Kany García delighted attendees at Billboard Latin Music Week on Monday (Oct. 19) when, accompanied by her guitar, she shared the stories behind her songs during a “Superstar Q&A,” performing snippets of hits like “Hoy Ya Me Voy,” “Te Lo Agradezco” and “A La Niña Que Fui.”
During the conversation, moderated by Billboard‘s co-chief content officer of Leila Cobo and held at the Faena Theater in Miami Beach, the Puerto Rican singer-songwriter shared how “Te Lo Agradezco,” her successful 2023 collaboration with Carín León, came to life. The track made its way onto Billboard‘s Regional Mexican Airplay and Hot Latin Songs charts.
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“I started following Carín on Instagram, and I loved his work. I kept liking and commenting, saying things like, ‘Wow, so beautiful.’ And I kept thinking, ‘When will he notice me?’ And suddenly, he did and wrote to me: ‘I didn’t know you followed me. When can we meet?'”
The meeting took place shortly after in Las Vegas, where they crossed paths during Latin Grammy week, and García came prepared with the song almost fully written, eager to show it to him. “I had everything except the line ‘Te lo agradezco,'” she recalled. “I invited him to a suite my label had in Las Vegas to talk music… It was 9 a.m., I was getting my makeup done and I still didn’t have that phrase. While they were doing my makeup, the line ‘te lo agradezco’ came to me, and I jumped up, as we say in Puerto Rico: ‘¡Puñeta!’“
When they met, León told her he had a song he wrote with Camilo that he wanted to show her, and García said she had one too. “He said, ‘You go first.’ I sat down, played my song on the guitar, and he was stunned. I told him, ‘Now show me your song.’ And he said, ‘No, not anymore.’ I never found out what it was,” she shared, making the audience laugh.
García, who graced the cover of Billboard Español in August in the midst of her ambitious arena tour Puerta Abierta, has built her career on deeply emotional songwriting and her ability to transform intimate experiences into songs that resonate within Latin pop and contemporary music.
She also spoke about “A La Niña Que Fui,” one of the most heartfelt tracks from her latest album, Puerta Abierta, dedicated to herself as a child and which has become a sort of anthem during her current tour. When Cobo asked if writing it had made her cry, as it does for many listeners, the singer admitted she is “bad at crying.”
However, she shared that the first letter she received from a fan about the track was from a Venezuelan woman accompanying her husband to chemotherapy for advanced cancer, and how the song helped her cope with the difficult situation. “That’s when I couldn’t hold back,” García confessed. “This song has become my license [to cry].”
Running Oct. 19-22, Billboard Latin Music Week coincides with the 2026 Billboard Latin Music Awards, which will air on Thursday (Oct. 22) live from the James L. Knight Center in Miami via Telemundo and Peacock.
Watch a fragment of Kany García’s panel below.