Mon Laferte, artist: “I tear myself apart and go out of my way to sing: my art is not decorative” | Culture

Mon Laferte is giving interviews at the ultra-modern headquarters of her record label in Madrid, surrounded by the usual array of media and advisors to the big stars. And it certainly is. This small and at the same time rotund woman who grows two palms taller when she sings, has five people in her house. grammys Latinos and has sold four million records. So her collaborators anticipate her wishes and question the photographer’s ideas to which she then happily agrees. It is about portraying the lights, but also the shadows of his gaze. And she herself narrated them – a father who abandoned her, a childhood in poverty, abuse in the family – in the documentary Mon Laferte, I love youreleased on Netflix in 2024. Once the photos were resolved, Laferte refused the set prepared for the interview, with three meters between chair and chair, and we sat on a raised sofa, where we could look at each other, even touch each other, during the talk, which she warms up with her Chilean accent. She only has her voice as a diva, and that is impressive.

Nice to meet you. I confess that I didn’t know anything about you. But I heard her sing and I felt a pinch. Because?

Oh, I don’t know. Let’s see, I think I may suddenly have a bit brutal and uncomfortable honesty. Maybe what happened to you comes from there. I think my art is very connected from the visceral, from the feeling, to the mouth. That may be, I don’t know.

In other words, he sings with his guts.

Totally, yes, yes, yes. When I get on stage, there is no filter, I don’t know how to measure myself or take care of my voice. I tear myself apart and go out of my way and I want to spend my entire life on stage when I’m singing. Vocally, the nuances range from a whisper in the ear to the most heart-rending scream, where I allow myself, if necessary, to destroy my throat so that the message and emotion can arrive.

And how do you temper those guts?

Well, I’m over 40. At this point in my life it’s not that hard for me anymore. But first, yes, clearly. When I was younger I felt like a runaway colt.

What happened at 40?

Well, I don’t know what will happen to other women, and in other areas, but, socially, if you are an artist it is an important moment, you feel like your career, your life, is over. Like the woman, if she is no longer young and superbuena and perfect, goodbye. So, there is this concern or crisis in me because I don’t feel like I’m from there or from here. 40 is like an intermission. And traveling there is always uncomfortable, because it means leaving your comfort zone. From 20 to 30 everything is a bit similar. But 40 is like, okay, the beginning of the end.

In other words, at 59, I am finished.

And not. But you surely understand me. Of course I’m excited about what’s coming. I feel better than ever, more fulfilled, calmer, more secure. I wonder what I’ll be like at 50, at 60. Maybe I’ll be more determined, or not. But you are no longer that young lady. And there is something strange, uncomfortable.

You talk a lot about discomfort, why?

My life has not been comfortable at all, but I also like to pinch others. Before I didn’t realize it, I wasn’t conscious. But, yes, I like to shake people’s nerves. Because I feel that the world, and music, is designed so that we are comfortable: watching television, shopping, having fun. Everything fast, fast, fast. And I like the opposite. I like that you see me, make you move, stop and say: ‘Ok, what is happening in my life?’. I love asking people questions.

She is also a renowned painter, and creates her sets and costumes. Since when have you had that drive?

Always, all your life. In my family we are all artists. My mother writes and paints, my father too, and my grandmother. So, for me the arts were part of normality. I always painted, my mother taught me how to embroider, I danced with my grandmother and acted in her dresses, I played the guitar. So, I don’t separate between the one who sings, the one who paints or the one who composes, all of that for me is creating.

Which of your skills do you enjoy the most?

They are different paths, but the music is much more earthly. Contact with people is more direct and I have already said that my lyrics are uncomfortable. So, I see people laugh, cry, and that flatters me, I’m not going to be falsely modest. Because I believe that art has that function: to make you feel things, to touch that chord. If not, it’s just decorative, and I don’t want it to be decorative, so if people feel, cry, I feel happy, not because I cry, but because I made them feel. With painting everything is more ethereal, I can allow myself to fly more, more metaphors and fictitious scenarios, but I have also sometimes gone masked to see people when they see my paintings.

