“At the beginning of my career, I was focused on absorbing everything as quickly as possible,” Manuel Turizo tells Apple Music. “However, after seven or eight years of making music, now I’m focused on enjoying it and living it.” Only a year and a few months after 2000, one of his most diverse albums, Turizo presents 201, which goes even further. The Colombian star draws from rock, vallenato, country and other genres, and connects with his musical roots while maintaining his mischievous vibe. “I like different types of music, because I have listened to them all my life,” he says. “Where I’m from, we do not listen to just one genre.” Below, Turizo tells the stories behind a few highlights from his fourth studio album. “Sigueme Besando Así” “This is a romantic song. Usually, when I am writing, the theme is not very clear to me. Sometimes, when you set out to define it, you sit down and simply write as you would a letter. It comes out in prose. You talk about a theme, but, in reality, each song is relative and unique. Often, you have no idea what you’re going to talk about. You spend your time thinking about it over and over. On certain occasions, I want to express affection or love and, on others, I want to express anger. Each song conveys very different things.” “La Ex de mi Amigo” “I remember the day when we recorded this song. Truth be told, it was very normal, nothing special. We went to the studio just to make music. One afternoon, we were composing, talking about what to write, and Kevin Cruz said, ‘What would happen if we made a song about you liking a friend’s ex?’ I feel this is the melody that most represents where I am from, Montería, on Colombia’s coast. This is Colombian folklore. Vallenato is from Valledupar, but we are greatly influenced by the sound of the entire coast. I did this track with Elder Dayán Díaz, an incredible person who is also part of one of the most important vallenato legacies nowadays. His father is Diomedes Díaz, the biggest star that has ever existed in the genre.” “Plata Pa Gastar” “This one has a funny story, because it’s actually the song on the album that has been around the longest. It was done even before the pandemic. I liked it from the beginning, and I’ve loved it ever since. Its sound is very humorous and energises me deeply. When we made it, the production team and those in the studio didn’t see its potential. I showed it to my manager and my people, but they had the same reaction. Nobody saw it, so I let myself be convinced by that. I forgot about it for a while and, after some time, when I was compiling songs for the album, I listened to it, and it gave me the same feeling. We released it because I felt a connection with it. It is a whim of my very own.” “Yo No Me Vuelvo a Enamorar” “The biggest challenge of this track was to find its identity as a country tune, without having it sound like it’s not from here, or that it doesn’t belong to us, because it doesn’t fit in the Latin genre. Since its birth, this was a country melody, but I wondered how we were going to give it a sound that also represented who I am, and that wouldn’t feel like a copy of someone else. When Alok entered the equation later on, he made a huge contribution and managed to make it grow in terms of production and sound.” “Mirando al Techo” “I love rock, alternative music and the like. For instance, Juanes, Miranda! and Julieta Venegas, to mention a few. I’ve never been one to listen to a lot of heavy metal or heavy rock. In general, I prefer a style that is a little mixed with pop. This is more my thing. It is also what I feel, what I’ve been consuming all my life—music that comes from Latin America and is very important. Many Latin Americans are influenced by that sound, and this song somehow proves it.”