The first time Puerto Rican artist Carolina Isabel Colón Juarbe visited Napa, with her parents and their friends, she was 16. The group spent a couple of weeks in San Francisco before making the drive to wine country.

“We went to all these vineyards, and I couldn’t drink anything. … They were like, ‘Oh, this is so good! Oh, this is amazing,’” said Juarbe, now better known as GALE (pronounced Gah-leh). “I remember being like, ‘Papi, you’re so unfair because you took me there when I was 16. I couldn’t try anything. We have to do it again.’”

GALE, now 28, an established songwriter (her credits include Christina Aguilera, Anitta, Juanes and Cardi B) and an artist on the rise, finally returned to Napa Valley earlier this month for Live in the Vineyard, where she got to perform alongside Kany García and others. She’s also recently released several singles and has an album on tap for mid-2023. All of this is speeding up the momentum of her career, which she knew she wanted since she was a kid.

“I wanted to be a professional singer. … I wrote my first song when I was 7. I started journaling when I was 6,” she said. “When I read those things [now], I’m like, ‘Oh my God; what a dramatic little girl!’”

Gale was born in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, a hilly region in the north of the island. Her birthfather (her parents divorced when she was 10, and she stayed close both to her father and, later, her late stepfather) played in bands. Her grandfather was a cuatro player. And her mom was a theater actress.

“Music has always been in my house,” GALE said. “My mom has always been the ‘80s rock and rock and roll and salsa [lover], and my dad has always been very bohemian [with] the boleros, old songs.”

Growing up, GALE’s family often called on her to perform at family events. Her birthfather would encourage her, asking for two songs and saying it would prepare her for performing in front of people when she was older. Those two songs would often turn into 10.

“I would have either been super traumatized, or would have been awesome, and thank God it’s been awesome,” she said.

After Juarbe’s mom remarried and her stepdad entered her life, he also encouraged and supported her at every opportunity. While she felt comfortable performing for friends, she was introverted in public.

Her stepdad, who passed away last summer from cancer, had the idea to put her in a songwriting camp when she was 16. She was scared, but he helped her realize she had to overcome that fear and helped her pursue her bigger goals.

“Even though he was not a musician, he was the one that pushed me to do everything. … After that, I’ve always done things ‘with fear,’” she said, explaining that’s how she’s known when she needed to overcome an obstacle.

By this point, GALE moved with her mom and stepdad to San Juan, the capitol, to pursue an arts education at a specialized school, studying guitar and classical singing. In college, she was a member of the well-known Black Box Theatre Workshop, which allowed her to kick stage fright and become a better performer.

She played the role of Mimi in “Rent” and Wendla Bergmann in “Spring Awakening,” among other roles. The theater scene is large in Puerto Rico and has only grown larger because of Lin-Manuel Miranda, who staged “In The Heights” on the stage where GALE had performed with Black Box. While GALE said theater performances are now behind her, she’s still interested in giving film acting a shot at some point.

The year 2017 was a significant one for GALE’s music career. By this point, she had released numerous songs—Spanish TV network Univision selected one of them, “Levántate,” as its official song of a major North American soccer tournament—was performing around Puerto Rico and self-released an acoustic-guitar-centric debut album, Espirales Sin Sentido.

Album promotion came to an abrupt halt when Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico that September.

“Of course, it was terrible, and obviously my music was not like the main thing in my mind,” GALE said. “At that moment, it was more like making sure that my family was OK, that everyone in P.R. was OK.”

Her family’s home was flooded, but compared to the damage in much of the rest of the island, San Juan was spared.

“It was bad. Even now we’re still recovering from that, but a lot of people came together, and a lot of people helped each other,” she said. “I feel like that’s something that describes and characterizes us as Puerto Ricans.”

Her family also fared well with Fiona, the most recent hurricane to blast through the island, in September.

“I get this small few seconds of joy, and then I think of everyone else and the people that are really in need of help. Then I’m broken again,” GALE said. “There are a lot of people that are working, a lot of organizations that are helping out in terms of rebuilding houses for people.”

After Maria, GALE moved to Miami, where she got a publishing deal as a songwriter with Warner Chappell and found success working as a sort of therapist, in her words, helping artists get honest emotions out in a comfortable setting, which has led to songs they’re connected to.

Her favorite co-writes so far have come with the likes of Pharrell Williams and, most recently, her childhood inspiration Shakira. The latter is a song that has yet to be released.

“It’s been one of my favorite songs I’ve written, for real, and it’s really honest and brutal and beautiful,” GALE said, adding she doesn’t know how Shakira plans to use it. “Hopefully, it’s in her album. Hopefully, she releases it as a single.”

Another career highlight came from working with another idol, Christina Aguilera.

“I used to practice every freaking run, every song when I was like 7, 8 years old, and obviously I couldn’t do it, but I didn’t care,” she said. “I had a mic, and I would practice to … Mi Reflejo, (My Reflection), her first album in Spanish. That was my jam. I knew every part, every breath, everything.

“Then when I worked with her, and she heard the demo of the song that we did, she was like, ‘Is that you singing?’ … ‘I love your voice,’ and I [screamed] inside, ‘Aghhh!’ But I was like, ‘Thank you. I love your voice.’”

That work with Aguilera recently earned GALE a Latin Grammy nomination for Album of the Year for the singer’s self-titled album.

Even more pivotal to GALE’s career as a solo artist was working with Colombian superstar Juanes.

“When he heard me sing, he’s like, ‘What’s happening with you? Why aren’t you an artist? What do you need? How can I help you?’” she said.

Soon after, he connected GALE to her current manager.

She continued working on her own music on the side, and one day the president of Sony’s Latin division found out and asked to listen to it. Just like that, she had a new deal as an artist.

While her earlier songs from Espirales Sin Sentido were organic and simplistic, GALE wanted to start from scratch and reinvent herself with the poppier, more bombastic songs she’s been releasing this year.

GALE has described her sound as a mix of Bad Bunny with Dua Lipa and Avril Lavigne. There are various Latin influences, from reggaeton to dancehall, as well as hip-hop (she said that rapping the second verse identifies her as Puerto Rican) to glossy pop and some pop-punk.

Her two most recent singles have been the guitar-based rockers “Problemas,” which reached the Top 15 on Billboard’s Latin Airplay chart, and “D-Pic.”

She’ll follow these up with a couple more singles and hopes to release an album midway through next year that’s influenced by her breakup from a three-year relationship. The album will chronologically go through each post-breakup stage. Even her latest, about unsolicited sexting, is part of the story.

“Everything with this guy in the beginning was pretty physical and … superficial. And it started out like that,” she said. “I love this album because I’m releasing it in a certain order. … I’m very conceptual as an artist. I love connecting everything.”

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.