At 21 years old, Barcelona-born Julieta has already composed some four hundred songs, although she estimates that she has published a dozen, including that catchy Tu Juru Ju that gives her first album its title and with which she honors that phrase in Catalan (Te I swear Ju) who has heard so much from the mouths of his relatives. This young engineering student and passionate about music says she is “very addicted” to making songs. “I love it”. In her electronic pop she combines urban and indie styles and feels that with each of them she expresses those two very powerful energies that are in her, that of the extroverted and empowered Juliet, and that of the more intimate and calm. “It’s like I can split myself,” she adds.
This June 6 has the opportunity to show a few live, with dances included. It will be in his debut at the Primavera Pro as part of the four proposals from the Catalan scene that are shown to international accredited. A musical festival that is part of the Primavera Ciutat and is free to enter at the CCCB’s Pati de les Dones (from 6 pm).
The songs and videos of Julieta – her real and artistic name – have been running for just over a year on the networks. And in fact, the interview with this newspaper takes place on a very special day, because she has a “launch” scheduled at witching hour, at midnight. It is that of her new single, A les fosques, which in September will give rise to her second mini album. So she has been tied to her cell phone all day, posting things on Instagram and reposting non-stop.
“That’s right, the networks serve to promote themselves. And the Instagram algorithm also works in relation to the more you use it, the more you share things and the more likes you make -he explains-. Sometimes I would like to be able to enjoy myself, because at the end of a concert what your turn to do is repost everything that people have said about you, when what you want at that moment is to be with your friends drinking a beer. But right now that is your portfolio…”
Theirs is a very generational self-management adventure: that I make them up, I produce them, I promote them and I market them. To which must be added the self-taught aspect and the courage to follow one’s own creative instinct. Although due to his way of singing and playing with sounds, as well as the approach of his clips, it is clear that he has had someone to take inspiration from.
“Rosalía marked me a lot as a child -she confesses-. She inspired me since her debut album Los Angeles, she made me see that things could be done differently. Why did we have to pigeonhole ourselves according to genre and what was planned for each one? Rosalía thinks further and with the production company Canada she started to make some different clips. I like my videos to be non-standard, to think about them, to think of a concept. And I love her latest album, it moved me more than The bad want She is the artist who has marked me the most, although I also greatly admire Angèle, the French singer. When I discovered her I saw that a Beyoncé-type voice was not necessary to sing. Because she has a voice like mine, airy, intimate”.
Julieta’s beginnings were with the guitar. As a child, she used to hear her father play it, “rollo Bach”, she says, although she took it up looking to do something more flamenco. “I was drawn to it, yes, but what really got me hooked was computer music production with DAWs and Logic.” She started in earnest during quarantine, when they had plenty of time. She could spend hours producing. And she did it in a self-taught way, learning new things with the rest of the producers with whom she works and shares computer programs.
Professionalizing has been like “coming out of the closet” for her. “Since I was little I always felt that I liked music very much and I secretly wanted to be able to dedicate myself to it one day,” she says. that I wanted to do it. And the fact that he told me that he could open my mind to that possibility. That’s when I started writing songs and producing them. It was like an inevitable road.”
Julieta is the daughter of mathematician Enrique Gracián, author of the essay Construir el mundo, and journalist Anna Salas, editor of 3/24, who loves helping her with song lyrics. But she affirms that doing ICT Systems Engineering was an impulsive decision. “Science is comfortable for me, and I love physics. The ideal, she points out, was to find a career that would also allow me to develop my passion for music. Googling ‘career’, ‘physics’ and ‘music’ I got that option.”
The question is whether all this theory that she is learning will end up being applicable to her goals… Although the artist has faith that she will be able to pour her creativity into it. “I have the ambition to change and find different things, to experiment. And I think that with this career at the end I will be able to go further at the level of sound research and programming. To do everything to my measure”, she says. What she can affirm is that although it is not always as a singer, music is going to be her occupation.
“Maybe it’s silly, but the idea that I have of being a singer is something that doesn’t last forever. I would like to live that craziest life, travel and do things… I see myself making experimental music or starting to produce. I can’t imagine touring but a very quiet life”, he assures, showing signs of having a scientific mind.
Lately, however, she claims to have dilemmas: she is afraid to act according to what people expect of her. At first she was very clear that she was doing her thing and if people joined, great, but it was not a matter that conditioned her. Now, as she becomes a professional, she is receiving more opinions from people.
“I don’t want to always do the same thing. I want to be able to change genres, songs and not hear that people expect more ballads or more urban rhythms from me. In the end, what you have to do is go back to your initial thought of doing your thing “.
By 2023 he is working to release not a mini album but “something more mature”. The advancement of technologies and the parallel society of the metaverse are topics that he wants to include. “I think we already live in a parallel reality. I spend hours on my mobile. And I am a different person on my mobile than I am outside. There are some little boxes that you enter, there will be no walls, okay, but it’s not as different from reality. The metaverse already exists, we are already living in it,” he reasons.
And regarding his way of working with lyrics, he explains that before he wrote a lot of poetry that later became songs, “but I stopped doing it because I didn’t want to rationalize it so much, I wanted it to be more spontaneous”. “Now what I do is absorb things that I see and feel. And I feel like moving on to a more intellectualized action. Everything that I have thought about for a long time, start expressing it,” she concludes.
