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Songs rarely stay frozen in the moment they were written. They travel with the people who create them, gathering new meanings with every performance, collaboration, and passing year. That idea sits at the heart of Gepe's latest release, “INVIERNO (en la playa),” a new interpretation of one of his most beloved songs featuring Daniela Spalla.
With a renewed sense of sensitivity and a strong bachata influence, the Chilean musician transforms the classic into something entirely different, where the cold of a Santiago winter coexists with the warm colors and rhythms of the Caribbean.
As the latest preview of an upcoming album dedicated to reimagining key moments from his catalog with artists from across Latin America, the release opens a conversation about memory, collaboration, and the meanings music continues to gather over time.
Speaking with Gepe, it became clear that he does not see songs as finished objects. He spoke about them as if they were still moving, still changing, still capable of surprising him years after they were first written. For him, returning to familiar music is not about preserving it exactly as it was. It is about hearing it again from where life has taken you since then.
The title of this new version, “INVIERNO (en la playa),” already suggests a poetic tension between cold and warmth, nostalgia and light, and its bachata influence reinforces that feeling. What does that contrast represent to you, and how is it reflected in the emotion of the song?
For me, that contrast comes from something very natural. I grew up in Santiago, Chile, where winter has a very distinct identity: it’s cold, harsh, and quite different from the imagery we usually associate with rhythms like bachata, bolero, or cha-cha-chá. That contradiction was already present in the original version of “Invierno.” I remember that when I wrote it, I was thinking a lot about the music of Juan Luis Guerra, which was an important part of my childhood and has always evoked feelings of warmth, nostalgia, and closeness for me.
I’m very interested in allowing those two worlds to coexist within the same song: on one hand, the Chilean winter, and on the other, a musical language that evokes warmer, brighter climates. In this new version, we pushed that idea even further by incorporating elements of bachata, bolero, and cha-cha-chá. I’m drawn to those small contradictions that subtly unsettle you and create a different emotional experience. I think that tension is a fundamental part of the song’s identity.
At what point did you feel “Invierno” was the right song to revisit, and what did you discover about it when performing it again from your current perspective?
“INVIERNO” is a song that has never stopped accompanying me. We’ve been performing it live for years, and I feel it’s one of the songs in my catalog that has aged the best. It’s also one of the compositions I’m most proud of, so in many ways, returning to it felt almost inevitable.
Reinterpreting it confirmed something I had already suspected: it’s still a very alive song. It’s a song I love, one that audiences have made their own over the years, and one that has built a very special bridge between the people who listen to it and the person who wrote it. Sharing this new version with Daniela also felt incredibly meaningful because she grew up in the Southern Hemisphere as well and naturally connects with the experience of winter that inspired the song.
Daniela Spalla brings a very distinctive sensitivity, much like she does in her own work, something intimate and delicate. What was the creative process with Daniela like, and what new elements emerged from bringing your two artistic sensibilities together?
What interested me most about working with Daniela was the opportunity to connect with a sensibility that’s different from my own. She has a voice and a presence that feel incredibly grounded and assured—one of those artists who naturally command a song or a stage. I’ve always admired that strength in her interpretation, and it’s something I continue to learn from as an artist.
I think our artistic worlds complement each other precisely because of their differences. If I had to describe it visually, I’d say Daniela is closer to an oil painting, while I’m more like a watercolor. She brings a particular intensity and richness, while I tend to gravitate toward places that feel lighter or more diffuse. Bringing those two approaches together created a beautiful balance, and the song ultimately grew into something it couldn’t have become in quite the same way if either of us had approached it alone.
In these new versions, as also happened with “SER AMIGOS (olvida)” and “LOS BARCOS (se van),” there seems to be a dialogue between generations, scenes, and different musical sensibilities. What have you learned from that creative exchange with other artists?
I’ve learned a tremendous amount from the way other artists relate to songs and to certain musical traditions. In the case of my collaboration with Daniel, Me Estás Matando on “SER AMIGOS (olvida),” for example, I was drawn to the way they approached bolero from an entirely contemporary perspective. I remember hearing them for the first time and feeling that they were doing something truly unique, which is why I always hoped we would collaborate someday.
What interests me most about these encounters is that every artist brings a different sensibility and helps uncover new possibilities within a song. In many cases, those collaborations ended up influencing not only the interpretation or the arrangement but also the way the songs themselves were reimagined. That’s where subtitles like “(olvida),” “(se van),” or “(en la playa)” came from. They function almost as extensions of the original songs—a way of opening up new readings and continuing conversations that were already present within them from the very beginning.
Many of your songs seem to age in a very particular way, revealing new layers over time while maintaining a sense of relevance that appears to defy the passing of years. Do you think songs truly change, or are we the ones who change when we return to them years later?
I definitely believe that we are the ones who change. We never return to a song as exactly the same person who first heard it years earlier. Life moves forward; we accumulate experiences, develop new perspectives, and find different ways of understanding the world, so every encounter with a song becomes a new reading of it.
That said, I also feel that songs change along with us. Not because their structure is different, but because our relationship with them evolves. There are certain pieces of music that seem to reveal new layers every time we revisit them and somehow remain alive long after the era in which they were created. I often feel that way when listening to artists like The Beatles, Violeta Parra, or Caetano Veloso. Their music speaks to me in completely different ways today than it did twenty years ago.
In the end, I think both things are true: we change, and songs take on new meanings as we change with them. It’s within that dialogue that some music finds a way to transcend time.
This new album also feels like an emotional map of your career. If your catalog were a musical autobiography, what chapter does this project represent within that story?
If my catalog were a musical autobiography, I think this project would represent a chapter devoted to the question of what endures. It’s a collection of songs that explores what survives the passage of time: melodies, lyrics, emotions, and even the desire to keep reinterpreting them from the present moment.
I’ve always had the feeling that every album I make is, in some way, my first. Each new project feels like an opportunity to start over—to choose the songs again and record them as though I’m finally discovering their definitive form. In that sense, this project takes that idea to an extreme, because it revisits songs that already exist and approaches them with the same curiosity and excitement that inspired them in the first place.
Rather than looking back through a nostalgic lens, I see this project as a personal collection of musical treasures: songs that have stayed with me for years and that still have the ability to reveal something new each time I return to them.
Thinking about the future, after this process of looking back and reinterpreting your own work, do you imagine the next step will be a completely new sonic exploration from scratch, or do you feel this project is already leaving clues about where your music is headed?
I think both things are true at the same time. I’m always excited by the idea of starting from scratch and approaching a new project as if it were unexplored territory. In fact, when I began working on these reimaginations, that’s exactly what I felt—the excitement of beginning again.
At the same time, I don’t think anyone ever truly starts from zero. Everything we create leaves clues about what comes next. Even when we try to move away from what we’ve done before or head in a completely different direction, we’re still in conversation with our past work. Every project becomes a continuation, a response, or even a contradiction of the one that came before it.
That’s why I feel this project does contain hints about where my music might be headed, even if I don’t yet know exactly what those hints are. What interests me most is keeping that sense of discovery alive. I like to think that every album contains, in some way, the seeds of the next one, even if you only recognize them when you look back.
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