Of Aleks Syntek’s 35-year career, the last five years have been wrapped in scandals and “bickering”, but the Mexican pop rock singer is not considering retiring from music and is showing it with the release of his next album, titled ‘Zen’, as well as with the preparation of his tour in the United States.
“The first 30 years of my career I was away from scandals, but the last five have been very problematic for me. I attribute this to the fact that I have been very successful, but at this moment I am no longer a fashionable artist”, the producer confesses to EFE in the face of controversies such as the one at the end of 2025, when “his health collapsed” and he was admitted to a “wellness” clinic.
The multi Latin Grammy nominee assures that “many things” have been invented about his figure, but that, “for better or worse”, this has helped him to be on “people’s lips” in an era in which the algorithm displaces the talents of his generation, the same one that defined the course of rock in the 80’s with bands like Kenny y los Eléctricos, of which he was keyboardist.
Syntek, famous for hits such as ‘Duele el Amor’ (2003) -which he released with the Spanish Ana Torroja- or ‘Sexo Pudor y Lágrimas’ (1999), recognizes that he belongs to the “last generation” in which the artist’s name remained in the “collective conscience of the people”, because now “songs are more popular than people”.
“I don’t think there is such a thing as bad or good music, but there is a difference between ephemeral and transcendent (…) The problem is that algorithms demand new artists to be fast and ephemeral with vulgar content that is easy to learn, but also easy to forget,” he stresses.
In that sense, he explains that in Mexico, praising sex, drug use or making apologies for crime has become “a tool to attract the public” and that, he argues, “is ruining us” musically.
“We are running out of true idols(…) If you don’t do reguetón or corridos tumbados, they throw you out,” he says.
Aleks Syntek talks about the controversies of recent years
For Syntek, whose real name is Raúl Alejandro Escajadillo Peña, the algorithm also affects his generation: “Now you’re 40 years old and they want to retire you.
A problem he detects in Mexico, with talents such as Yuri or Manuel Mijares, and also at an international level, with Alan Parsons or Tear for Fears, British rock icons of the 1980s who, he defends, “are still making music” but “are no longer in the ‘top ten’ and the algorithms don’t look at them”.
In view of this, the composer points out that his music and even ‘Louder than I thought’, the next book he will publish, is a “cry” to society to “not discard” people who “still have a lot to give”.
Zen’ state
Therefore, ‘Zen’, his new studio album, to be released in May, is born from a more spiritual place, with songs based on tantric words, such as ‘Pranayama’ or ‘Kamasutra’, and at the same time, with the same essence of Syntek’s pop rock of the 90s.
This album, which marks the singer’s return after ‘Anatomy of Love’ (2021), is also critical of the current reality, as it includes ‘Matrix’, a song that states that “we are living in an unreality” very similar to the one portrayed by the Wachowski sisters in 1999.
As for his upcoming tour of twelve U.S. cities, reported Agencia EFE, the musician hopes that from the first date, scheduled for April 3 in New York, he will be able to offer “a little bit of joy and healing” in the face of the “anguish and stress” being experienced by the Latino community due to the tightening of U.S. immigration policies.
Find out more at ‘QueOnnda.com’.
