Reimagining Freedom: A Chat With Natalia Lafourcade

This article was originally published on Clash

Being in complete awe of Natalia Lafourcade feels rather natural given her spotless track record. In fact, moving past this starry-eyed impression of her is practically impossible until she herself explains how she is still honing her craft all these years later.

A lot has changed in the past two decades for the four-time Grammy winner. Most importantly, she has been making a concerted effort to cultivate her spirituality in order to express herself with complete abandon and pliability. Of course, Natalia Lafourcade might very well be the only person who thinks Natalia Lafourcade can be better than she already is.

Whereas her last album ‘De Todas las Flores’ was released to widespread acclaim in 2022, she has now shifted her focus to making music that allows her to fully leverage the liberties success has afforded her. Though she sounds just as striking on her new album as she did on previous ones, one distinct quality separates ‘Cancionera’ from the rest: Natalia Lafourcade the human being and Natalia Lafourcade the singer, songwriter and performer have now fully merged into one entity, having only overlapped before.

A month prior to the record’s release, the lyric soprano elaborated on its conception and development during a chat with CLASH.

The new album is built around the perspective of your alter ego, La Cancionera, which translates to “The Songbook” in English. For those who don’t understand the exact purpose of this character, how is it different from your usual self and the music you’ve put out so far?

I will try to be good in my English, because I can’t explain the Cancionera character very well that way. What I loved about creating the music and the visual universe of Cancionera was the fact that there was this mystic energy around the process that was telling me that something else beyond my persona was manifesting.

Recently, I’ve been able to connect to painting. It is something that I’ve always loved as a hobby, but I was very much in my mind and saying things like, “No, I am not a painter,” “I can’t do that perfectly,” “This is not for me.” I did that for many years because I was stuck in my thoughts and judging the way I was doing things. I didn’t realise the importance of letting myself and my subconsciousness project things without really thinking too much about it. So, I started letting myself do things, but more from my soul and intuition rather than my mind. Doing that gave me the chance to unlock something, and it felt like I was letting out things that have to do with my persona that I would hide; things about my personality that I didn’t want people to notice or the ways I would behave or do things.

It was like Cancionera was asking me to add that to the ingredients of what we were creating. It felt like this character was asking me to go for honesty and the truth beyond Natalia Lafourcade, which is a name and a persona. My family knows me like that and so does my audience. But there was always something else that was hiding, and it just felt like the time had come to bring all the things on the table and not be afraid. In a way, it felt like I erased my face.

I was taking this approach to music, arrangement and visual art that allowed me to become a character. Through that, I was able to bring acting to the process not just for the video clips, but also during the recording sessions and from the very beginning of the creative journey at the studio, with the musicians and the band.

There emerged a parallel universe that let everybody at the studio play, let go and not think too much about the fact that we were recording the whole album in one take on a tape machine. At the same time, we had the video recording and all these other elements, so how were we going to make it all work? It was Cancionera that was encouraging us to let go and play and just … be.

The yellow flower in the music video of ‘Cancionera’ represents that same energy; the inner light that will tell you, “Don’t forget that at the end of the story, you can change the mask that you put on as a persona as many times as you want.” An alter ego gives you the opportunity to play without worrying about what others are going to think or say. It’s about playing the game of life and knowing that it’s about that internal loyalty to your freedom, your mind, your soul and the way you’re doing things.

You grew up in the state of Veracruz, which not only shaped your understanding of music but also greatly dictated the aesthetics of this new album. Most people in the West have a very flat understanding of Mexico and its many textures, so could you elaborate on the nuances of Veracruz culture and how it manifests in ‘Cancionera’?

It’s a wonderful place, especially where I live. My house is five hours away from Mexico City in a town called Coatepec. The people there make coffee and there’s also a lot of sugarcane. We also have our own traditional music which is called Son Jarocho, but also many other genres because the capital city of Xalapa has a great university for classical music. We have jazz and contemporary and all these amazing types of music coming out of there.

Also, Veracruz has produced some incredible artists. For example, Agustín Lara is one of my favorite composers from Veracruz. I made a tribute to him long ago in an album, but he was a great inspiration to me even while making ‘Cancionera.’

