Ismael Serrano: “Stopping being the youngest and most handsome singer-songwriter on the poster screws up your thing” | Culture

At noon on a Thursday, the La Latina neighborhood in Madrid is bustling with older people going or coming to shop at the La Cebada market, modern young people and not so young people huddling in cute cafes and delivery vans supplying drinks to bars. nights closed to the public. Here, in a large room with a basement, in the middle of this motley countryside, is the office and studio where Ismael Serrano prepares his music, his tours and his next project, a podcast in which he will talk about the human and the human with his colleagues and friends. For his political positions, he already has social networks and all the microphones that are placed in front of him. Unlike others, always wearing a wetsuit, Serrano gets wet.

What puddle have you gotten into today?

Well, I have signed a manifesto with other artists asking the Government to embargo arms on Israel to stop the genocide in Gaza, and I have also gotten involved in defending the public university in Argentina, which is almost my second country. My wife and children are Argentine. The Milei Government has cut the budget by 40% and is in the process of privatizing one of the country’s prides. Every time I speak, I get a barrage of trolls, I take that for granted.

This summer, you got into trouble when someone thought they saw that you and one of your collaborators were carrying weapons, called the police and evicted Callao street in Madrid.

And it was a microphone stand. That would have remained a funny anecdote to tell friends, if it weren’t for the fact that it led to a wave of hate on the networks. Guys, with first and last names, even said that they were two armed Muslims, two black people with knives, and the amazing thing is that it wasn’t even a misunderstanding: it was pure invention, pure evil, pure hatred. Networks feed our prejudices, our ideological biases, and with Artificial Intelligence, what is false will increasingly be indistinguishable from reality. We are destined for reality to be an option, the one that people choose to believe according to their ideological bias, and that seems terrifying to me.

But it doesn’t leave the networks.

I have appreciated it, but it would be assuming defeat and I am not resigned. It is a way of not giving up the battle as lost. When I argue with a troll, I don’t do it to convince them, but to show that I can talk, that I am a reasonable person against the other’s prejudice. I never point out politicians. Not even artists. I do not point out Nacho Cano, or José Manuel Soto, for example, who are right-wing artists and have every right to express themselves politically, even if they do so in my antipodes. I will argue with them and do my best so that their way of seeing the world does not prevail, but I do not point them out.

Do you assume the toll of losing audiences due to your political positioning?

That’s inevitable. If you try to please everyone, you are in a sterile and absurd endeavor and you end up not liking anyone because you have no personality. In this life every choice entails a renunciation. I know that it is unlikely that a brand, Renault, for example, will be associated with my image, due to my positioning. But modulating your message because you think it can stop you from hiring and that cuts you off is bullshit.

Publica Symphonic, an album with a big orchestra, just when it turns 50 years old. Have you indulged yourself?

Completely. Making a symphonic album is the recurring dream of any musician. They have done it from Serrat to Raphael or Metallica. For those of us who make popular songs, it is like arriving at a place where songs take on another flight. I am a great defender of the canon of the singer-songwriter, with the guitar and the voice and such, in a context in which everyone avoids it, but playing with the Symphony is a dream and, yes, I have paid myself that tribute.

For 50?

You’ve already told me twice, about the 50s (laughs). I’m going to therapy.

Because of the crisis of the middle century?

For everything a little bit. But, yes, the passage of time really affects me. Such emphatic figures lead you to take stock and increase the feeling that time is passing by at speed. I believe that those of us who write songs have a conflict with time, we are a bit like children, we do not manage well what has to do with renunciation and loss. Then, you realize that it’s not just resignation. Time has also brought me fatherhood, which is wonderful, but, yes, the passage of time hurts me a lot.

Does it hit you more at night or in the morning?

At night everything hurts more. It activates the most primitive part of the brain and fears are exacerbated. That’s why we go to bars, because we feel alone, to look for company. And that is one of the things that brings you to the stage: the pathological fear of loneliness. Anyone who goes on stage is because they need to be told that they love him, we are like scared little children and, sometimes, capricious.

