Will she become the Chilean Madonna?
The Chilean-American artist spoke with GO! about her new album, her difficult moments, her plans with the LGBTTQ+ community and nostalgia for the past. “Sometimes as a musician you become desensitized, you get distracted and think about whether what you are doing makes sense, you know? I think that, although we do it from a personal point of view, that is what art has, that the feeling is everyone's, whether it is a song, a poem, a film and even a series, they make me feel less alone, they make me feel that I exist. I write from necessity, so it makes sense to me that this internal search also ends up being generic, it happens to all of us. My artistic difficulty has been to silence the noise from outside to listen to myself and understand what the next cycle will be. It gives me pleasure to design a cover, to create a song, but I did not take care of myself and I did not stop for years and that took its toll on me, I questioned even my existence.”
About her songs she says: “I don't think there is a topic that I am not willing to talk about or sing about if I feel that what I am saying makes sense. For example, in the song 'Open Pit' (Open Pit, 2014) I sing a complex situation, it is a difficult subject for me because when I was little I suffered a lot from cutting myself and, although I dared to talk about it, it was not until I heard 'Hurt' of Nine Inch Nails I couldn't believe that there was an artist who talked about cutting and didn't have a paralyzing shame; I wrote it in disguise, with 'surgical' lyrics and so I can sing about anxiety, desire or whatever, but I feel that my limit is later in having to talk about it, because I am very respectful when it comes to telling things about my life, I feel that they are not interesting to anyone but me. On this album, Inside“I talk about the breakup all the time, and yet I have protected the breakup as such, I don't tell the details of the relationship.”
The most difficult thing about being an artist. “The most complicated moment for me, speaking chronologically about my albums, was between Open Pit and Strengthit was five difficult years for me personally and I was out of love with music, I thought about retiring and I made music for commercials, for other people and I thought that I was no longer good for this, and that was happening to me because I was having problems with mental health, I was alone and I felt bad, I feel that as an independent Chilean artist I had to push and push and that was when the cost was reaching me. In 2017, Bite your tongue I was turning 10 and a friend told me what I would do to celebrate and I was in a mood terrible and I remember that I told her that it wasn't worth it for people to listen to me, that I was a shitty artist. It was a very dark time, it was hard for me to get out of there and start going out into the world with my creations, and I already felt a burnout for tours, record labels and all that.”
A return to the past. “Looking back and remembering with nostalgia all the nice things I have gone through in my career makes me emotional because sometimes, one does not stop to see what one has achieved; for better or worse, I am authentic and the cost is that one will not always be the center of relevance, but one will always be consistent, I am not afraid to think if someone will like something or not. Yes, I think that music is something that has accompanied me, even with the artists that I like, mostly women, because they have accompanied me in difficult times. That is how it was born. Noisybecause I wanted to learn from their travels, to soak up the experiences of others as well.”
What is coming with the community. “Although I am not part of the LGBTQ+ community, since the beginning of my career I have felt supported in Chile, Mexico and throughout Latin America, it is a community that I love and from which I learn. Precisely, the Ella Festival It's about cultural management, femininity and minorities; for me it's about music, alliances and storytellingI keep doing things with Everything improves and I will continue to promote 'Juan' “I'm back!” the activist concluded..
