The voice of the young Paula Valls resonates in Començar de nou (Satélite K) like a wound that releases rage and hope through nine songs, nine seasons of the ordeal she suffered during the pandemic in the form of anorexia converted into music with her own voice as the main protagonist. The second album by the 24-year-old artist from Manlleu, resumes a career that at times she thought was over, to show herself naked in body and soul alongside Filomena, the illness that will always accompany her.

Would there be an album without everything you experienced?

If I had not explained this story, perhaps there would have been no album ever again. I’m a very perfectionist, I reached a point where I couldn’t make music because I didn’t feel like doing anything. Making music destroyed me, I even thought that perhaps my role as a singer would be just an anecdote.

When did the disease start?

I have always carried it with me, it is anorexia, eating disorder, eating disorder, was what kept me away from the stage due to an unmanaged personality disorder. I had the symptoms of anorexia during confinement, I controlled food, sports, I became very obsessed and anorexia developed.

How long was he out of the game?

From 2020 to 2023, I tried to do some concert after the pandemic, but it didn’t work out. It had physical consequences, in addition to the mental ones, very destructive.

At the beginning of 2023, she already feels recovered

I still go to therapy, I have normalized it a lot, but I started to recover and while still in the day hospital I started reading. Little by little I went looking for the piano to play for a while, until one day when I was at home, in Manlleu, I made a song.

The next step was to record the album…

I recorded with the phone on the piano, I invented things, I sent audios via WhatsApp and the producers worked on them.

The songs on the first part of the album have a very raw sound.

The voice is from the demo, that day I was weak, angry, and sad. I haven’t been able to go back there, that’s why we left the voice of the demo.

They tell the story chronologically.

When I started to have the demos more organized, I realized that they all talked about a certain point in the disease. Without knowing it, I had established the order in which they should be on the disk. For the vinyl we have thought that side A is the disease, and side B is the exit, that’s why it starts with PV-01.

The music begins to sound optimistic with És estrange.

The sound changes but it is full of messages. If you listen to the songs together they are understood differently because things that you may see as funny change their meaning. In some songs people think I’m talking about a breakup, but I was thinking about breaking up with the illness, saying “I’ll let you go.”

In Filomena he says “I write with the fear of understanding, but it is my therapy”…

Filomena is the name that one of the hospital assistants gave to my illness, to my ED, so that I would understand it, to understand that it was not my fault to have certain attitudes or give some answers. That’s why the song is called that, because Filomena speaks and she talks about Filomena.

Musically, how have you approached the album?

The main idea started from piano and voice, but the result has been voice and piano, I have played with the voice to unlearn ways of singing that were very perfectionist or very well sung that I had, playing at destroying it, understanding where the song comes from and enhancing the pain.

The previous album was in English.

Catalan is my language, using it is like undressing, English gave me this layer of protection of thinking that people will not understand me, you are speaking in a language that is not yours, it is no longer so first person.

Have you made other songs that have nothing to do with the disease?

I have composed others, but I have not analyzed whether they have to do with the disease. Now I am worried about returning to the stage, how people will see me and sharing what I have suffered. I’m worried that suddenly it’s not Paula Valls the singer, but Paula Valls who had anorexia and also sings.