He said what he said in the morning in the mirror. How do you get along with him?

I have my conflict with the mirror. On the previous album, I made a song, I love me, to remind me that I have to love myself. The tyranny of the image is much worse with women. But ceasing to be the most handsome and youngest singer-songwriter on the lineup screws up, of course. And I claim my age. Sometimes I hear colleagues talk about certain experiences and I say, “Damn, man, don’t talk to me about that.” I understand that, at this age, you can fall in love and lose your temper, but there are certain things that I don’t believe.

Like which ones?

Well, I think that, at 50, you already know that you are not going to die of love. When you are 20 you do believe it, that everything is final, and, at 50, no. That does not take away the passion or emotion or feeling of love, but it is healthy to understand that it is not definitive, that you are not going to die. And I would like to think that that, too, takes away some of the toxicity from the issue. There are certain clichés of romantic love that are a little toxic. Above all, heartbreak, many heartbreak songs are sentimental blackmail.

Like those of Shakira and Piqué?

Clear. There is a component of resentment there. And I think that age teaches you that in heartbreak it is also nice to learn to let go and let go.

In Symphonic Has he rescued his 13 best songs?

Let’s see, they all have their context. And we return to social networks, which have stripped content of context. Since I have a high opinion of my songs, they all seem very good to me. Another thing is that you stop singing them because you no longer feel identified with the 20-year-old kid who wrote them. But it’s also good to rescue them and say: look at the things he said then.

I see that you don’t go to the therapist due to lack of professional self-esteem.

(Laughs) No, but to cope with the fact that, being so good, I have to continue pedaling continuously because, if not, the bicycle falls, and the feeling of guilt comes if you stop. Any artist will tell you the same thing. Music has become very dependent on social networks and these require us to be creating content all the time, because if not the algorithm penalizes you. Look, Vetusta Morla has retired for a year and made a statement as if that were something extraordinary. 30 years ago, for an artist to stop, to think, to breathe, it would be logical. But that no longer exists, the dynamics do not allow it. You have to continually feed the algorithm.

Talking about the passage of time. How do you deal with having young children and older parents?

There is a kind of helplessness that comes to you when roles change and you have to take care of your parents, who have taken care of you and contained you. Argentinians call it “containment”, and it is nice: holding back when you overwhelm your parents. But, suddenly, the roles change and I think that reaching maturity consists of that, facing that helplessness with arrests. It’s a very profound change of mentality, I’m working on it.

What have you inherited from your father, the journalist Rodolfo Serrano? Are your songs chronicles?

Absolutely: I’m a story-obsessed guy. Life itself is the search for one’s own story to tell. Also, to write a song I need a headline: to know what I want to talk about. More and more, the lyrics ask me for the music.

“That life was serious one begins to understand later,” wrote Gil de Biedma. Did you understand it before?

I have always been a serious guy. Ellis Murphy said that to be young when you grow up you have to be old when you are young, and I am going that way.

How will you interpret Symphonic live? Does he have the orchestra on his back?

I will work with local orchestras. It’s very laborious: you have to go a few days before, rehearse, get along with the musicians, put everything together. It’s a headache and it’s going to be very expensive, but hey, the tributes are worth it.

(The interview ended here, but, upon leaving the basement where we chatted, we both found out, each on our side, of the resignation of the left-wing politician, Íñigo Errejón, plagued by complaints of harassment and sexist violence. The next day, I told him I ask about it on the phone and he answers me from the van that takes him to a it was in Badajoz).

How do you stay with Errejón?

It’s terrible. The most important thing is to accompany and provide protection to the victims. Parties, like so many institutions, should have clear protocols to act in cases like this immediately. How can you say “this was known”? It’s all so bleak, so murky and so sordid that it fills me with melancholy.