Despite not fitting the tropical stereotype often attributed to (and intensely exploited by the Latin music industry, Argentina has always found ways to stand out. Historically known for tango and one of South America’s richest rock legacies (thanks to names like Fito Páez and Soda Stereo), the country is also an inexhaustible source of pop culture exports, from iconic telenovelas like Chiquititas and Rebelde Way to a new wave of global pop stars. Milo J stands in an interesting position regarding Argentina’s music scene.
When Latin music had a post-Despacito boom in the 2010s, Argentina’s most visionary artists carved a place in the Latin pop explosion with smart, self-assured moves. Singers like TINI, María Becerra, and Nicki Nicole emerged as A-listers of the movement, shaping their careers around the aesthetics and performance style of global pop stars.
Meanwhile, Argentine producers such as Bizarrap brought an electronic edge to reggaeton and urban pop, merging dance, house, and trap. Argentine music has never thrived only by “riding the wave” of rhythms born elsewhere, however. It has also built its own genres and styles (like RKT and turreo), and artists like Cazzu and Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso have experimented with pop and Latinidades in fresh, creative ways.
At first, the young Milo J seemed to belong to that latter context. After achieving international recognition with “Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 57” (2023), many expected him to continue exploring the trendy genre-blending trap-pop that defined his early sound, as seen in Rara Vez (2023), which remains his most significant success to date. Instead, in La Vida Era Más Corta (2025), Milo J went all the way back into the parts of Argentine music that the world is less familiar with: its traditional, folk music.
Those who’ve been paying attention to Milo J may have spotted clues of his musical ambitions in tracks like “Carencias de Cordura” (2023) or “NI CARLOS NI JOSE” (2024). La Vida Era Más Corta, however, is the most straightforward demonstration of the lengths he is willing to go for his artistry, which is impressive for an 18-year-old.
Perhaps the only unsurprising thing about his new album is his voice: a clean, direct, meslima-free, grounded baritone which sounds almost weightless. Here, Milo J’s timbre finally gets room to breathe. Divided into two discs, this project leaves no room for remixes or collages. Genres such as tango, chacarera, and Argentine folk are presented in their purest form. There’s no heritage-baiting or pop accessibility-chasing here.
In a 2025 interview with Apple Music, Milo J cited his grandmother from Santiago del Estero (Argentina’s oldest city and its cradle of folklore) as one of the album’s guiding inspirations. Indeed, La Vida Era Más Corta sounds like a musical tapestry woven from the shared roots of the Andino-Platine world, the cultural continuum that connects the South American pampas to the Andes.
There are even a few samba beats in the closing seconds of “Llora Llora”. Perhaps this is meant to be a discreet hint at Brazil, which is also part of that geographic-cultural collective, although not through samba, but through the gaúcho culture of its southern region, instead.
The album’s palette of timbres is colored by instruments such as the Andean flutes of “Solfican12” and by voices including Argentine rap star Trueno, Chilean trap singer AKRILLA, Argentine chacarera icons Cuti y Roberto Carabajal, and Argentine folk singer Soledad Pastorutti, among others. The collaboration with Silvio Rodríguez is also a highlight: the Cuban icon was a longtime idol of Milo J’s grandmother.
Although not stemming from South America, Rodriguez has a long tradition of collaborating with exponents of Latin American cancionero, including Mercedes Sosa, the ultimate voice of Argentine folk across Latin America. Sosa is also present in La Vida Era Más Corta: Milo J’s posthumous duet with her is the album’s closing track. What could better evoke the country’s musical heritage than that?
Nevertheless, La Vida Era Más Corta is far from a cheerful celebration of South American kinship. It’s a melancholic, deeply introspective record, whose tone is set from the first lyrics: “I have some tattoos under my skin that haven’t healed, and others that are reincarnated” (“Bajo de la piel”). That ache, both nostalgic and existential, lingers through the end.
In a way, what Milo J does in La Vida Era Más Corta compares to what Rosalía did in El Mal Querer (the Spanish singer’s stunning flamenco album released in 2018): it’s a display of youth inserting itself in an ancient landscape with more pride in its history than anxiety to modernize it. Thus far, among the most well-shaped Spanish-language albums of 2025, La Vida Era Más Corta arrives at a moment when Latin pop stars with global exposure are embracing their roots with more pride than ever, and Milo J does that for Argentina gorgeously and sincerely.
