Argentina Es Una Trampa

This short but intense song Argentina Es Una Trampa appears on a demo tape that Fito Páez recorded in 1988, a material that never became an official album but holds clues to his sound at the time. At just two minutes and forty-two seconds, the track surprises with its raw energy and direct lyrics, something that would later become a trademark in his work. What’s curious is that it was born as part of a failed project: Fito was composing music for the soundtrack of a short film, but the project fell through due to lack of funds. That frustration, however, ended up leaving a recorded piece of his creative process from that time.The tape, titled Novela, ended up including fourteen tracks, several of which the artist would later reuse under different names and on other albums.

For example, As de Poker appeared years later as Circo Beat in 1994, and Novela became Nada es para siempre when Fabiana Cantilo recorded it in 1995 for her album Sol en Cinco. Even a children’s song like Las brujitas had its version in Piojos y piojitos in 1991, renamed as Ay. But Argentina Es Una Trampa remained there, in that demo, as a testament to a moment when Fito was testing ideas without knowing that years later they would lead him to sell over a million copies with albums like El amor después del amor and Circo Beat. They recorded it with limited equipment, without pretensions, yet it ended up being a genuine fragment of his evolution.