Carlos Vives’ ‘La Tierra del Olvido’ Turns 30: All Songs Ranked

In 1994, Carlos Vives was at a crossroads. He had become an overnight sensation, following the 1993 release of his album Clásicos de la Provincia, where he recorded cover versions of classic vallenatos. Young, handsome and a musical risk-taker, Vives had managed to make vallenato –the Colombian popular music of the masses, often shunned by the upper classes and trendy media– hip.

But Vives, who at that point had also played the role of fabled vallenato composer Rafael Escalona in the TV series Escalona, was getting restless. He’d been tasked with following up the sensational success of Clásicos de la Provincia, but “I couldn’t continue to just record classic vallenatos,” he told me in an interview for my book Decoding Despacito in 2021. “Or at least, the next release couldn’t be another album of classic vallenatos; no more songs by old composers of the time. I was faced with composing.”

Vives, along with his band La Provincia, dug deep. He and his band holed up at a farm, where for weeks they worked on a new blueprint for Colombia’s distinctive beats, one that married the most traditional of folk rhythms and genres with a con-temporary edge; the Caribbean and the mountains; the tropics and the cold; rock and cumbia; North and South; music for the masses and music for musicians.

“The first thing I had learned about vallenato was that it was the son of cumbia, and it opened up to a much bigger universe that touched all our Colombian culture,” Vives told me. “It was a broader musical DNA that I called ‘La Tierra del Olvido’ [The land of the forgotten]. It was for me to find myself with my roots.”

La Tierra del Olvido would forever change the course of Colombian music. It introduced vallenato to the world; the genre, to this day, remains broadly fused into all kinds of Latin music. It opened the door for Colombian artists to become global superstars; every Colombian star, from Shakira to Maluma and J Balvin, owes a debt of gratitude to Vives. And the title track spawned an entire new musical movement, tropi-pop, that blend of pop and rock with Colombian tropical beats that would become the signature of artists from Juanes to Fonseca.

La Tierra del Olvido debuted and peaked at No. 5 on Billboard’s Top Latin Albums chart in 1995. It also gave Vives the first of his two No. 1 on Top Tropical Albums, where it spent seven weeks on top, his longest-reign ever on that chart. Two songs from the album charted: “Pa’ Mayté”, which reached No. 7 on Tropical Airplay and No. 12 on Hot Latin Songs; and “La Tierra del Olvido”, which reached No. 8 on Tropical Airplay and No. 5 on Hot Latin Songs. 

As for Vives, he remains Colombia’s most authentic musical ambassador, a man deeply vested in mining and preserving his country’s heritage — from vallenato and beyond — by making music that’s eminently, joyfully commercial.

Thirty years since the release of La Tierra del Olvido, we delve back into its songs and rank them in descending order, arriving at our favorite. — LEILA COBO

Editors Note: A remastered, extended version of the album released on Friday (July 25) features a new song — “500” with Lalo Ebratt, Bomba Estéreo, Estereobeat and others — that is not included on this ranking.