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# Have You Noticed Santiago Motorizado Is Always Losing Something?
- URL: https://www.421.news/en/santiago-motorizado-el-mato-song-analysis/
- Published: 2025-06-19T19:20:35.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-08T14:08:09.000Z
- Description: The singer of El mató a un policía motorizado has spent over 20 years singing about searches and absences. What's the deal with him losing everything?
- Author: Luis Paz
- Tags: culture, Music, #en, #ensayo

Have you noticed that **Santiago Motorizado** is always losing something? It started as just a comment, an offhand remark after listening to one of the latest tracks he released as a [solo artist](https://www.421.news/es/discos-ozzy-osbourne-solista/), but it gradually became an absolute certainty as I went through the [discography](https://www.421.news/es/babasonicos-lados-b/) of **El mató a un policía motorizado** and **Santiago**'s [solo](https://www.421.news/en/ozzy-osbourne-solo-albums/) work.

If you haven't heard "**Google Maps**," here's the video. It's a very simple song, the concept is not only clear but also underlined, highlighted, and signposted so the idea comes through loud and clear. A joke so obvious I won't even bother transcribing the lyrics -- fair enough -- but an obvious joke that still earns its place because **Santiago** has been in a constant iteration of songs about searching, loss, and absence, generally with excellent results.

We'll go over the numbers below, but there must be about 20 of his songs -- [**I already checked and there are at least 28**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7bQJeQK55mR6xeBOtX3pDO?ref=421.news) \-- that have some version of this as a leitmotif, and almost all of them are very good, almost all of them are epic, and in almost all of them he finds a different way to face that search. On a different scale, but much like Dargelos, the search is a constant in the poetics of **Santiago Barrionuevo**.

That's the trait that made **El mató a un policía motorizado** a proposal bordering on pulp literature in its early days. Not just because of the characters, the dead, the zombies, and the space rock, but fundamentally because of the adventure, the *quest* that almost all their songs lay out. And every adventure is always the same adventure: the search for a person, a place, an object, or an answer. It's the foundation of human history and its narratives, and that's above all why **Santiago Motorizado** is a world-class songwriter.

Absence is a recurring topic for **Chango** \-- that's the nickname we first knew him by -- and it's already present in the first single by **El Mató**, from 2003, **"Tormenta Roja"**: *Me decís que no me importa porque no estás conmigo hoy, no estás conmigo hoy*. By the time **El Mató** reached their debut album, the self-titled record from 2004, he added the other two elements. The search in **"Terrorismo en la Copa del Mundo"** (*Si vienen a buscarme, estoy dormida*) and what's about to slip away from him in **"Guitarra comunista"** (*Mis amigos se van y sé que ya no volverán*).

Then, at the start of the EP trilogy that truly cemented **El mató a un policía motorizado**'s career and took them out of La Plata to place them at the center of [Argentine](https://www.421.news/es/de-donde-venimos-los-argentinos/) indie, there were several cases on ***Navidad de reserva***, their 2005 record. "**Navidad en Los Santos**" and that *Te persigue la Policía el día de Navidad*; the old drunk and lost man from "**Viejo ebrio y perdido**"; and the "**Villancico del final**," with its *No va a volver, vas a llorar*.

On that same EP, which turned twenty this year and remains an absolute banger, another one of **Santiago**'s habits also begins to take shape: setting up the search situation right from his very first line. *Eh, esta mañana dijiste que no ibas a volver*, is how "**Navidad de reserva**" opens: the conflict is presented immediately.

He would do the same as the lyricist of **El Mató** in 2008 on "**Día** [**de los muertos**](https://www.421.news/es/la-voz-de-los-muertos-hauntologia/)" (*Ey, mi voz desapareció*), in 2013 on "**Yoni B**" (*Ey, Yoni, ¿dónde estás? Te extrañamos*), in 2016 on **El baile de la colina** (*Perdido en el gran baile de la colina*), in 2017 on "**La noche eterna**" (*Hoy voy a salir a buscar todo lo que quiero*) and "**Fuego**" (*Desde el pueblo más lejano de acá, siguiéndote*), in 2019 on "**El perro**" (*Busco a mi perro perdido, se escapó con los ruidos*), in 2022 on "**Tantas cosas nuevas**" (*No es difícil de entender, todo esto se va a perder*), and in 2023 on "**Diamante roto**" (*Pierdo la cabeza y no te conozco*). All of these songs open with the quoted lines.

The [discography](https://www.421.news/en/babasonicos-the-parallel-discography-of-the-90s-outlaws/) of **El mató a un policía motorizado** is full of other songs that deal with these themes, some as iconic as "**Chica rutera**" and those cries of *Espero que vuelvas, chica rutera*; or like "**Mujeres bellas y fuertes**," those women who *se han ido, mi amigo, y no volverán*. Even the band's contribution to the *Okupas* remaster, with the soundtrack **Unas vacaciones raras**, has "**La otra ciudad**": *Ya no busques más, es la sombra que te cubre hacia otra ciudad*. And so on all the way to the band's latest album, **Súper Terror**, from 2023, with "**Un segundo plan**" (*Quiero saber a dónde ir, quiero saber a quién seguir*) and "**Coronado**" (*Volví y ya no estabas ahí*), which, by the way, clocks in at **4:21**.

Always something or someone leaving, always something or someone getting lost, always searching.

But the story doesn't end there. **Santiago Motorizado** has been running a prolific solo career in parallel, spanning singles and soundtracks to albums and collaborations of every color and [national](https://www.421.news/es/seguridad-nacional-trash-metal-nwo/)ity. The obsession keeps showing up there too. Also for *Okupas* but as a solo artist, for instance. On **Canciones sobre una casa, cuatro amigos y un perro**, his soundtrack album, there's the track "**Bajo las sombras**," where he states: *Tantos momentos que buscamos y no encontramos. Ya no quiero, ya no quiero buscar más*. OKAY SANTI, WE TOTALLY CAN'T TELL YOU DON'T WANT TO SEARCH ANYMORE.

Also part of the pattern are "**Un día no vas a estar**," self-explanatory title; and "**No hay lugar para nadie más**," with its desperate plea for some certainty: *¿En dónde estás? ¿A dónde vas? ¿Quiénes te esperan?* And a couple more examples, in case the thesis wasn't clear enough. "**Polvo de estrellas**," a 2021 single: *Vamos a buscar subir todo lo que puedas* (that's the opening line) and *No lo busques más, ya se acercan las tormentas* (that's the closer). "**Muchacha de los ojos negros**," another single: *Yo quiero volver a verte, muchacha de los ojos negros*.

Before arriving at the paroxysm of "**Google Maps**," **Santiago** left us another track that revels in the search. "**Lo que perdí**," from 2024, which he made for the Cromanon series on Amazon Prime: *Y te escuché decir "Lo que perdí sigue ahí", hay una sombra frente a mí, lo que perdí sigue ahí*. But I think the clearest one of all has to be "**El fuego cálido**," naturally from the search-obsessed Okupas soundtrack and its band of seekers:

*Bajo las piedras no hay más que tierra, no busques más*, he says at one point; but at another he invites us to keep on *Buscando lo nuevo, buscando un lugar donde las noches no se terminen y el fuego cálido sin final te queme los días sin mirar atrás*. Man, how could you not go out and search for whatever it is you need to search for.

By the end of this deep dive, I had so many tracks that [**I ended up putting together this playlist**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7bQJeQK55mR6xeBOtX3pDO?ref=421.news). Maybe if we all listen together, we can help **Santiago Barrionuevo** in his search.