Anitta - Kisses

The Guardian 60

(Warner Music Brasil)

Vai Anitta, the Netflix docuseries that chronicles the life of one of Brazil’s pre-eminent pop stars, opens with an attempt to boil down the enormity of the 26-year-old’s popularity into a quick-fire montage. Layered over footage of weeping fans and hordes of frenetically bopping concert-goers are the stats: Anitta has over 2.6bn video views; she is the most streamed Brazilian artist on Spotify in Brazil; all of her singles have topped the country’s radio charts. Yet despite her standing in the Portuguese-speaking world, Anitta remains relatively unknown in the UK. It’s a position that seems less tenable by the day in light of the cresting wave of Latin pop that has recently made its presence felt in the charts on both sides of the Atlantic, and Kisses, Anitta’s fourth album, seems expressly designed to chivvy along her breakthrough. Sung in a mixture of Portuguese, Spanish and English, it is her first to feature US stars – as keen, no doubt, for an introduction to Anitta’s staggering South American audience as she is to capitalise on their household names.