A quién le importa

The song began on holiday. Carlos Berlanga started writing it on the Greek island of Mykonos, and when he got back to Spain he finished the lyrics with his bandmate Nacho Canut. The two were listening to the new Hi-NRG dance sound, to the singer Sinitta and to Gloria Gaynor's I Am What I Am, and that mix of club pulse and self-assertion runs right through it. Hispavox released it in March 1986, from Alaska y Dinarama's third album No es pecado, produced by Nick Patrick. The lyrics are about personal freedom: living as you please and refusing to be steered by what the neighbours think. They never mention sexuality, but the LGBT community adopted the song as an anthem anyway, and it became one of the emblematic songs of the 1980s in Spain. The video was shot on a set of La bola de cristal, the children's television show Alaska was hosting at the time, with Alaska dancing on a round platform under a turning mirror ball. It went on to become reportedly the biggest single of Alaska's career, and Rolling Stone later placed it at number 52 among the best Spanish pop-rock songs. Thalía took it to a gay club in Manhattan for her 2002 version, and Raphael, Rozalén and Bebe have all recorded it. In 2010 Alaska and Canut recut it as Fangoria, and in 2017 Alaska sang it with other artists as the anthem of WorldPride Madrid. Four decades on, its shrug at anyone who judges still sounds like a door held open.