He vuelto es el tema #6 del álbum Performance de Astrud, un dúo barcelonés formado a mediados de los años 90 y en activo hasta 2011. Astrud eran Manolo Martínez (cantante y autor principal de las letras) y Genís Segarra (teclista y programador de ritmos y efectos).

Tal como sugiere el título del disco, Performance presenta al oyente una especie de catálogo de relaciones interpersonales más o menos “tóxicas”, abundantes en gestos teatrales o afectados.

He vuelto is a sequel of sorts: una secuela. Part I of this hypothetical ‘song diptych’ would be Caridad, track #3 of the same album. In Caridad (Charity), the narrator has suddenly decided to leave his partner and put an abrupt end to their relationship. “Te dejo”, he says, “¡qué lástima!” I’m leaving you. What a pity!

El narrador de He vuelto parece ser la misma persona. Si es así, está claro que ahora el hombre ha cambiado de idea. He’s gone from “te dejo, ¡qué lástima!”, to “he vuelto, ¿ves qué bien?”

Martínez, who wrote both songs, deliberately used an almost identical chord progression for both tunes, so that the listener might subconsciously imagine them as sung by the same character: a volatile kind of guy who doesn’t know what he wants and cannot stick to his own decisions - but still portrays himself as being always in the right.

En He vuelto, la letra se repite dos veces de manera idéntica. La segunda vez los versos son cantados en falsete, como si se quisiera recalcar el tono insincero, “performativo”, un tanto chirriante de las palabras del personaje: his righteous speech, as he grandly announces his comeback, is made sound by the singer even more cringey by his use of falsetto in the second part of the song.

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