Julieta Venegas (Long Beach, California, 1970) appears smiling on the computer screen. She is on tour presenting her latest album, Tu historia, released in November and with which she is doing especially well. It was composed during the pandemic and he has presented it in the United States, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Chile… Although on her day he also presented it in Spain, this Thursday he returns to perform at the Vida Festival, in Vilanova i la Geltrú . The singer, who throughout her career has won two Grammys and ten Latin Grammys among other awards, is one of the most recognized figures in Latin pop. La Vanguardia has been able to talk to her about her current moment and recover her beginnings with hits like Limón y sal.
What is the photograph of today’s Juliet?
I think I’m in a good moment. About five years ago I questioned myself if I wanted to continue doing what I do, music and touring. I realized that I just needed to build things to my size. Now I really enjoy what I do and I’m also curious to do more things. I want to write for another project, but first I need to finish the tour.
How is the tour going?
It has been very beautiful. The first show was in my city, Tijuana. We had time to think about the set because we had already played some of the songs on the album before. Some shows we do with string instruments. Apart from the time I had to prepare it, the good thing has also been that it is not a super-killed tour. Each show is super special and I think it’s the ideal way to present it.
How are you doing traveling so much?
I’ve gotten used to my life being like this and it’s funny because I don’t really like to travel. What I like is connecting with the music and all that being on tour means, for me, is much more than traveling. I have been living in Buenos Aires for five years and, now that I have a team, it is very nice how we are working.
What was it that made you return to the stage when you stopped?
In reality, it lasted very little: I had my crisis in 2018 and in 2019 I was already playing. I think I realized that I could stop making music, but if I did, something inside me would harden. I felt that it was going to hurt me. I was suddenly afraid of everything that making music meant: putting out a record meant going on tour and traveling all day. The crisis was because it connected with everything that it meant to make a song. Later, when the pandemic came, I started writing without thinking. I simply needed to disconnect from what was happening and it took me three hours a day to do it. When I had a certain number of songs, I already began to think that I could put them on a record. I talked to Alex, who was just my friend then and now he’s also my producer, and we started building the record.
He has always been very sincere in the songs. It seems that with Your story he has done it even more. How are you doing with this exhibition?
I tell stories and it is very difficult to know which part is made up and which part is me. I think I’m used to it because I’m born to write about personal things, I don’t get conceptual. I like to start from reality and pour it into music. I release stories that go the other way, people connect them with their own. For me it’s ideal, that everyone take each song and make it their own.
The album sounds like everything he has done, but it is also a more modern and renewed production. Have you been afraid of not liking it?
No, enthusiasm always wins me. I’m immersed in what I’m building and I don’t think about what comes next. First, the songs. I’m actually very insecure, but it’s more with myself and when it comes to making a song work and have everything I feel it should have. In this sense, I relied a lot on Alex, he took the artistic direction of the record and I put myself in my place as composer, singer and executive producer, which I had never done before. I felt very confident and he encouraged me to do things that he might not have done at another time. We did a lot of research and I just focused on what was going on.
Have you gotten tired of hits like Limón y sal?
Surely at some point I got tired but now it amuses me. Even though these older songs don’t signify the show, they are part of it. I love going to concerts and having them play the songs that I know. I understand that people ask for them. Listening to something that is familiar also excites a lot and generates very nice things, there is a very beautiful chemistry in connecting each one with her stories.
Now that Your Story has been out for some time, what can we see at the Vida Festival concert?
Your story came out in November but we started playing it in March, and it already has its own life. Being a festival we are not going to play it completely, we are going to mix songs from the album with previous songs like Limón y sal (laughs). I love festivals, I think that something happens not only on stage but also behind it. I really want to connect with other artists and listen to other groups.
What artist are you obsessed with lately? Do you have any collaboration pending?
I don’t think just because I like an artist means I want to collaborate with them. These things happen, often naturally, and it’s for the best. I listen to a lot of music and admire a lot of people. Here in Spain I like Ralphie Choo, who has now released a song together with Rusowsky: I love them both. I’m also obsessed with Sílvia Pérez Cruz’s album, which I can’t stop listening to because it seems crazy to me. It also happens to me with Alex Anwandter, my producer, for me he is one of the best composers in current pop. And I have something pending to do with Caetano Veloso, but I don’t know if it’s going to happen.
What book is he reading?
One of an Argentine called Pablo Maurette. He has several books on skin, touch, and has now published an atlas of the human body. He does a very weird mix of personal essay, literature and science. Hybrid books, which you don’t know very well in which genre to place them, I have always liked. I am also reading a lot of poetry. I have stages in which I need to reread more and, with poetry, I feel that the more I read it, the more it opens up. Wis?awa Szymborska, Olga Orozco, Raúl Zurita, etc., are the authors that come to mind now.
What is the last song you remember listening to?
By Alex Anwandter. I take very long walks in which I listen to an entire record and El diablo en el cuerpo has many stories. Precipice is a song that is very dramatic and funny at the same time because of how the protagonist takes a rejection. It is of the disco genre and for me it is one of the best albums of this year. There is also a song by Sílvia Pérez Cruz, Sin (a poem by Idea Vilariño), which I like because she builds it from nothing: it is her voice and an ensemble of winds appears around her. There is a moment when the only thing that sustains the song is her voice and I find it very beautiful.
What does the future hold for Juliet?
I hope music and also good things.
What advice would you give to Juliet who released her first album, Here (1997)?
I would tell her not to be so darketa, not to be so dark.
