Karol G accepts the Woman of the Year award at Billboard’s Women in Music 2024.
Karol G:
First of all, it’s an amazing surprise that Sofía Vergara is giving me this award, I love it. Buenas noches a todos. I’m super honored to be here today. Oh my God, [this] might be the most significant and important recognition of all my career, this is super special. This is Woman of the Year, but this is the first time ever a Latina is named the Woman of the Year. So, I have to give my speech in Spanish, of course.
Well, this is Women in Music so I’m going to talk about us. I have to start first by telling you that for years and years, I lived very disappointed with the fact of being a woman. I found myself on the road with so many rejections and so many lost opportunities. Because of that, I wondered why I was not born a man to exploit all this love, this desire and passion I felt for music. Where would all this desire I had to eat the world have gone if it was assumed that, as a woman, I could not achieve it? For a long time, I believed that story. I believed that this was not for me. So many times I was told that I could not make it and I always think of the number of people who leave their dreams behind and leave their dreams aside for that reason, for the perception of others but not for the real dream they have and the desire they have inside. In the midst of my desire, in the midst of wanting to make music even if it was just for me, I decided that if my environment did not change, I was the one who had to change and I was the one who was going to do it. And that I wasn’t going to let being a woman be an obstacle or define my capabilities, but that it was going to be my strength, it was going to be my motive and my reason. And every time I was told no, I found the strength and the desire and everything I needed to say: yes I can. In my mind I changed the “a woman can’t do it” to “look at this woman how she does it, look how a woman does it.”
Watch the full speech in the video above!