She is one of the Latin icons in her own right and for having reigned in each of the disciplines she has faced. Actress, singer, director, businesswoman, queen of social networks. Thalía celebrates fifty years, a new album and the award for her career from GQ Mexico. We talk to the artist about the past, present and a future that will never be boring.
HQ
by Urbano Hidalgo / Photos Enrique Vega
Earrings, Versace
Turtleneck, Norma Kamali
Bodysuit, Act No.1
Bra, La Perla
Earrings, Aster Lab
Shoes, Hardot
SEQUENCE 1. Television studio at Condé Nast offices. Inside. Day.
Our video team works with the last details of the recording of the interview that will accompany the digital cover and photo session that we have organized with Thalía to celebrate her award in GQ Mexico and Latin America Men of the Year 2021 (Hombres del Año) as a tribute to her entire career. Salvador and Alain are busy in the narrow office that we have occupied and that serves both for a meeting and to connect with the woman who accumulates awards, records, mentions and countless rumors. We know so much and so little about it that searching for information on the Internet becomes an exhausting dive into a tidal wave of data (64 million results on Google in just 0.64 seconds).
It is imposing to think that in a few minutes we are going to meet face to face (in digital version) with the star of Timbiriche, the protagonist of Quinceañera, that drama of rich and poor girls full of excessive loves and heartbreaks as were the eighties novels; the woman three times María in the golden age of Mexican series that were seen all over the world (María Mercedes, 1992; Marimar, 1994 and María la del barrio, 1995). One does not really know how to address the woman who appears on the screen, perfectly made-up and combed, sitting in a study that she has built on the ground floor of her mansion in response to that infinity of virtual meetings that we have all had to have but that, in her desire for perfection has made it look more like a television station where she herself places the lights and cell phones that from time to time will have to be turned off "because if not, I won't be able to send you the videos in good resolution". God's word.
It is a sunny September morning in which Storm Ida looms like a shadow, as if it were jealous of the hurricane of the Mexican pop song. But as soon as he pronounces the first words of her (which you can see on our YouTube channel), one meets a sweet, intelligent woman who is difficult to get a moment of weakness out of. Thalía has told everything about herself but she has only told what she wanted.
And her first word is "Oh, my love". Nothing to be surprised about. Ariadna Thalía Sodi Miranda has been singing to love since her first album as her soloist in 1990. And she has turned many of these songs into authentic hymns that cannot be missed at any party or celebration. "But that's what life is about. Of celebrations and of putting one more line on the tiger of life". And it must not be easy to be Thalía and at the same time be Ariadna. "I try to keep them separate, but sometimes, unconsciously, they get mixed up."
Earrings, Demarson
"I WISH I WOULD HAVE HAD IN MY TWENTYS, WHEN ONE IS TRAPPED IN THE NETS OF THE OTHER'S PERCEPTION, THE STRENGTH AND THE KNOWLEDGE THAT I HAVE NOW."
Changes, metamorphosis and a new album, desAMORfosis, the singer-songwriter's seventeenth studio album, with which she is sure to break the digital charts; she, the new and undisputed queen of the networks. In this new work, the artist has mixed her roots with all the genres that today count as regional or urban music. "I am Latin pop," she sentences with a frankness that makes you discover that yes, if there were a definition of Latin pop, it would have at least the artist's surnames (Tommy Mottola by means of). In desAMORfosis the mixture is the DNA because the singer explains that she does not want to remain anchored in a single style and a single conversation. For example, "Eres mío" we understand as a song to female empowerment, which could speak of a certain militant feminism, but which she describes as a topic where the conversation resembles a hive of hashtags where relationships, like cells, are they come together in difficult ways to create complex discourses. Although the artist subtly escapes from expressly pronouncing on political or ideological positions, because she knows that the networks, always hungry for her words, could misinterpret her.
Like when she is asked about whether she is related to her former soap opera companions and effectively ditch the answer with a "life takes you to new places." Elegance and mischief?
Although in the beginning Thalía sometimes faced voices that, anchored as she explains "in a patriarchal and macho society", today in songs like Barrio, another of the songs on the album, returns to that same empowered discourse of those who it is known above social or moral conventions: "Make men a laundry. Put them on, take them off without mess. And when you suffer that you are alone. So that they do not enjoy your pain". And it contains a phrase, "go and eat your life", which can describe the artist who has sold millions of records, produced, had her own doll, got married at a wedding that even Michael Jackson attended, who observed the conga starred in Jennifer Lopez, Danny De-Vito or Bruce Springsteen, and which has generated millions of views (memes included) of her famous "¿Me escuchan? ¿Me sienten?" ("Do you hear me? Do you feel me?").
"Everything, everything whole, my love, I ate it with a single bite," she confesses. "I wish I would have had in my twenties, when you find yourself trapped in the networks of the perception of the other, the strength and the knowledge that I have today, in the middle of my life, and I plan to continue enjoying it the other half that I still have to live".
And it seems that yes, she will be a long-lived artist. The British newspaper The Sun named her as one of the fifty artists who would always be remembered. Flattery? Pressure? "The pressure, which in my case I am compulsive anonymous, makes me want to create. I want to compose, produce, direct, make it all better and bigger".
The artist recognizes that today some of her greatest concerns are being strong, healthy, conscious, and even trivial questions are allowed, such as going to the gym, "the body needs to reset itself", and at the same time other deeper ones, such as when we asked if the money gives happiness (or at least helps). "What she counts is spiritual wealth, inner wealth. That is what helps you to live without limits and without ties. Money, if you don't have spiritual wealth, doesn't help". I believe her deeply as I look at the delicate solitaire with a yellow diamond adorning her hand.
The conversation flows little by little, between the interruptions that we make every six minutes to download the videos that Thalia will make us finish. We talk about her funny appearances on her social networks that have made her digital community grow to the stratosphere of the web. "I do them myself." And I believe her, as when she explains that in a society still sadly dominated by men, she has such a capacity for influence. "I fought it and broke stone." She looks like she has made it.
SEQUENCE 2. Men of the Year Gala 2021. Interior. Evening.
After a heart attack that lasts forever, Thalía appears on the screen live. As always, she is splendid and friendly, she thanks the entire team and the guests for her lifetime achievement award. An impeccable and hard-won career. With lights, with hardly any shadows, because what we know about her is a brief slit that only opens, much less spontaneously than we surely believe, in her Instagram account or in her Twitter profile. But without a doubt, an icon of Mexico and a symbol of how much that country has evolved thanks to personalities like her. And someone who is always capable of the most difficult thing: making us smile.
Styling David Marquez and Erin McSherry
Makeup Anneliese Tieck using Jouer Cosmetics
Hair Jennifer Matos @ Rita Hazan Salon
