¡Mechipintada!

As we Colombians say, this is a “mamadera de gallo,” and if that expression isn’t in your vocabulary, the closest I can get you is: the specific art of teasing someone you love very much over something small, until the teasing itself becomes the proof of affection. A friend dyed her hair, it didn’t turn out the way she expected, and I couldn’t help myself.

I built the insults to escalate on purpose, mild at first, “now you look like a gringa,” committing further and further, the negative-image skunk, the mop, until I let myself land on “when I look at you in the mirror, I think you’re better off bald,” which is something genuinely cruel to say about a dye job if taken seriously and literally. I didn’t want it taken literally. I wanted the exaggeration itself to be the joke, so over the top that it loops back around into affection.

The hook, “¡Mechi, Mechipintada!,” is the one doing the real work of the whole song. Say a nickname enough times and it stops being an insult and becomes a term of endearment, the way it happens between siblings, the way it happened to me as a kid with the people I actually loved and who teased me. I wanted every dramatic line, “you’re breaking my heart,” pitched exactly at the melodramatic register the genre demands, exaggerating a trivial offense on purpose because the offense really is trivial and everyone in the room knows it.

Again, I chose rock/punk because it gave the joke irreverent muscle, strong enough that nobody could mistake it for a real complaint.

So turn up the volume and enjoy “¡Mechipintada!”