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Carmen Lopez Barcelona
Barcelona
Updated Friday, January 26, 2024-02:27
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Sitting with a coffee in her hand, comfortable clothes and her hair tied up,
Paula Ribó
(Barcelona, 1990) meditates on her words before answering the questions and opens her eyes wide in the emphasis. Seen like this, calm and reflective, nothing would make one imagine that she is also
Rigoberta Bandini
, the artist who burns up the stage dressed as a schoolgirl and
composes
hits
that cheer up even the dullest
.
His musical alter ego has been silent for almost all of 2023, with the exception of the summer song
Miami Beach
. However, now her name is back in the headlines. At the end of the year, she was nominated for a
Goya Award for Best Original Song
for
Yo Solo Quiero Amor
, included on the soundtrack of the film
Te amando locamente
.
Almost at the same time, Bandini published the song
Qué más da
in collaboration with
Julieta Venegas
and released 2024 with Pipiolas with the song
La Niña Bonita
. They are small appetizers to whet your appetite before the new feast you are preparing, which is expected to be opulent.
After a very eventful 2022, in 2023 you were barely heard from. What have you been doing? The first thing I did was go back to my family life a little and understand everything that happened to me, which was wonderful. And then, compose a lot. I really wanted to have that space without the pressure of schedules. Now I'm starting to understand the puzzle in my head, which is something very satisfying. Will this new work that you are preparing be a collection of
singles
or an album? Will it be an album, it's something I've never done before and with the hiatus of the stages The desire came to me. Although people are not going to conceive it as such, because nowadays you rarely listen to an entire album, creatively I find the challenge of uniting many songs in the same bag, racking my brain to find things to deliver together, very interesting. with
a coherence not only musically but also at the level of discourse
. I'm enjoying it although I also suffer from it because there are moments when you say 'what have I gotten myself into?' But it still has to come out.
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And then he will return to the stage. Are you looking forward to it? Yes, I am very keen and very curious to create this live show, just like I am doing with the album. The previous process was so different that it's a bit like I have the roof of the house built and now I'm going to make the door. This moment of creation, of cooking music and live performances, is for me one of the most enjoyable. Maybe you are tired of the question, but how do you manage to reconcile motherhood and work on tours
?
I like being asked. I think it is important that there are references for women artists who go on tour and have children. In this case, I have a little advantage compared to the previous tour because my son was very young, when he started he was 10 months old. Now he is three and a half years old and, although there will be difficult moments of conciliation because both of us [her and her husband] are in the project, I find it much easier to go with him to Latin America for three weeks. I
am privileged because there are more screwed-up conciliations
. There are people with very few resources, with many difficulties and situations much more adverse than mine. I am grateful because I have many moments where I can enjoy my family life with a lot of freedom and without a boss to set limits for me. We are talking about your personal life. I don't know how she handles being in the media, as happened with her wedding to Esteban Navarro, for example. She is one of the faces of fame. I have no interest in showing my life but nor in hiding it. If it comes out, then it is what it is. It's a part that I can't control either. I didn't sell the wedding to any magazine, they scratched it because nowadays everything is on the networks. It did shock me because
you never think that someone will care so much about your life
. I try to be discreet, but it is difficult because with my songs I open myself up a lot on a personal level, for me it is very incompatible to talk about my music and my creative life without talking about myself. In that area I want to be generous, it is a decision.
"I have no interest in showing my life but nor in hiding it"
Alba Obradors
Now that
Christian pop
is on the rise, perhaps she could recover her song
Que Cristo Baja
in addition to the Teresianas' uniform for concerts. I don't know what was left of her time at the nuns' school. I think that everything that happens to you in life is for a reason. My time at the nuns' school has its lights and shadows, like any school. There are things that I have taken away and that I am grateful for, even the ones that have bothered me the most because they are the ones that have driven me to write since I was little. Right now I would not enroll my son in that school, not for anything, but because I want him to have another perspective that will also give him other things.
The type of education I have received has given me the clairvoyance to speak about depending on what topics
, it has made me understand spirituality very well, because I rejected it and when I left there I understood it from another side. Actually I have to thank that school, that Paula, because I feel that most of my songs explore the spirit in some way. What is your relationship with religion today? I believe in everything because I have the feeling, the certainty, trust, that there is something that unites us, a kind of mantle. That connection is a bit my driving force in many ways.
