Aitana – Superestrella

Next, an electropop champion from Spain…

[Video]
[6.43]Claire Davidson: It would be easy to call “Superestrella” basic, and, in many ways, it is. Were this track intended for an Anglophone pop star, I could easily see Ava Max faring well with it; make of that what you will. Still, there’s refinement in the commitment to a formula, its synth lines dutifully pulsing with surprising depth beneath Aitana’s flushed underplaying, as she narrates a nightclub rendezvous with a man she’s sure will be overwhelmed by the barrage of attention that follows her. You wouldn’t really sense the song’s anxiety from the instrumental, though, especially not during the chorus, whose buoyant guitars and subtly shimmering keyboard accents support Aitana’s gentler delivery without ever overpowering it. Striking that balance while remaining so effervescent is more difficult than you’d think; it’s hard to fault a song that so clearly understands its niche.
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Iain Mew: “Superestrella” pulses like Kylie c. 2010, but then the music fails to rise to the chorus at all, leaving it curiously inert despite Aitana’s best efforts
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Katherine St. Asaph: Chipper and pleasingly irony-free, like a Radio Disney theme or an early Carly song. Probably says something geopolitically that the viral benefactor of Spain’s World Cup win is this, and meanwhile the Knicks got, what, “Empire State of Mind“? A Kalshi clip?
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Ian Mathers: The actually-only-slightly-less-fraught flipside to Underscores’ “Do It” feels a lot more cheery on the surface especially if you don’t know or translate the lyrics, but underneath the steadily percolating build it’s just as clear-eyed about the way any amount of fame makes casual encounters feel perilous. And yet there is a joy in the performance of those bursts of “superestrella!” that brings the whole “fuck it, I’m going to do it anyway” part of the song to bittersweet life.
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Nortey Dowuona: Nico Cotton will never see heaven (producing for Rosalía). And to think, Aitana showed such promise!
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Alfred Soto: The video’s a hoot: hot boi in extreme closeup stroking himself. Aitana’s midtempo lust-to-longing track is a useful complement, despite the rote lyrics.
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Al Varela: This one is just very nostalgic to me. This is the kind of pop smash my mom would be playing in her car. It’s a blatant ’80s Spanish pop throwback, but in the age of reggaeton and corridos tumbados we don’t really get much of that anymore. So it’s a pastiche I fully welcome!
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