Reggaeton singer Karol G made history with the 2023 release of her album “Mañana Será Bonito,” which became the first-ever Spanish language album by a woman to debut at number one on the Billboard 200. Now, fans are getting a touching inside look at her journey to bringing that album to life from the studio to the stage in the new Netflix documentary Karol G: Tomorrow Was Beautiful. The singer bares it all in this project that doubles as a tour documentary and a career retrospective, capturing the technicolor pop star at the height of her career as she looks back at what it took to break into the male-dominated genre as a woman.
Opening Shot: As countless fans stream into the stadium for Karol G’s Mañana Será Bonito tour, the singer is backstage venting to her team about how nervous she feels. “I can’t control these nerves because I haven’t felt them before,” she confesses, before proposing they take a shot together to ease her nerves.
The Gist: Tomorrow Was Beautiful is a moving follow-up to what Karol G describes in the doc as her “most honest” album yet, offering fans an even closer look into her family, love life, and her creative process, making it clear that this epic era of her career did not come easily. The Netflix documentary functions as a bookend to what could be the peak of Karol G’s career. The album not only debuted at number one on the Billboard charts, but it also earned her the title of Billboard‘s Woman of the Year in 2024. Her stadium tour, which is chronicled in this documentary from its early days to the final stop, also became the largest Latino music tour in Europe with over 415,000 tickets sold in 10 shows, per the Los Angeles Times.
Interestingly enough, Karol G is the only person interviewed throughout the documentary. But her supportive family and team are present all throughout, bolstering the singer even when things go wrong. And they do go wrong. Tomorrow Was Beautiful shows the many difficulties of executing a stadium tour. But it also illustrates the lengths she went to get there as she dealt with sexism, setbacks, and toxic relationships, all of which she explores from the comfort of her couch in the documentary.
What movie will it remind you of?: Tomorrow Was Beautiful is the latest Netflix doc to highlight Latinas in music, following Anitta’s tell-all documentary Larissa: The Other Side of Anitta. Karol G fans will also enjoy checking out the Peacock documentary Reggaeton: The Sound That Conquered The World, where she and several of the biggest names in reggaeton share their perspectives on the genre they’ve devoted their lives to.
Performance Worth Watching: It’s easy to sympathize and root for Karol after seeing Tomorrow Was Beautiful, but it’s clear that she attributes a lot of her success to her father, Guillermo Giraldo, who seems like the ultimate Girl Dad. The singer reveals he was the one who encouraged her to pursue music when she was just a teenager. As she describes it in the documentary, her father believed in her so much that he didn’t speak to her for months when she briefly decided to quit music at the age of 16.
Memorable Dialogue: The documentary takes an unexpectedly morbid turn in the final act when Karol admits she believes she’s “going to die young” and says, “I feel like there are so many things I have left to do that I keep working, and working, and working. That’s one of the reasons why I try to do things fast.” It’s immediately clear why the singer has wondered several times in the documentary about what kind of legacy she will leave behind; it’s a topic she clearly ruminates a lot on, especially as she sees the late Mexican singer Selena Quintanilla (who passed away at the age of 23) as one of her idols.
Sex and Skin: No sex, but lots of skin.
Parting Shot: Tomorrow Was Beautiful ends with a montage of footage from the tour, coupled with a voiceover of her acceptance speech for Billboard’s Woman of the Year. “I was never going to let being a woman be an obstacle or to let it define my abilities but rather it was going to be my strength, my reason and my motive,” she says.
Our Take: It’s refreshing to see one of the biggest names in urbano and reggaeton being so candid about the realities of the genre and what it means to be a woman in music. While Tomorrow Was Beautiful has all of the makings of any typical music documentary, Karol offers even more of herself to her fans by opening up about her “toxic” relationship with singer Anuel AA as well as the pressure she faces both from herself and the public.
While the documentary captures the underwhelming drama of executing a stadium tour – there’s several stretches where Karol openly complains about her camera crew – the singer also shares the darkest moments of her career and is open about the anxiety she faces every day that makes her obsess over what’s going wrong as opposed to what’s going right. Karol is known for propping herself up as la bichota, but she outrightly states in Tomorrow Was Beautiful that she viewed being a woman as an “extremely huge disadvantage” for her career, pointing to a particularly difficult time in her career when she completely quit music at 16 because her middle-aged manager confessed he had feelings for her and threatened her career. Though she shares a lot about herself and her family in the documentary, there are points where the singer is clearly holding herself back from sharing too much. Regardless, Tomorrow Was Beautiful will leave viewers feeling closer to the singer during one of the most important parts of her career.
Fans looking to learn more about her relationship with fellow reggaeton star Feid will also be pleased to hear that the documentary gives a sweet glimpse into their relationship. He doesn’t really appear in the documentary until almost 2/3 into the movie and doesn’t stay for long, but Karol even shares the story of their first kiss and praises their relationship as a “healthy” one, a marked difference from how she candidly describes her time with Anuel AA.
Tomorrow Was Beautiful highlights the epic proportions of her stadium tour and what it took to bring all of it to life. The Netflix documentary will leave even the most skeptical reggaeton fans rooting for Karol, as her passion for the music and her fans is evident all throughout the movie.
Our Call: Tomorrow Was Beautiful is a lovely look into an artist at the peak of her career, with a lot left to achieve. STREAM IT.