Paula Felices is a Barcelona singer-songwriter born in 1997, who spent her childhood in Malaga and returned to Catalonia at the age of 11. Her musical proposal lies between the diaphanous author’s song and folk-pop with an orchestral vocation: if her melodies are reminiscent of the first Christina Rosenvinge, her vocal timbre can evoke that of singers like María Rodés.
Her debut album has the gesture of being titled like the classics: ‘Canciones de Paula Felices’. Opening with the swampy ‘El mal y el viento’, it includes the orchestral folk-rock outburst of ‘Ámame’, emotional acoustic pop songs like ‘La intimacy’, and a song that appeals to queer identity which, perhaps unsurprisingly given the weight of identity in current music, is currently his most popular creation.
This is ‘Sáfica’, a song in which Paula Felices Echaniz explores the classic question that plagues many queer people: “Could it be that I like her or do I want to be her?” Felices approaches this question with a mixture of calm and resignation, relying on gentle guitar strums, soft melodies and light percussion.
If the protagonist figure of ‘Sáfica’ is a girl who “is like the breeze” and “is in no hurry,” the song transmits exactly that same sensation, carried by the almost slurred voice of Paula Felices and a contained and serene interpretation, which explores identity from a perspective of curiosity rather than deep emotional introspection.
The official explanation of ‘Sáfica’ is quite self-explanatory: “This song talks about the sincere love of a girl for another girl, of not knowing exactly what you want, if what you feel is simply admiration or there is something else hidden in the corners of the heart,” he indicates.
Paula Felices has two concerts confirmed for this year, on September 10 at the Heliogàbal in Barcelona, and on September 18 at the Cadavra in Madrid.
