Karol G told a stadium in Toronto on Wednesday night that her next album lands on August 7. It is called No Me Arrepiento de Sentir Tanto, which reads in English as I do not regret feeling so much, and in conversation for her ELLE cover story she described a turn toward something moodier and more alternative than she has attempted before.

The title is an argument with herself

The 35 year old traced the phrase back to a habit she has spent years disliking in herself. She gives too much in every part of her life, she said. She cries a lot. She is sentimental in a way she has actively resented. Her conclusion is that suffering because she loved and lived too hard is the better outcome, and the record is an invitation to everyone else to be a bit more dramatic than they think they are allowed to be.

The sleeve carries the same idea: a pout, a wash of pale blue, and the title written across her body in what looks like glitter pen.

Made alone, on purpose

Her last album, Tropicoqueta, was a wide survey of Pan-American sound, and her Coachella set in April staged it as a full colour panorama. This one narrows to a single person. She spent time by herself in Hawaii last November, hiking and climbing alone and standing about looking at the sky, and describes learning to enjoy her own solitude inside an industry she calls unusually isolating.

Then she corrected herself, laughing. There is also the version of loneliness where a hundred people are waiting outside for you to come out onto the balcony and wave, she said, and you are still alone in the room.

Two singles pointing in opposite directions

Matadora came out last Friday, released in Chicago on the opening night of her Viajando Por El Mundo Tropitour stadium run. It is a reggaeton track produced by Tainy, the Puerto Rican producer behind records for Bad Bunny and Selena Gomez, and it puts her firmly on the harder edge of her own sensuality.

The single before it went the other way entirely. Despues De Ti is a guitar ballad written and recorded with Greg Gonzalez of Cigarettes After Sex, who describes her writing as deeply romantic and, at moments, a little dangerous. What first pulled him in, he says, was the sweet sadness in her voice on Provenza in 2023.

The part she keeps

Asked during a Playboy shoot this year what people do not know about her, she answered that they know everything, because that is the arrangement when you are a public figure who shares as much as she does. Then she qualified it. Everyone keeps hold of something that surfaces only alone in a bedroom after dark, flat on the mattress with the ceiling above you and music on.

That is the territory she says the album opens. She credits her fans with giving her the confidence to keep betting on it, and describes a ritual in her own room involving small lights, candles and incense. What she would like is for people to play the record in theirs and see what comes up.