María de los Ángeles Rozalén says that she is getting older, not because of her age (37 years old counts) but because of the experiences she has had in recent years. The death of her father, her grandmother and her uncle, the time when death begins to coexist with life and she has no turning back. “I have had a very happy childhood, but yes, now it’s my turn,” she explains as a preamble to El embrace (Sony), the seventh studio album and the most introspective of the singer-songwriter from Albacete, crossed like the previous ones by a variety of genres: folklore, electronic, urban and even symphonic music in a work that has several nods to Colombia, a reflection of the freedom allowed in his compositions. On May 23 she will sing them at the Teatre del Liceu within the GuitarBCN festival.

“I’m a happy aunt, but here I feel more nostalgic than ever,” she says of an album that has as its common thread the universal gesture of hugging family, friends, childhood, good and bad times, life and mourning for death. “The word hug is in almost all the songs,” songs that talk about “universal emotions” and how “when these things happen to you you realize that the important thing is the simple, that’s why I want to hold on to that, the hug”.

Rozalén’s first embrace, before the album had a name, was to her own childhood with So, “it is the one that has cost me the most to write, they are images of my childhood, I had so many that I was not able to write, it was the first that I started and the last one that I finished.” At the other end of the thread moved by the Fates, Everything You Loved, the farewell to her father, who died at the age of 77, “a bullet in the chest and the heart stopped,” she sings accompanied by the Euskadiko Orkestra. “My voice went away, I had a strange tremor in my hand, a tremendous scare,” she remembers of that moment, which she conjured by locking herself up to write at home, dressed in her mother’s clothes. “I cried a lot, I vomited everything in the song, we spend our lives running away from what hurts us and in this way I made it very palpable.”

Death is also present in Ceniza, dedicated to his grandmother who died during Covid. “I saw how that tree, that strong stem around which my entire family revolved, became a withered flower, but from which I will sprout.” Watching her die was a learning experience, “and far from being sad, it was beautiful,” which is why she believes that “loving life, honoring mine, is the best thing I can do for those who are no longer here.”

Back to childhood, The Kind Face of the World sounds, life advice that she dedicates to her nephew, “how not to take into account those who come, they are the ones who give meaning and hope to everything.” The same could be said of the friends, present in Everything remains the same, to the beat of a festive beat: “We have been from Viñarock all our lives, we have the punk crest, some rave.”

There is no shortage of songs with social content, like Tuya, where with possession and insecurities in mind, Rozalén exposes her utopia, “if we loved each other in a pure way, no one would look at you badly for looking at others. “Jealousy speaks more about the insecurity of the person who has it than the person who causes it.”

He also claims in My Hells, a rap that shoots against those who criticize behind the bar counter or the networks: “The rest of the album is pure love, but I allow myself this relief, I needed to get it out somewhere.”

They talk about love On any given night, with flamenco palms, or songs with Latin echoes like I am clear, or Three days in Cartagena, the latter with the collaboration of Carlos Vives: “As we increasingly move to the other side of the pond, there are a lot of influence, many winks to Colombia without meaning to.”

“Now I hug more, I say I love you more, I am more affectionate,” Rozalén reflects, “I value the sunrise more, a chat, before I was involved in other more superfluous things, I suppose it is age that makes you realize that the only thing “Simple is important.”