There are three kinds of fans at Ricardo Arjona’s concerts: There’s the 25-40 year olds who scream at the top of their lungs, hold up signs with personal love notes and sing along to every word. Then, there’s their mothers, most of them in their 50s and 60s, singing along with their daughters, also on their feet, but far more composed, although they often cry.
And then there’s the men, most in their 30s. They stay seated, but they lean forward, raptly taking in every note, quietly and loudly mouthing the words. They’re outnumbered by the women, roughly 10 to 1 — but given Arjona’s capacity to move masses, their numbers aren’t negligible.
Tonight, Arjona will play the fourth of an astonishing five sold-out shows at Miami’s Kaseya Center as part of his “Lo Que Dijo El Seco” tour, adding up to nearly 70,000 tickets sold in a single city. It’s not his only multi-stop in a single place.
Between May and June, following arena stops in five other U.S. cities and three sold-outs at Coliseo de Puerto Rico, the Guatemalan singer/songwriter is slated to perform 13 dates at Movistar Arena in Buenos Aires, 10 at Movistar Arena in Santiago de Chile and five in Bogotá. All runs are already fully sold out. Counting upcoming stadium stops in Mexico, Arjona will easily sell over 1.8 million tickets before the end of the year, according to concert promoter Marcelo Figoli of Fenix Entertainment.
In an era where streaming algorithms favor facile reggaetón, Arjona is a complex wordsmith whose songs demand multiple listens, but who nevertheless sells tickets at a pace that dwarfs that of most younger billion-streamers. Live, his shows have long been dazzling, yet earthy. This time around, he has a 10-piece band (shout of to the outstanding pianist who can traverse blues, soul and Latin) — plus himself on guitar—playing in front of a tall, five-panel set that begins in a Parisian street and evolves to Arjona’s Guatemalan streets for classics like “El taxi.”
Granted, legacy artists of all genres with strong chart histories tend to be big concert draws. But in the Latin realm, Arjona stands alone as a traditional pop/rock singer/songwriter who pens all his songs and sings of topics ranging from love to social turmoil and sells out massively across continents. While not a traditional balladeer, he’s a commanding, swaggering figure onstage who likes to blend music with personal storytelling and who loves to interact with the audience from the stage. Yes, other singer/songwriters of his elk tour successfully, but none to this level.
In fact, everything about Arjona bucks trends. In his long career, dating back to the late 1990s, he’s placed nine albums on the Billboard 200 and 23 on Billboard’s Top Latin Albums, including 15 top 10s and five No. 1s. Roughly half of those have been as an indie on his own Metamorfosis label, which he launched in 2011 (with the No. 1 album Independiente) and is currently distributed by Interscope.
Although he often invites rising singer/songwriters onstage with him (Thursday in Miami he hosted Elena Rose and Ronkalunga), Arjona rarely collaborates with others in recordings, he has never done a reggaetón track, rarely does press, has never appeared in a mainstream late-night show and doesn’t seem to be at all interested in the mainstream acceptance other Latin artists crave.
This, despite the fact that his daughter is rising film star Adria Arjona (“Hit Man,” “Blink Twice”) currently dating Jason Momoa (meaning Arjona could gather easy mainstream interest). Call him a curmudgeon with hundreds of thousands of friends who are willing to pay for the privilege of his company.
In fact, Arjona doesn’t have a manager, or even have a booking agency; in terms of touring, he works directly with Figoli, who books him globally.
You could argue Arjona’s success hinges on the fact that he keeps such a tight rein on his music and his business. But really, it goes back to his uncompromising approach to his songs. In the past decade, many extraordinary legacy acts have buckled under the pressure of streaming requirements, putting out music fast and furious, pairing up with whoever remotely makes sense in terms of gathering more streams. Arjona has stayed his course, largely recording solo, and his fans find him.
In Miami, they sang along to the old hits but also to the new. The two women behind me were mother and the daughter; the latter, approximately 30 years old, said she grew up listening to the Arjona albums her mom played. As soon as tickets for his shows went on sale, she made the virtual line for hours to snag four second-row premium seats.
The woman in her 30s beside me was Cuban-born and raised. “He sings about everything we care about,” she said, holding up a sign that read, “You can call me señora,” a reference to Arjona’s hit “Señora de las cuatro décadas” (Lady of the Four Decades), an ode to cougars before the term entered pop culture. The guy beside me, also in his 30s, was sitting with his girlfriend, which automatically led me to believe she was the fan. Not so. “He’s a far a bigger fan than I am,” she told me.
He nodded gruffly, then went back to his laser focus on the stage. This was Arjona, after all. There wasn’t a word to be missed.
