“Poco Tiempo” is the second single off the forthcoming Tipa Tipo album Cintas, to be released April 5th, 2024. Poco Tiempo, which means “little time” in Spanish, is a smooth tropical pop track with a dark edge that addresses the myriad unattainable standards placed on women in patriarchal society.
Speaking in the voice of society, one of the verses implores: “Tienes hijos, tienes plata, eres sexy, eres guapa? Tienes chico, un esposo? Ahora tienes, poco tiempo” [Do you have kids, do you have money, are you sexy, are you pretty? Do you have a boyfriend, a husband? Now you have so little time] The chorus rebuffs these constraining narratives with a liberatory message: “Yo no quiero ser la mala, solo quiero una vida libre” [I don’t want to be a bad woman, I just want to live a free life].
A sampled grandfather clock throughout the song underscores the anxious urgency of time passing. The track was written and produced by Adele Fournet, and her combination of analog and electronic elements has come to exemplify the band’s unique style of tropical yacht rock. The blend between dancing electric bass, Moog synthesizer, and latin flavor is something that has become emblematic of Tipa Tipo’s sound across their forthcoming LP Cintas. The resulting amalgamation of cultures and sounds is a musical spanglish that blends influences from their lives in Peru and NYC and their musical upbringings listening to and playing genres across the musical spectrum.
The colorful music video for Poco Tiempo, which was also directed by Fournet, uses collage and greenscreen techniques to contrast the sexy and the grotesque, highlighting the sheer absurdity of normative expectations and timelines imposed on women. Fournet writes about her creative process in creating the “Poco Tiempo” music video:
“I drew inspiration from the aesthetic of early 1980s music videos, like the “Once in a Lifetime” video from Talking Heads and the video for “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” by the Eurythmics – especially with their use of minimalistic gestures and early greenscreen effects. I also used collage elements, including archival 16mm film footage of clocks and eggs, as well as an image of frozen human eggs extracted using hormonal fertility treatments.
So many of the women I know, myself included, experience a lot of uncertainty around parenthood and fertility. The music industry is still so incredibly male-dominated and I think the issues facing women and gender expansive people in music often go under the radar, so I wanted to highlight this particular issue in the lyrical and visual content of this song.”
Are we vibing with Tipa Tipo’s new single “Poco Tiempo”? Looking forward to the full album?
