Juan Wauters shares ‘Estás Escuchando’, featuring five-time Latin GRAMMY nominated artist El David Aguilar. ‘Estás Escuchando‘ is the fourth single from Juan’s forthcoming album Real Life Situations, out April 30, which also features collaborations with Mac DeMarco, Peter Sagar (AKA Homeshake), Nick Hakim, Cola Boyy, and more. Directed by Juan Molinet, the ‘Estás Escuchando’ video is a colourful expression of playful animations.
Juan Wauters on ‘Estás Escuchando’: “I had heard of David when I was in Mexico recording ‘La Onda de Juan Pablo’. People there regarded him as one of the most talented songwriters of his generation. One day, months later, I was in Mexico recording a music video and I was invited to a house where there was a musicians’ gathering. When I showed up there were many well known singers there and they were all passing the guitar around and singing songs. One of the people there was David Aguilar. That day we made plans to meet and we did.
When it came time to do my albums in which I wanted to include other singers, of course I thought of inviting David to participate. I went down like this: I was in Mexico filming a music video for my song Mi Guitarra and we scheduled some studio time to do a song together. The initial idea I had was to utilize his great whistling ability and have the hook of the song be a whistling part. (I got this idea from the N.E.R.D. song Wonderful Place / Waiting for You). I wrote a whistling hook and I sent him an audio message with the idea I had in mind. He immediately sent an audio back of him playing the guitar (with that particular rhythm that the song has), the whistling hook and him singing two verses he wrote then (the ones that ended up on the song). I heard it, it was late at night and I sent him an audio back with the chorus (“si escuchas esto de noche, saca de tu pelo el broche y deja tu pelo al aire..”). It was made like that. Though we were both in the same city, the song happened to be written over the phone in a very quick and spontaneous way. It’s the only one of the collaborations on RLS that was written from afar.
The following day we met at his studio, Estudio Continuo, with Ulises Hadjis (Venezuelan musician, producer and co-owner of Estudio Continuo with David) and recorded the track. It was great to have Ulises in there. He played drums and oversaw the whole production. I saw then, at the studio, how talented of a musician David is. He played guitar, bass and sang the song very naturally.
This all happened the week before COVID LYFE hit so the song production was finished by me in NY during the summer of 2020. I had Chris West from Nashville send a flute solo. He sent 8 to have different variations. When I put them on the track, by accident, they all played at once I loved how they sounded all together so I left the flute solo be “a vibe” or “a ‘tonal’ moment”. It feels as though the song goes into a world during that solo and then quickly comes back to its easy-going-fun vibe.