I grew up in Coatepec, and I decided to return there after many years of living away. I was able to build my house in the middle of the jungle; it’s a very pretty place where I can be in touch with my universe, and most of my inspiration comes from that place. 

The music, lyrics and arrangements all reflect the everyday life that we have in Veracruz and Mexico because I love my culture and I love the traditional music from my country. The food in Veracruz is also something that’s very important because it’s so exotic, and in a way, I want my music to feel the same as when I eat. I want those flavours to be reflected in the way I arrange the songs with the producers and musicians.

However, this is not something that I really think about a lot. I don’t focus too much on trying to make a song sound a particular way; it just comes. Also, many of the musicians who played on the album are from Veracruz as well, and they played some of those traditional genres I mentioned earlier during the recording. They were bringing a part of my culture, which is something I’m surrounded by all the time, to the studio.

Photo Credit: Carlos Manuel

Adán Jodorowsky, who co-produced the album, has said about you, “If we recorded Natalia and started editing her takes in search of some elusive sense of perfection, then the music would lose its soul.” You’ve previously talked about how much effort it took to get a song like ‘Muerte’ just right on your last album, so what exactly was the motive behind recording ‘Cancionera’ in one take?

When you do something like this, you’re still putting a lot of time into the tracks. The difference is that the conclusion comes at once. You do a lot of pre-production, a lot of work on the arrangements, on already knowing certain things about the songs and the ways you want to approach them. I try to be very natural in the way I’m playing the songs on the guitar and the way I sing lyrics. It almost needs to be a part of my body; something that I don’t think about, something that just comes.

One of the things that I love about doing this is that when you work toward one good take and you bring a group of people together in a room, you need to be very present and focused. You also need to be with the right people and make a good choice about who is there. Then, everyone has this adrenaline and attention and intention to make it the best we can. You know that something might not go perfect, but if that happens amid this teamwork, it’s going to be fine.

I love when you’re making the music and you can hear that somebody made a mistake or isn’t playing what you expected – maybe they end up bringing in something even better – and so you adjust to what that person is playing. It’s like a game of making something work: the song, the arrangement, the soul and the music come from all of us working together.

When you listen to the track later, you are like, “Oh, I was not singing so much on tune” or “I didn’t pronounce that so well” … but I was so happy, and I can feel that energy. For me, that becomes more important; that soul or that heart that you can perceive from the music that is not necessarily the perfection that you will get when you have a producer who can cut parts, which, by the way, is also a huge talent. I’ve done that many times myself, and I love it because you make a construction out of something, but it’s just different.

However, just bringing human beings together at this time is something I’m passionate about. There’s beauty in having everyone together because they each bring something different from their universes.

You released your first album at the age of 18, and so your maturing process took effect alongside a career in music. If you compare 2025 to 2002, is there a sizeable difference in what you’re trying to get out of writing and recording and performing music?

Essentially, not so much. Now that it’s been like 24 years, I understand that music can have its own soul and life and colours. Things, of course, have changed. When I was young and doing my first album, I didn’t know how the music industry worked. I didn’t know how to relate to the music industry because I only wanted to play the guitar and get people to know my songs, and that was it.

Now, everything’s very different because I know the impact of music and how much a song can affect someone in a good or bad way. I’ve become more mindful of that gift and responsibility in whatever I’m doing, and that makes me create in a certain way. For example, we were doing all the visual parts for this new album at the same time as the music since we knew we would need to have a lot of material for the industry because all these different platforms now want everything. So, we said, “Okay, let’s do it, but in a different way. Let’s build a studio that doesn’t look like a studio.”

It was a different world because we wanted to bring those places from our imaginations to life while we were playing the music. We were trying to create a universe for ‘Cancionera’ inside the studio, and we were doing that all together, all at once. It basically changed the energy of the people working on the album, and you can hear that magic in the music. I just love that mix.

The way I work on projects has changed a lot compared to the very, very beginning. Now, I know more about all the tools I can use and the different ways to create … I know that I’m a part of this game with the industry. Of course, the music is what’s most important to me, but how to approach people while telling a story also has so much more value to me now.

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