My religion has no name, but I believe
. In the universe, in God or whatever you want to call it, but it's a little bit of that light that helps me. Back to your work, how did the project for your song
I only want love,
nominated for the Goya, come about? Xavi Toll contacted me, who is the executive director and a great friend of mine. I was at the end of the tour, super saturated and it gave me a few months to see how I saw it from a distance. When I met with him, with the director Alejandro Marín and with the producer Carmen Garrido, they told me the plot, they showed me some
frames
and I felt that I had to be in that movie. I was starting to take a break from performing on stage and composing with the guitar and I started working on the production with Esteban and Stefano Maccarrone. We immediately saw a thread because they asked us for something very hymn-like for the end of the movie and this chorus had something catchy that fit very well with the images. It has been very easy because we have understood each other, I have not had to send 18,000 versions. Are you nervous? Do you see a chance of winning? The truth is that it's super cliché, but I feel very lucky and a winner to have been nominated.
Going to the Goya gala seems like a great gift to me
being surrounded by all that talent and then there is also the most curious part, because I have seen that gala so many times on TV and I think 'what will it be like?'. Obviously if we win it will be wonderful, but I try not to think about it too much because I don't want to get hung up on that. And, above all, that the film has four more nominations, I hope it takes as many as it can because it seems incredible to me. It already faced a similar situation at the Benidorm Fest 2022. Since I think that things happen for a reason, when at the In the end
we didn't win at the Benidorm Fest. I understood it from a beautiful place, I didn't feel, I say this from the bottom of my heart, neither anger nor helplessness
. We also win in many aspects, because the song reaching people is the best reward. The same thing happens to me with the Goya, whatever has to be will be fine. Let's go for it, but happy. At the moment he has released all his work without a record label behind him. Will this change with your next album? I am very clear about what type of contract I do not want to sign, but I am also not obsessed that
I do not want any type of connection with a record company
, because depending on what moment along the way they can help me grow, invest the money that I can't. Right now it's a bit on
standby
. My intention is to maintain maximum independence but I don't know yet if this album will be 100% independent or not. Their last two releases have been collaborations: the song
Qué más da
with
Julieta Venegas
and
La Niña Bonita
with
Pipiolas
. How did both projects come about? I proposed it to Julieta and Pipiolas proposed it to me. When the tour finished in 2022, I looked at my
wishlist
of who I would like to collaborate with and I thought of Julieta, although I didn't know her in person. I wrote to her on Instagram because I saw that she followed me and she immediately told me that she did, that she was just in Madrid on vacation and that we should meet to compose. I got on an AVE with the little guitar and I went to her house one afternoon and we did it. Pipiolas proposed the collaboration to me a year ago. When I met them, I really liked them, then we met at a festival and a relationship immediately arose. I don't know why, when I was a teenager I was discovering new music all the time and now I meet an artist and six months go by without discovering another. I missed that feeling. It may be that due to the constant avalanche of news it is more difficult to choose. Yes, perhaps it is the same thing that happens with streaming platforms
,
that there is so much to choose from that in the end you end up not watching anything... in this silence of a year, in which I have released three songs and have not been on stage, I have realized that, as an artist, not existing is complicated. It has two faces, because
existing is exhausting, but it is a constant treat for the ego.
. It has been cool because it has inspired me to write and ask myself if I am capable of existing without the need to give, it is a learning experience. It is possible, but it is difficult. The issue of ego is controversial... has it changed with fame?
C. Tangana
, for example, insists on the importance of keeping your usual friends to keep your feet on the ground. I haven't seen myself changed, but it is important to have a solid group of friends. Luckily, I have it, and staying with them calms me down and in the peak moments I did very well. Maybe
I'm also at a time when it's harder for me to open up to new relationships
, perhaps due to lack of time or the difficulty of getting to know the complete Paula. My usual friends know all the Paulas and it's easier. Do Rigoberta and Paula have many differences? No. Rigoberta sings Paula's songs, it's a channel.