Karlos Rosé, born Carlos De La Rosa, is a Dominican bachata singer, songwriter and producer. He has taken four records to number one on Billboard’s tropical chart, and three of the four were somebody else’s songs first.

From a television studio

He started as a singer on the television programme Divertido con Jochy, at seventeen. That is an unusual door into bachata — the genre normally arrives through a bar, a colmadón or a requinto, not through a variety show — and it explains the finish on the records, which sound built for broadcast from the first bar.

The covers

Just the Way You Are, in 2012, was Bruno Mars in bachata, and it went to number one. Infiel, the year after, was a song by the Colombian group Daniel Calderón y Los Gigantes, and it went to number one as well. Niña de Mi Corazón, by the Mexican Horacio Palencia, did the same in 2014. In between he sang I’ll Be There, from the Jackson 5 catalogue, with the American pianist Arthur Hanlon, and reached number four.

El Caribe put the practice in a headline as early as 2012: the covers are what feed bachata urbana. It is a fair description and not necessarily a complaint. Bachata has always worked by absorbing other people’s songs and handing them back with a requinto and a bongo underneath — what changed with his generation is that the songs being absorbed were English-language pop and Colombian vallenato rather than boleros.

Géminis and Sabotaje

Mi Lugar Es Contigo, in 2015, was his own, and it also went to number one. Géminis came the same year and gathered all of it — Ojos Verdes, Mentías, Princesita, Por Amarte, Enséñame a Olvidar, and both a bachata and a pop version of Mi Lugar Es Contigo, which is the record label showing its hand about where he was being aimed.

Sabotaje followed in 2019: Te Salvaré, Siento Que Muero, La Ronda, El Juego, Mi Cama Es Testigo, Brindo, No Dejo De Amarte. He has kept releasing singles since — Tan Fácil, El Espejo, La Verdad, Un Mal Sueño, Yo No Me Muero Por Nadie, A Gritos De Esperanza.

On the dance circuit

He works the international bachata-dance festivals, which is a market of its own: rooms full of people in Sydney or Milan who learned the steps before they learned the language. Very little Dominican music reaches an audience that way, and it is a large part of why bachata now travels further than merengue.

Nothing found names the town he comes from — every source says only the country.