Camila Cabello is dropping singles that are thriving in the music industry, and doing great in the public eye. The music video Havana, is a great way to demonstrate parts of Hispanic heritage. Cabello is a solo artist who started her career off in a band named Fifth Harmony. She decided to depart from the band and take her own path in the music industry. The music she is writing now has a very different style than her past band. I immediately spotted how much more personal and grounded her songs have become, rather than about common things like writing about having a broken heart. The music she makes now has more personal background, as this song is about her heart that stayed in Havana. Camila Cabello is half Cuban, so to hear a song that shows she hasn’t forgotten where she came from is really important and good representation to show.

However, the artist herself has stated to “Wonderland” magazine that the song is more of a story that explains her falling in love with a Cuban guy. I found this slightly disappointing due to the fact of wanting this song to be more of a representation of her heritage than falling in love with a guy. However, in the music video, all of my disappointment, which wasn’t much, went away as I found it was very well produced. It showed a lot of classic Hispanic culture by showing Cabello’s version of telenovelas and inside jokes, like the grandma threatening the grandaughters with her chancla, which means sandal, when they weren’t listening. The music video took the courtesy of translating everything into English when they would speak in Spanish. Although I found it well put together, some opinions shared explained that the video’s introduction took a bit too long to get to the music, but that it was really funny which made up for it. I noticed this as well, but never looked at it as if it took too long because I have seen many other music videos that start off with a long introduction.

Once the music had started in the video, I took notice how much Spanish dancing was included in the video as the lyrics went on. This plays back on my previous statement of being glad she is expressing her Spanish heritage and showing that kind of representation, as there isn’t much of it out there. I understand that the video would have been focusing on Havana in some type of way because of the title and lyrics. However, hearing how the song is about falling in love with someone from Havana, the music video could have taken a whole other route and not focused on the Cuban heritage itself. I was very impressed and happy that she took the route she did with this video.

I enjoy her work as a solo artist and am curious to see what else she comes up with. She has a whole different style than what I was expecting. I hope to see more songs like this in the future from her, where the song and video, if there is one, shares to everyone listening and watching more about Hispanic heritage yet makes it fun and easy to dance to. It’s always good to get representation out there, but especially in the music industry, you want to have things easy and fun, which I think she did a great job doing with this music video and song overall.