Yuri claims he sang the song for years without realizing it told a story of sexual abuse and incest. (Photo by Medios y Media/Getty Images)
When Yuri realized that “El apagón”, one of his most famous songs, had a very harmful and offensive message, his surprise was enormous.
“I never noticed!” he said in a recent interview with Nayo Escobar, in which he assured that he had decided for years to change the lyrics a little to eliminate any negative connotations.
And in her own words, the song's lyrics tell the story of incest from a woman's perspective.
“I was walking alone down the street when I suddenly fainted. It's better if I keep quiet about the adventure that happened to me. They grabbed me by the waist, took me to the corner of a hallway and in that dark street, Oh that I screamed “It's happened!” And without seeing the enemy in that terrible darkness, they took my coat and my hat, and what barbarity! I thought about the punishment this cool guy was about to give me. When she turned on the light, oh, that was my father!” the song states at various times.
“It’s incest. 'Oh, it was my father'. Naturally! And I never noticed,” insisted the interpreter of “The Damned Spring”. “Nobody had noticed, right? It was incest and I sang that song for years,” he insisted.
For years Yuri sang the song without much problem until he converted to Christianity and became aware of the lyrics and their meaning. Although he didn't stop there, he decided to stop singing the line in which he mentioned, “He was my father.”
“I had to change it out of sadness and nothing happened. “Thank God the composer wasn’t alive, otherwise he would have taken the song away from me,” he said.
“El apagón” was one of the most successful songs from his album “Soy libre”, which he released in 1990 and which included other songs such as “Un Romance” and “Who are you”.
The song was co-composed by Manuel Esperón and Ernesto Cortázar, responsible for major hits such as “No Volveré” and “El Aventura”, and was performed for the first time by Antonia del Carmen Peregrino, known by her stage name “Toña la”. Negra'. '.
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Various versions assume that the authors were inspired by the power outages that occurred again and again in those years due to the Second World War.
But that wasn't the only song Juri changed as part of his conversion to Christianity. The other was “You have to love me,” which tells the romance between two lovers.
For a long time, he says, he stopped singing it, but his followers insisted so much that he decided to ask his priest for permission. “Then my pastor gave me permission and told me, 'Okay, you're going to sing it, but first you're going to give a little talk about what adultery is,'” he revealed.
He has since assured that he did this so as not to contradict his faith.