TEARDROPS ON MY GUITAR

Four years ago, when Ivan Cornejo was a junior in high school, he had a meeting with his family to announce that he was dropping out. His parents were alarmed, of course, but his older sister, Pamela, had a more sympathetic reaction, because she also happened to be his manager, and she knew that he wasn’t bluffing when he said that he had to focus on his career.

- KELEFA SANNEH

By the time of his announcement, Cornejo was becoming a star on Instagram, where he posted videos of himself singing and strumming his guitar. But, unlike many Instagram kids, he hardly seemed like a kid at all. His specialty was plaintive love songs, delivered in a voice that suggested he was already starting to suspect that romance might be more trouble than it was worth. Not long after he quit school, he released “Está Dañada,” the lament of a boy hoping to make an impression on a hopeless girl. “Está dañada del amor / No siente ningún dolor,” he sang—“She’s damaged by love / She doesn’t feel any pain”—emphasizing the sentiment by enveloping himself in reverb and bending his notes downward, as if he were literally melting with heartache.