You step into his home—or, rather, his mom’s—as you would a friend’s or a cousin’s. Alexander (A.C) Castillo Vasquez is the embodiment of humility. Pride seems to have no hold on him.
Yet A.C, as everyone calls him, would have every reason to let it go to his head. He has, after all, helped create THE song of summer 2026, the worldwide hit adopted by FIFA as the anthem of the 23rd World Cup. Alexander and his sister, Vanessa Castillo Vasquez, laid the foundations for “Dai Dai”—the Shakira song that everyone and their mother, all across planet Earth, have heard during the matches and far beyond: on the radio and streaming platforms, at the grocery store and in the street, hummed by a passerby or blasting from car speakers. Since May 14, there has been no escaping it: Dai Dai is quite simply everywhere. The song has woven itself into the very fabric of everyday life, brightening it with a festive glow.
“I’m so proud of both my children,” says Yolanda Vasquez, their mother, her eyes glistening. Yolanda is a warm, radiant woman who fusses over you from the moment you arrive: “Would you like a coffee? Or perhaps some juice?” Step inside this house in Montréal’s Saint-Michel neighbourhood, and you are enveloped in extraordinary warmth and kindness. It is hard to visit the Castillo Vasquez family without falling in love with them.
Composing, Day and Night
During our visit to the family home, A.C drifts back and forth between the kitchen and the patio, cradling his guitar. It is always with him; he never puts it down. “It’s like my fidget spinner,” he quips.
That is exactly how “Dai Dai” came to be: from idly strumming the guitar between conversations, between places. When A.C and his sister came up with the song’s melody, they were getting ready to leave for one of SOCAN’s KENEKT camps. “I’d just bought a new electric guitar and wanted to give it a test drive.”
He continues: “Vanessa played me a couple of Afro beats—different kinds of progressions, things I wasn’t familiar with—to give me some inspiration. From there, I started playing this little riff, which ended up underneath the main melody of “Dai Dai.” I played it in a really strange way, using only two strings. It wasn’t really chords…” More like a rhythmic melody? “Exactly!”
The rest, as they say, is history—both musical and sporting. After all, “Dai Dai” is the first official FIFA song ever to reach No. 1 worldwide. Since A.C. and Vanesa received a SOCAN No. 1 Award, “Dai Dai” has also reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Latin Airplay chart.
Heeding His Calling
It is no coincidence that the “Dai Dai” demo found its way into Shakira’s hands. Over the past decade, A.C has worked closely with Shakira, ultimately becoming her lead producer.
He still can’t quite believe this is his life now: “At the end of the day, I still have to pinch myself sometimes. When I step outside myself, look at the situation and think back to who I was at 14, I’m like… this is completely insane!”
@aalexxac / Instagram
Beyond his colleague’s superstar status, their creative partnership also holds deep symbolic meaning for A.C because of his roots. “My mother is Colombian, so the whole family—everyone on my Colombian side—is absolutely thrilled [that I work with Shakira]. Obviously, Shakira is a legend. She is to Colombia what Céline Dion is to Québec.”
The thing is, no one becomes Shakira’s creative partner by chance. Nor does anyone make their way into the upper echelons of the international music industry overnight. Getting there takes time and tremendous effort.
A.C’s musical journey began in early childhood. “My mother still sings, but she used to be in a group called Seducción Band, and my father was their manager. They were a Montréal band that never released an album, but they played live a lot. They performed all kinds of Latin covers. They won competitions, played in Toronto and all over… I would go to their rehearsals when I was little. Even though I was only three, I have a very vivid memory of sitting underneath the timbales…”
As he revisits this distant memory, he switches to Spanish for the word timbales: “The whole band was playing salsa, and I was fooling around on the timbales. I don’t know why… but I still remember it. It stayed with me. It feels like yesterday. I loved it, and it left a lasting impression on me.”
From then on, young Alexander began taking lessons. His mother, Yolanda, recalls: “His timbales teacher has since passed away, but even back then, he was convinced that my son would go on to do great things.”
Holding On to Your Dream
At 16, A.C took a leap of faith: he left school behind and devoted himself entirely to music. “My mother said, ‘Okay, go ahead, drop out—but I’d better see you sitting at the computer every day making beats.’ And that’s exactly what I did. Two years later, I signed with Prescription Songs.”
The budding Québécois artist then relocated to Los Angeles. “It was pretty wild, honestly, when I think back on it… At the time, I didn’t even really speak English very well!”
Where so many others run into closed doors and have their wings clipped, he managed, through hard work and talent, to make a name for himself. Then, one day, a fellow American producer named Kool Kojack made him an offer he could not refuse: “Kojack had been jamming with Britney Spears the day before, and they’d recorded a guitar part and an idea for a chorus. He left it for me in a voice memo that I kept—I still have it on a hard drive. He said, ‘Listen to this and come back to me with some ideas.’”
The rhythmic foundation of “Hold on Tight” grew out of that spontaneous invitation to collaborate. Released in 2013, “Hold On Tight” is one of the few songs Britney Spears performs in her natural vocal register. It is a dense, emotionally charged track that subtly evokes the difficult period she was going through—the darker side of her life: the conservatorship imposed by her family and the psychological and financial abuse that followed, the full extent of which no one yet understood.
Not long after contributing to the Britney Jean album, A.C began racking up other high-profile collaborations with Justin Bieber, Nicki Minaj and Ricky Martin, to name just a few. The framed platinum records hanging in A.C’s studio bear witness to that success. His fingerprints are all over a decade of Billboard charts.
But what does a producer dream of once they have clearly made it to the big leagues? “Of course, I’d love to work with The Weeknd, Bruno Mars or Drake. With a little luck, it’ll happen. But I don’t see things the same way I did when I was starting out. Big names are cool, but in the end, all I want is to make good music.”
Now that the dizzying rush of going viral with “Dai Dai” is beginning to subside, A.C is setting his sights on a new goal, another challenge—one that is musical, certainly, but also deeply rooted in family. Together with his sister Vanesa, he hopes their duo, Karibe, will reach as many people as possible.
Shakira herself has become an ally in this side-quest. “She gives us advice and her input on every song we write as Karibe. Shakira is like an aunt to my children and, to me, she’s like a sister.”
And it is with these two sisters—Vanesa, his sister by blood, and Shakira, his new sister at heart—that A.C hopes to take in the view from the highest peaks, pouring his whole heart into the climb.