She is the most listened to Chilean artist on Spotify worldwide and has just won the Grammy for Best Singer-Songwriter Album. Mon Laferte he does not stop reaping successes that endorse his work. With four Grammy Awards already behind her, the soloist (who began doing covers) stands out for his lyrics, capable of tackling different registers, but also for the content of his lyrics, with great social awareness. Your music has the power to strike a chord and that has allowed her to build a solid career in the sector.
Thus, the songs of ‘Seis’, the album awarded at the Grammy Awards, and ‘Carmen 1940’, his new work, accumulate more and more reproductions. In them, he talks about the struggles of women, politics and strips naked touching topics that touch him personally.
We spoke with the singer-songwriter to get to know her a little beyond her voice and her characteristic vintage style with rock tones, flowers in her hair and tattoos.
“I made an album to help me deal with my personal situation”
You wrote ‘Carmen 1940’ while you were looking to get pregnant, how did this influence him?
Carmen wrote it while I was trying to get pregnant, I was undergoing fertility treatment and this completely influenced me. It is an album that exists for that particular moment in my life. I was taking hormones and I had a lot of anxiety, I had to stop taking medicines, I stopped smoking and I got together with hormones and withdrawal from some antidepressants and tobacco and it was crazy. She also had the illusion of pregnancy, she wanted it with all her heart.
When I started making the album I didn’t know if I was going to get pregnant and at the end of the process I found out that we succeeded. All of that happened to me while recording. The album was born from this situation. I sought to make an album to help me deal with my personal situation. Music always helps me and saves me.
When you got it, did anything change in the creative process?
He changed more in the musical, the lyrics already had them. The arrangements, I dared a little more, I got a little more fun. Before I found out I was pregnant I was more careful and cautious.
Have you always wanted to be a mother?
No. It’s not really that I didn’t want to, I’d never thought about it, I thought about other things, a lot about art. Suddenly I wanted him and it’s not that I felt ready, I don’t know if he’s ready for something like that. I think it takes us all by surprise regardless of age. It is something so new and so strange. Suddenly the desire for motherhood came to me.
How are you going to introduce your baby to your world, to music?
I don’t know, what I do know is that I’m going to try to get on with my life, to be a happy woman. To the extent that I can be a happy and complete woman, I can also give that happiness to this being that is growing within me. I am discovering a new pregnant me and I guess I am going to discover a new me as a mom.
Tell me a little more about the album. What else can you tell me about him?
I feel that it is a brave album that I made to overcome the whole hormonal issue, the insecurity, the fear, the anxiety of what one experiences when undergoing fertility treatment. It was not the first time that I tried to get pregnant, I had already tried before. And it’s also brave because a lot of things were happening at a professional level through contracts and I wanted to release my own album.
What is it that you like the most about him?
Musically I like it a lot because somehow I went back to the origin of being alone with the guitar, using the electric guitar more, the pedals, being like a soloist composing and recording and working at home.
My last works had been much bigger, many people working, production with many orchestral arrangements and this one is much simpler and I like that a lot. She is more of a singer-songwriter. I wrote it and produced it myself, that is also nice because I am getting to know myself and I am seeing how much I have grown and learned in recent years. I like that.
“I like drama, it’s true, I accept it.”
I have read that the simple ‘Something is better’ reminds us to see life lightly, have you ever needed to remember this? Do we take life too seriously?
Yes, totally. I feel that, at times, we take life too seriously or we go around in the same place like dogs chasing each other’s tails. Life should be so much simpler. I always think about the things doctors tell us like drink water, eat well, sleep and you will be fine. And that’s the way it is, and in life I think it is too. The actions, the decisions we make have total influence in the future and should be much simpler. If we already know what is going to be okay, we have to do it. I need to remind myself of that too. Sometimes I think about it a lot. Although I also like drama, it’s true, I accept it.
“I’ve loved myself a lot more over the years.”
In the lyrics you say “something in me changed, what was it?
I began to love myself more, I am beginning to see myself more and I think that the years have given me, the experience of life and that excites me because I think that maybe when I am a grandmother I will love myself much more than now, like that I’ve loved myself a lot more over the years.
“I wrote ‘A crying diamond’ using Google translate”
In your video clip you smile a lot, is it important to do it despite the setbacks?
The smile heals everything. I have realized that you go down the street and smile at a stranger and make his day and even make your day. Nor am I a person who goes around saying “let’s be happy” all day, but I think that a smile doesn’t cost us anything. It’s free and feels great.
Why did you choose English for ‘A crying diamond’? It is a very crude denunciation song, do you want to talk about it?
I don’t understand English well yet. I wrote that song using the Google translator and my intuition to write the lyrics, but since I can’t quite understand the language well, I feel that somehow it is not understood as much. I don’t think I would have dared to write this same song in Spanish.
That song is my life, that 13-year-old girl is me and I don’t have much more to talk about it, it’s still something that costs me. I think it’s the bravest song I’ve done so far and it’s still been cowardly because I did it in English.
You had four Latin Grammy nominations, how did you experience it?
I am happy for all the people who worked on the album who were a lot: mariachis, band from Oaxaca, the producers … I feel immense joy. As a team, we deserve these nominations, which are a gift.
Photos Gtres