Y como es él

The song's harmonic power lies entirely in its economy. A small diatonic vocabulary serves the lyric's quiet devastation: every resolution sounds both inevitable and bittersweet. There is no harmonic complexity to distract from the emotional directness of the text. All harmonic detail here is inferred from training knowledge; no external transcription data was available for verification.

José Luis Perales wrote '¿Y cómo es él?' in 1981 with Julio Iglesias in mind as the intended performer. Perales ultimately recorded it himself for his 1982 album 'Entre el Agua y el Fuego'. The song's central dramatic device—a man quietly interrogating his estranged partner about her new love through an implied phone call—was unusually restrained for mainstream Latin pop of the era.

Composed by José Luis Perales in 1981 and originally conceived for Julio Iglesias, '¿Y cómo es él?' became one of the defining Spanish-language ballads of the 20th century. Its deceptively simple premise—a one-sided phone call in which a man asks about his romantic rival—resonated across the Spanish-speaking world, reaching #1 in Argentina and becoming one of Colombia's best-selling songs ever. Marc Anthony's 2010 cover brought it to a new generation, culminating in a celebrated live performance alongside Perales at the 11th Annual Latin Grammy Awards.