Sophia Michaels
Looking as hot as he does, Maluma shouldn’t have to pray for a girl’s attention. But in his new video for “Junio,” dropped Friday, the singer pleads for a miracle — and cheesily finds one — after a road trip through his native Medellín.
“Mе das calor como si fuera verano en Junio/Qué chimba que fueras mi novia/Si no es así, pues me conformo con un beso tuyo,” he sings in the chorus. (In English: “You give me warmth like the summer in June. It would be cool if you were my girlfriend. If it’s not possible, I’ll be fine with a kiss.)
It’s Maluma, so we’ll let the cheesiness slide, but to recap the Juan Luis Londoño-directed video: he prays for a girl, a statue of mother Mary sheds a black tear after hearing his prayer, and then he finds a girl he thinks is cute, realizes she’s deaf, has an unspoken connection with her, and then asks her to be his girlfriend. [Insert vomit emoji here.]
After holding hands and having a telekinesis-type communication, the woman asks him, “When you were walking, I saw you staring. Why?” Then, Maluma responds, also seemingly in sign language: “Because I’m in love. You’re beautiful and I want us to be boyfriend and girlfriend.” Then, of course, she says yes. And the two embrace.
Maluma recently spoke to Rolling Stone about his mezcal brand Contraluz, which is also featured in the video, as he touched on how his family has been his latest musical inspiration.
“I feel like I’m coming back to my roots. When I went out from Medellín with my music around the world, I felt like I was losing a little bit of myself,” he said. “Then I was doing some songs that, okay, maybe they were hit, but I didn’t feel like that was my essence. Now I want to be successful, but in a more personal way.”
He added, “I want to go back to Medellín, I want to go back to my farm, be there with my family, with my friends, with my animals. That’s what inspires me right now. Just what I am. I don’t have to go and look for something that I already have inside.”
Maluma debuted the song Thursday night at the Billboard Latin Music Awards. It follows the surprise release of The Love & Sex Tape earlier this year, along with “El Que Espera,” his song with Anitta.