Their songs are tremendous. What inspires you more to create, pain or happiness?

I think pain has always caught my attention more. The artists I like the most have an energy of drama and theatricality: Chavela Vargas, Edith Piaf, Nina Simone, they have that dramatic and painful charge. I guess it has to do with my life experience. It was never rosy, especially in the early days. So, I have a harder time empathizing with happy songs. I don’t think anyone can be happy all the time. I get the trap. There is this toxic mentality that we have to be happy, and have books sold to us to do so. And not. They are small flashes in the day. Sometimes, consciously, I’m driving in the car and I play the saddest song, and I cry at traffic lights, but because that makes me happy. Sadness sometimes gives pleasure.

Have you suffered or enjoyed more at 42 years old?

I would say the same, because I have been very free, and I have lived and enjoyed freedom very intensely. I left Chile for Mexico very young. There were many prejudices. It didn’t fit. I left as sad. It was a self-exile looking for an opportunity for me and my music. But I have met people traveling the world. I’ve had long nights of music, drunkenness, I’ve gone partying with strangers. But I have also had magical moments of absolute meditation embroidering for five days. I have been very happy and I have had a lot of pleasure in my life, I have not sought the pain, it has come alone. He looked for me and found me, but I have learned to inhabit it, not let it absorb me, and put it into my art.

The disk is called Femme Fatale. How fatal are you?

I am a walking drama. I really like that thing of drama, luxury, suffering, but, scratching a little, the image of femme fatale It is that of those who left the scheme: they did not marry, they were not like those who took care of the house and the husband, but they smoked and were sexually free. I feel very identified with that part, and with the drama as well.

Did you go out of the box?

I have always felt strange, like I didn’t fit in, and I tried to file myself down, mold myself, to fit into the mold. I still do it today. There are days when I wake up and I feel ugly: then I put on a little more makeup because I have to look a certain way to be accepted and fit in. I’ve always felt like a weirdo. When I was young, everything was very sectarian. And I listened to Led Zeppelin with my mother, but also Juan Gabriel and Isabel Pantoja. I listened to everything and I liked everything. I wanted to sing boleros and heavy rock at the same time. Everyone told me that you can’t do that, and I always wanted to be everything.

A colleague in her twenties, Coni, a Chilean journalist, told me that she saw her as a child on a television contest and that she now considers her a role model. How does it stay?

It excites me, it inspires me. I see photos of myself from when I was 20 years old, I was a bone and I felt fat, I said: I’m horrible. And now I see my photo and it was beautiful, it was full of light, but I felt ugly. These 20-year-old girls, that Coni, Chilean, in Spain, telling me that I inspire her, it feels nice. They inspire me a lot. I would have liked to be 20 years old and be so safe and with so much freedom. That strength they have to say: I want this, this is me, that is beautiful and incredible. I didn’t have that freedom in my youth.

Recently, he shared that he had been diagnosed bipolar disorder. Did it cost you?

In fact, I heard about it before, and I said: how crazy. The truth is that I always intuited it, because there have always been those manic and depressive episodes in my life, which are not daily, but rather seasons that last months. When I dared to seek help, it was to say, ok, I want to know if I have it.

And what was it like confirming your suspicions?

It was difficult, first, to be told that way: you are bipolar, because they give you a label, a name that is a very heavy stigma. I cried a lot at first, but I also felt a lot of relief because it is precisely giving a name to something that you know you have, and that a lot of people have, and knowing that with it I have gotten here. And I wanted to say it for that reason. Because there are people who don’t say it, don’t seek help and I am proof that bipolar people can be functional adults.

So, this album of maturity is like your revenge?

Yes, I’m not going to lie, nor am I going to be falsely modest. Many, many times in the past I have seen myself smile at times thinking about what my revenge was going to be like. And I did it. This is my universe, my thinking, my art, my person: I can do everything and do it well, like Barbie.