Heart in Havana
Chart-topper Cabello sings her story for herself and American DREAMERS
In March 2012, Simon Cowell was taking a cigarette break backstage at Greensboro Coliseum in North Carolina, where he was judging auditions for the X Factor, when he saw a girl lying on the ground, sobbing.
The girl was Camila Cabello. She had just turned 15, and for her birthday had asked her parents — Cuban immigrants living in Miami, who were making ends meet as a shop assistant and car washer — to drive her the 12 hours from their home to the auditions. Cabello explained that, having been kept waiting for two days to see the judges, she had just been told by the producers that time had run out and she should go home.
“I said to her, ‘Listen, I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about ... but since you’re here, come and audition,’” Cowell says over the phone. “Five minutes later, she sang (Aretha Franklin’s Respect) in front of 7,000 people, and it was sensational.”
Cowell installed her with a group of four female contestants, and Fifth Harmony was born. After finishing third in the competition, they signed to Cowell’s Syco label.
For Cabello, that was just the start. Last year, Havana, the second single from her No. 1 debut solo album, made the singer the first female artist to achieve a billion streams for a single song.
This summer, the 22-year-old has repeated the impossible. Señorita, a Latin love song from her imminent second album featuring fellow pop star (and, as of July, her boyfriend) Shawn Mendes, has conquered the charts. “Havana was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of success, and she’s just ... done it again,” says Cabello’s manager Roger Gold.
When I repeat Gold’s words back to Cabello, she grins. “It was the same with Havana,” she says. “Everyone said to me, this is a Latin song, it could never be the single.” Cabello released Crying in the Club as her first solo single instead. But when the album was released, it was Havana that listeners pounced on. The song was nominated for two awards at the Grammys, where Cabello became the first female Latin artist to open the ceremony.
Cabello’s grip on the charts is part of what Gold calls a ground shift. “Latin artists have gained enormous global acceptance in the pop world in the last few years,” he says.
Cabello donated the proceeds from the song ’s music video to support DREAMERS — immigrants who entered the U.S. as minors and are seeking resident status. Her Youtube channel has been inundated with messages from Latino fans thanking her for making them feel welcome in America. “That makes me so happy,” she says. “That’s why I want to tell my story, because when I saw pictures of what’s happening at the border, my heart was broken. That’s my story, too.”
Cabello was six years old when her mother, an architect, carried her across the Mexican border, telling her daughter that they were going to Disneyland. They were detained for 22 hours before being allowed to proceed to Miami. Her father, originally from Mexico City, joined them illegally a year later after swimming across the Rio Grande.
Cabello’s as yet untitled new album, out later this year, is a tribute to first love. Of the 72 songs Cabello wrote for the album, only a small number will appear. As with her last album, Cabello has a writing credit on every track of the new one — a rarity in an era when so many hits are manufactured by teams of writers and producers.