Guitarricadelafuente is increasingly “positioned”, that word that the music industry likes so much. His first album, ‘La Cantera’ (2022), added a chapter to the recent claim of Spanish folklore in pop and was a success. Then, Valenciano Álvaro Lafuente Calvo arrived an international collaboration in Troye Sivan’s last album. His felt way of interpreting and his poetic letters have earned the appreciation of an audience eager for original proposals. And of creativity, ‘Full Time Papi’, the new guitarricadelafuente single, is left over.
A surprising production, worked with Pablo Drexler, PabloPablo; Lucas Durán Forga and together with two American producers, Jasper Harris and Carter Lang, ‘Full Time Papi’ has opened the way to the second guitarricadelafuente album, an album produced mainly with PabloPablo but also recorded in part in the United States, which will consolidate the artist and open new doors. Jnesaispop has been able to meet with “Guitarrica” in a bar in Barcelona to comment ‘Full Time Papi’, his collaboration with Troy and, very, well, well, above, the content of his next album. The tour starts in May:
18.05 – Bilbao (Euskalduna Palace)
24.05 – A Coruña (Coliseum)
27.05 – Cartagena (Paco Martín Auditorium)
29.05 – Sevilla (Cartuja Center)
01.06 – Valencia (vivers nits)
04.06 – San Sebastián (Kursaal)
06.06 – Zaragoza (Multiusous room)
21.06 – Las Palmas (open sea festival)
22.06 – Santa Cruz de Tenerife (Open Mar Festival)
27.06 – Granada (Congress Palace)
02.07 – Barcelona (Alma Festival)
03.07 – Barcelona (Alma Festival)
07.08 – Marbella (Starlite)
21.08 – Mallorca (it’s Jardí)
17.10 – Madrid (Movistar Arena)
Do you record at your home?
Yes, the models. But we have recorded the album in many places.
Jasper Harris has produced for SZA. Have you worked the album in Los Angeles? How do you get to Jasper?
Jasper contacted me two years ago, he told me that he would love to work with me. After a year, in November 2023, we met in New York, we went to the study together, the Electric Lady, nothing less. There we saw each other for the first time. He told me: “We stay there.” And me: “Ah, ok.” He told me that a girlfriend who had discovered my music playing in Benicasim and recommended my work. In the end that relationship did not go well, but Jasper and I started working together. Jasper has participated in the album contributing many ideas, it is very generous creatively.
Carter Lang (SZA, Post Malone) is also on the album.
He entered the equation later. With Carter Lang there was a lot of chemistry. I thought he was not going to work because he came from the R&B, but there was an absolute connection. We also work with Frank Dukes (Camila Cabello, Lorde, ‘Motomami’).
I understand that they are also hungry to try new things.
I think so. Apart from the Latin barrier that has broken, and the barrier of language that has been broken, there is an interest in the music of Spain, American producers want to try things that come from a completely different world.
Have you experienced a lot? This song is surprising.
I have been immersed in the process so much time that it does not seem such a radical change.
In ‘Full Time Papi’ an organ sounds and then a accordion. Then the chorus is at choir. Has a lot of change,
The concrete accordion is a zanfona. It is a medieval, folk instrument, which I would have already put in a song before, but this time we put it in a world, say, foreigner. Anyway, my goal on the album has been that each song is recognizable and reducible to the guitar.
How have you managed to put so many instrumental ideas and that the song stays whole?
The organ and zanfona are heavy instruments, but the song is playful, it is not made to be contemplative, but to enjoy it with the body.
Why ‘Full Time Papi’ is the first single from the album? It is a new introduction.
The theme on the one hand collides a bit with what it had been doing before and represents the energy of the album. Perhaps it is not so representative in the musical sense because the album crosses very different roads, there is also a lot of song in which guitar and voice predominate. But the content of the letters is another. The album talks about getting carried away.
Is the album that guitarricadelafuente disinhibits and releases?
I do not free myself because I have always been released, I have never felt self -conscious. I feel that the album reflects my maturity, exposes a learning path. In ‘La Cantera’ I felt that I had things to demonstrate because it was my first album, but in the second it has simply wanted to enjoy. For example, in the letters of the previous album you had to search a lot to find something personal, without so much cape. This time, I wanted to evolve from that idyllic and romantic world of the first album field, towards something more transparent, direct and leather.
