, dreaming of being the next Steve Vai; Amoroso studied violin but switched to drums – 'I wanted to be a rock star.' They tried for seven years with funk-rock band Astor, releasing a 2017 EP to little fanfare. But soon trap was sweeping the nation – and the rest of South America – via YouTube. 'We saw an opportunity to be seen by everyone,' says Amoroso. What do Argentinians do differently? 'We have no shame and no fear,' says Ca7riel.
They started releasing tracks as a duo, split in 2020, and reunited in 2023, though they still perform solo tracks in their shows. They agree they're more 'fearless' as a duo and write lyrics together like it's a jam session. They're also more famous, so much so in Spain that their Tiny Desk has been parodied on national television. Ca7riel has flown his 73-year-old mother out from Buenos Aires to Spain to experience the tour, the first time she'll have seen him perform abroad. 'She can't believe it,' he says. 'It's weird to me but it's so weird to her.'
You wonder what his mum made of their Madrid arena show. It flips through genres like a hyperactive TikTok feed, from funk-pop to nu-metal, and, like their Tiny Desk, they sing sitting on stools like a boyband. When he's on his feet, Ca7riel, who is also in the metal band Barro, has the strut of Freddie Mercury and a screamo howl; Amoroso, the Hansel to his Derek Zoolander. 'We are giving everything on stage,' says Amoroso. The show ends with male bodybuilders who hoist them in the air, linking to the themes of their recent release, Papota. Argentinian slang for being pumped on steroids, the EP pokes fun at the music industry and image. The song #Tetas (direct translation: tits) depicts a fictional music producer in Miami who tells them they need to get buff, sing in English and go viral on TikTok – 'to win a Latin Grammy', says Amoroso. They've felt those pressures, but are setting their sights beyond the Latin pop world and collaborating with UK electronic producer Fred Again. 'We don't make music to win Grammys,' Amoroso says.
The pair amplified their gym bro satire by wearing muscle suits on a recent Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon performance. But expanding later on email, the pair suggest they have a more serious message too. 'There's definitely a pressure for Latin men, especially artists, to look like action figures. Six-pack, perfect jawline, dripping in machismo,' they say through a translator. Mocking this, they've used a 'chad filter' in their visuals, they appear naked in a hot tub on Baño María's cover and they sometimes share a kiss at the end of their stage show. 'We're not anti-body, we're anti-box,' they add. 'Pop music can be so polished, so scared to offend, but we want to poke at expectations: of masculinity, of genre, of what a Latin artist should look or sound like.'
Not that they shy away from polish: #Tetas has a knowingly saccharine chorus, worthy of Backstreet Boys. It's the 'most cheesy shit' they've done, says Ca7riel. But, adds Amoroso: 'When the chords are right and the lyrics are fun, everything is possible.' Like video game avatars, they have 'a skin that we put on and we're able to change, musically and visually'. Lately they have taken to describing themselves as degenerados – not just 'degenerates' as it translates, but genre-less and gender-less too.
As for Glastonbury? No word yet if they are shipping in the Chippendales but they are open to the great unwashed on Friday afternoon at West Holts. 'It's a special festival,' says Amoroso, 'and the freaks will be watching us.'
'And,' hoots Ca7riel, 'we are freaks too!'