The alter ego of Paula Ribó has just released ‘La empreatriz’, a first album that brings together almost all of her hits and four new songs
Single to single. For example, Rigoberta Bandini, alter ego of actress and singer Paula Ribó (Barcelona, aged 32), has built up a career full of successes. ‘Two Many Drugs’ was the starting point. The theme was launched as the Spanish population was plunged into the harshest of incarcerations. Nico, the little boy to whom he has dedicated so many songs, was barely three months old – now he is two years old. Then there would be songs like ‘In Spain We Call it Soledad’, ‘Perra’ or that anthem that is ‘Ay, mama’ with which the singer appeared at the Benidorm Fest in an attempt to enter the Eurovision Song Contest. Now he presents ‘La empress’, a first album on which he brings together almost all of his greatest hits and four new songs.
-The album came out a few days ago, what are your feelings?
-The ‘feedback’ I receive is super good and super nice. People receive it with great affection. The new songs are going really well and the work is being understood, so I’m happy.
-Because now?
I had to frame my work somewhere to get ahead. It’s something that even surprised me, but hey, when you order an album, you understand yourself as an artist. I had to organize who I was, who I am now and what I’ve been up to so far.
-Like your previous singles, you self-released it, but you won’t be short of offers.
-It continues to compensate me a lot to have a monopoly on my project. Yes, there have been offers, but I was not interested.
-Actually, there aren’t that many songs that are left out. Why don’t you put them all?
-Because I didn’t want it to become a collection of everything I’ve released. Obviously everything defines me and I don’t give up on any of them, they are all part of my career and of what I want to show the world, but I wanted to go a little further, I wanted ‘La Empress’ to be an internal coherence, not just speech, but music, so I racked my brain a little bit so that it would have its own identity, even if someone who didn’t know me at all heard it.
-How was the process of deciding which ones were and which ones were not?
-There are songs that are already such hits that they had to be recorded because they define my project a lot, but the thermometer I used was that of songs that especially moved me and talked about me from different perspectives, to show myself in different ways, not only from different rhythms or production textures, but also from different messages. And now I feel it’s very complete, very close to me, but polyhedral at the same time, I didn’t want it to become a monotonous album or say the same thing all the time. And I relied on that a bit and also on intuition.
-‘Canciones de amor a ti’ is a beautiful danceable electronic pop song dedicated to her son. What a present he gave you, didn’t he?
– (Laughs) Yes, I think so. He doesn’t understand much at the moment, but he does love the song. Yesterday he listened to it and danced on a loop and he loves being in the video. For him it is like a memory of his short life and he is delighted.
-In that subject there are verses like ‘that the men of this new world weep very calmly’. Is it still necessary?
-I think we’ve improved a lot, but the emotional education we’re getting is still kind of binary. I still feel like my son is getting the “you gotta be strong” thing. Sometimes you feel like it’s hard to go against the grain to say no, that the more sensitive and the more he puts things out the better.
-It is not uncommon to see in your most festive themes, conversations, humor… Do they come up spontaneously?
-They always appear in the studio. It was an idea that Esteban Navarro -his partner and half of the Venga Monjas duo- had in the beginning and has stayed there. It started on ‘In Spain We Call It Soledad’. When I was done with all the vocal takes, he said, “Do one more take and say what you want, and we’ll cut it off.” And this tradition has been born. There is always a moment when the song is over, I step into the aquarium wearing a pair of helmets and say things that come to mind as I listen to the song. Sometimes they stay and sometimes they don’t. Ultimately I come from the world of dubbing and my relationship with microphones is quite close and it doesn’t scare me.
-Has this propensity for humor not brought you something that was not taken seriously?
-It’s just that it’s always seemed to me that adding a sense of humor doesn’t take away credibility. On the contrary, I believe that a sense of humor is a clear sign of intelligence and of knowing how to put things into perspective and not make them less profound. If someone disqualified me for making a joke, the same is that someone didn’t understand that I was trying to say things that were important to me.
– I don’t think she’s shy.
I don’t know what I am (laughs). I don’t consider myself overly shy, but I don’t consider myself overly outgoing either. I think I’m normal.
-Given the complicated agendas that Esteban and you deal with, how do you manage to reconcile it?
-Already. Sometimes it’s complicated. Fortunately we have a very large network of grandmothers, babysitters… People close to us who help us a lot and then, look, take space where we can and most importantly try to make sure that when we are with him, it’s Quality time. If we have a weekend, offer him the real presence, not with the phone or awareness of other things, which is sometimes unavoidable, try to put a lot of awareness into that, by being with him.
-Another of the new songs is ‘Tu y yo’.
-It’s a love song and it’s weird because I’m humble when it comes to writing love songs for my partner; my son is less ashamed but this is a love song for my partner and for the family we have created. Since it was very born during the pandemic, it greatly praises the little things of ordering pizza on Friday, those household elements that we really appreciated during the pandemic because we had that on our own. When you’re really on the brink, like back then, when we didn’t know anything and couldn’t move, all the lyrics that came to mind back then are pretty much from everyday family life.
-The album closes with ‘The Empress’, where echoes of Disney soundtracks and even Danny Elfman can be heard.
-Yes, that intro is from Esteban who is a big fan of those kinds of melodies and he comes a lot from progressive rock where there is little complex in terms of creating such crazy melodies and I think it fits the song perfectly because it’s an entity of its own and I love it because it’s like a curtain that opens to make way for the Empress. In it I tell about my maternal grandmother, who passed away a year ago, and for me she was a reference in many things and most importantly, she was the matriarch of the family and she was my empress.
-Just before the summer you announced that you would be leaving the stage for a while. Did the commotion surprise you? Though he never said it, many thought he would say goodbye forever.
-I was also surprised that he was a starter in so many places. I believe it’s still a break that many artists need, although they don’t put it all into words, but these stops are natural. I had to explain to my audience that this tour coming up now, these last fifteen concerts, is ending an era and I don’t know when I’ll be back on stage because I don’t want to commit the dates. I’m lucky I don’t have a record label getting in my way, so I wanted to explain to you that one stage ends, but of course I want to think there are others to come.
-You say another stage is starting, you know where the music is going?
-I have no idea why it doesn’t exist, until I get to it… And that’s what I want too: surprise myself, make mistakes, go back to the sketches, to the artisanal composing, which I love. And it will surprise you as much as it surprises me. I feel like diving in and seeing what I find, what I feel like and when I have something I have to get it out, take it out, but slowly.
-Your niece, Belén Barenys, is unable to do the last dates of the tour due to her pregnancy. I think it will be hard to get on stage without her by your side, right? How are you?
– He’s okay. Yes, it is true that it has been very strong. Emotionally, the last concert we did in Granada was very intense, but I am also very happy that she can experience this end of her pregnancy with peace of mind, which a pregnant woman needs, because concerts bring a lot of problems. We both know full well that we’ll be back on stage together, so it’s like we’ll see you later. But yes, it has been strong. Anyway, I feel like the Bandini family isn’t getting any smaller, on the contrary, she’s adding people because Berta Gratacòs has come in, who is an incredible singer and who is also going to give her everything on stage and it’s going to be really cool.
-I think it’s still recent, but would you participate in Eurovision again if you found a hymn like ‘Ay, mama’?
-No. I believe this has already been done and I feel that if something is already done I don’t feel like it, it doesn’t motivate me, I like to seek new adventures. I wouldn’t perform anymore, but I wish a lot of people would do it with really nice songs.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