In the song you sing “I want you to explain the emotion of moving from 100 to 0.”
Yes, that phrase speaks of a person who feels something intensely and, in a short time, stops feeling it. It is a reflection on the way we have to feel today, to give everything and remove it from the first change because we get bored. To me personally destabilizes me, because I can go from feeling insecure to the opposite, and when you receive that dose of sudden self -esteem, again predispones to fall into similar situations like the one commenting on the song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seumhthgwlw
What does the video clip mean for you?
We have worked with Albert Moya. The idea was to make a transfer of innocence and the field, of that analog and film aesthetics, towards something more carnal, because I am no longer a young teenager, I am already older. I am a Full Time Papi (laughs) in the video of ‘A thousand and a few nights’ we already showed those bare bodies, but without passing us from the line: they were delimited by an innocence. In ‘Full Time Papi’ I wanted the treatment of bodies to be more direct and naked. ‘Full Time Papi’ tells a sexual discovery of oneself, of the tastes of one, how one feels in the roles of love. In the video, the fight in the mud represents the internal struggle that each one has with himself, that struggle to break the barrier towards what one would like to experiment to feel comfortable.
«’Full Time Papi’ is a sexual discovery: the video talks about breaking the barrier to what one would like to experiment to feel comfortable»
What is your favorite song of Troye Sivan’s album?
‘Still Got It’.
I remembered that song listening to ‘Full Time Papi’, for the organ.
Yes, I love that and ‘One of Your Girls’. I love the whole album.
How was the process of composing ‘in my room’ with Troye Sivan?
The night that Troye and I met we went to party and connect super fast. He had already shook something through networks, we started talking and, two days of meeting us, I was on tour with ‘La Cantera’ and Troy wrote me on Instagram to tell me that I have a “very beautiful voice.” I had been listening to my music. Then, he proposed to participate in his album, which at that time was just recording him in London. I traveled from Valencia to London and planted in the studio at four in the morning. I have a hard time going out of the studio with a song, I give it many laps, I am to rest, to see it in another context and discover that it still makes sense. When I arrived at the studio, there was Oscar Görres (the producer of Troye Sivan) with Troye and, in three hours, I already had my part written in Spanish.
How do you see Troye in the study? Do you see more leader or more open to external contributions?
I see Troy in both ways. That is the energy to have in the study because, if not, for that, you stay alone. Troye was super generous, he asked me if I wanted to do something special. I didn’t want to make a ballad, with him I wanted to do something fun and energetic, different from what he used to do. At least, I wanted to try. I wrote the lyrics and I had to translate the English to understand it (laugh)
How do you translate “Fine fight” to Troye Sivan?
(He teaches me the notes of his mobile) “Cold Skin is like finely.” Troye works with Laland, his lyricist. I spent my letter in Spanish, and Troye and he finished the letter of ‘In My Room’ together in the United States.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx92lstrfmo
How do you negotiate the composition of letters with other people? Your lyrics are poetic but nothing abstract, they are actually easy to understand. They do not seem pretentious.
It is the first time that I have joined with people to compose. Before I felt the need to tell something very intimate, but in this second album I have required the input of other people. I have worked with PabloPablo, Teo Planell and Tristán!, Artists that I like and that transmit an aura with which I feel identified.
Do your producers easily tell you what they see badly, just as they easily tell you what they see well?
It is a lot of depending on yourself. If you are sure with something, the rest of the people will receive it like this, and if you go doubts, the same. In these composition processes, I demand a lot, I never cool anything; But when I get a phrase that I like, I have been satisfied with the study.
You like to leave the issues rest. Are you to recycle old ideas?
I do not delete any musical idea, my notes are a landfill, I don’t shoot anything in the trash. You have to save everything. This morning I listened to a melody that I recorded in December 2023 that I had discarded, and has sounded great. I compose with recycling, I write a lyrics, I keep it and later recover it to put it in a different song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwvkh9oyjpi
