The singer anticipates that she has her new album ready, talks about the song Tick Tock, the healing power of music and how to be a Tik Tok diva.
Thalía assures that music has a healing power. "It takes the demons out of you, it takes the stress out of you, it cleanses you," she tells GQ. She added it is also liberating. And she confirmed it in the middle of the pandemic: since the confinement began, the singer has not stopped. She released songs with Myke Towers, a second children's album, a series with Facebook and premiered the song Tick Tock. "Being able to share songs in this pandemic has been a mission; It is something that I needed, first, my heart to be saner, healthier in this confinement. But I know that there are also many people who need to bring out those emotions through music," she added from Miami.
The singer's most recent release is Tick Tock, in which she is accompanied by Colombian Farina and her compatriot Sofía Reyes. "It's like loving yourself first, not sacrificing yourself for a relationship." The song was created as part of Latin Music Queens, an original Facebook Watch series produced by Thalía and Tommy Motola that follows the three performers throughout the development of the collaboration.
The She Is The Music initiative, which seeks to give visibility to women in the industry, investigated female representation in the 2019 hits. Of 651 producers, only 2.6% were women. The same percentage was present when engineers or mixers were sought and in composition, of 2,767 female composers, women reached only 12.5%. "It's that process of music, that perspective of women within this industry," says Thalía from Latin Music Queens.
You have been in the industry for decades, have you been treated differently musically? Was there a greater demand for you to be considered in the production, in the composition?
Yes. Throughout this career I have obviously come across certain individuals and certain moments, certain stages where perhaps it was not as easy or as ordinary as it is today, so simple, so easy, so day-to-day for women in the music industry. Perhaps at that time she was much less flexible. I feel that today we have it to win in all aspects.
From LP to streaming: a diva of Stories and Tik Tok is born
At 49 years of age, Thalía's résumé seems to have no end. Since she began her career, she has moved from vinyl to cassette, from there to CD and today she makes music under the rules of streaming. Along the way, she has served as a singer, actress, producer, businesswoman and now a star of the social networks.
All you have to do is upload a dance or simply a message that you usually spread so that it goes viral, accumulates millions of likes and ends up becoming a song as happened with her famous Me oyen, me escuchan. "I've always been very techie," she says. "I've been the one who connects the cables, the one who empties the hard drive in the computer, I'm the one who has always had a fascination with the technical." The interpreter remembers the Timbiriche years, when the recordings were on tape. "They cut with a razor and stic it with a tape." The singer summarize the experience of recording with software: "You already do copy-paste and let's go next".
She also goes back to the 90s, when the soap operas led her to go viral in advance and even without social networks at that time she was being recognized in Brazil, the Middle East, Jakarta and the Philippines, where she recorded an album in Tagalog. "Can you imagine that era with technology? The time of Amor a la Mexicana, of Piel Morena, when I traveled all over the world... even Pulgoso would have his TikTok, imagines Thalía. "Today's generation does not know how easy they have it, they already have a platform to express what they feel and how they see life, something that previously had a process."
There is no secret, being you is the formula. When you try to change and say: "I'm going to do what someone else is doing so they can see me more," that's where the joke ends. People feel when you are having fun.
The same to dominate these platforms leaves it in spontaneity. Although she confesses that some of those viral videos requires planning. "Especially for TikTok," she reveals. "The lives on Instagram is what comes out," she snaps mischievously.
A new album ready.
Thalía also assures that her walk through digital platforms has nurtured her creatively, since from Brazil to Greece the fans suggest her with whom to collaborate. "It has brought fresh ideas to my music."
GQ anticipates that some of them have molded the new album that has already finished. "The new album is ready, it's 'ready to go', I'm waiting to square on what date I want to release it," reveals the singer. She prefers to reserve about the sound and the songs of the project, but not when asked if she will continue to expand the spectrum of collaborations that led her to share with Joan Sebastián or Tony Bennet as well as with Maluma or Natti Natasha. "More are coming and also songs alone, my ballads, my songs of riot and party".
