Más: Futility in a Catchy Beat

I discovered Kinky’s “Más” this morning on a music subreddit, after spending most of the night with fever, sneezing, and coughing as this flu bug peaked. Chasing one last tissue, one extra dose of medicine, always one more something that never quite satisfied, the song caught me and held me, its repeated más echoing my restless state.

Kinky, a Mexican band from Monterrey, grabbed me with Pliego’s insistent bass, Chairez’s skittery guitar, Góngora’s driving drums, and Cerezo’s relentless vocal, creating a pulse you can’t ignore. “Vamos queriendo más y más” (“We are wanting more and more”) isn’t just a lyric; it’s a rhythm you can dance to, a compulsion you can get lost in.

Curiosity led me to read more about the song and listen more closely. This 2013 live performance I watched captures the energy of Monterrey’s Avanzada Regia movement, a turn of the millennium scene that helped put the city on the musical map with its innovative mix of rock, electronic, and Latin sounds. That context explains its appeal: entertaining, physical, and propulsive, without pretending to be anything else.

Listening more closely, the phrase circles endlessly, never resolving, gradually hollowing itself out through sheer insistence. About three-quarters of the way, a cymbal-crash marks a brief musical breath before plunging back into the same loop, now tighter, more insistent, as though effort might finally produce satisfaction.

The structure mirrors my own experience: when emptiness creeps in, I pour on extra force, added speed, heightened desire, hoping intensity will accomplish what repetition cannot. And it rarely does. What follows is still desire without arrival, motion without rest.

The song was crafted for movement and atmosphere, not reflection, yet I cannot ignore what it stirred in me. Sometimes sound, rhythm, and repetition carry more than their makers consciously intend, and the listener supplies the rest.

Over time, I’ve recognized that feeling of emptiness well enough. The pull of “more” doesn’t vanish with age; it simply changes costumes. Long ago, a writer described that chase as vanity. The word still fits. Hearing it echoed here, unintentionally and without commentary, gave me pause.

Culture does this at times: without aiming for insight, it brushes against it, unable to help reflecting the contours of the human heart.

Here was a song I could have enjoyed purely for its groove, yet it opened a small space for reflection on desire, contentment, and restlessness. The loop did not resolve, and perhaps that is the point. It invites the listener, if inclined, to notice the hunger beneath the beat.

In the end, what might have remained just a catchy dance tune became, for me, a quiet reminder that “more” is a demanding master and a poor destination.

…or maybe this is just the flu talking.