Although Ana Torroja is categorical in the title of her new album, ‘Se ha acabado el show’, which reveals a debate she has had with herself during her 30 years as a soloist after leaving Mecano, the artist returns “proud” as ever after discovering that, at 65, she still has things to tell.
“My position as a soloist and coming from where I come from, from a band like Mecano, is very exhausting; to prove that I can also sing alone and to tell for the umpteenth time that I continue singing those songs. There are many times when you say to yourself: what’s all the effort for?”, she confesses in an interview with EFE, before commenting that if she continues it is because she is “very stubborn”. “And besides, I like above all what I do,” she says.
An unexpected record
Away from the multinationals since ‘Sonrisa’ (2010), ‘Se ha acabado el show’ is her first independent album, released with Altafonte. “I had to get to this point where I invested not only my soul, artistically speaking, but also my economy and make a project that was entirely mine,” she points out.
The beginning of this sixth studio album with original material was, however, uncertain. He planned to record only two songs and what he received did not convince him, except for one track. He got together to compose with his creators and understood “the way”. “The things I had to tell were so personal that either I told them or no one else could,” he says.
For the first time she has participated in all the compositions and has worked side by side in Mexico with a group of five producers, Andrés Levin, Santiago Rodríguez R., Dan Solo, Fernando Burgos and Alex Patri, to shape “therapeutic and liberating” songs, telling things that even she didn’t know she wanted to tell, such as ‘A veces’, about the ups and downs of long term relationships, or the aforementioned ‘Se ha acabado el show’.
Her case, “that of a long journey that ended without a goodbye”, as she sings in the song ‘La maleta’ about the end of Mecano, has enough similarities with what happened recently between Leire Martínez and La Oreja de Van Gogh. “By surprise we both found ourselves without a project and having to make a rather risky decision,” she concedes, before giving her colleague some advice.
“To Leire I would tell her to have patience and, above all, not to give up”, he says, while holding in his hands an album that he was not even thinking of releasing and in whose first bars he sings: “You say that the show is over, that I have half abandoned you, I don’t know if I should say goodbye”.
It is, he clarifies, an internal conversation. “It’s that this is a profession that requires a lot of dedication and many times one forgets the person inside. The Ana persona was demanding a lot of attention lately and that’s why I thought the show was over, but once I put it down on paper, I realized that not only was it not over, but that I still had things to tell,” she adds happily.
Ana Torroja and the shadow of Mecano
Awards such as the Latin Grammy for musical excellence, which she received in 2023 amid tears, also helped in the face of doubts. “It must be because I’m not doing so bad, right?” he wondered after almost 30 years as a soloist, compared to the little more than ten that Mecano lasted.
She herself was surprised that in this album she ended up dedicating a song to her ex-band, which ended abruptly when at the 1998 Amigo Awards ceremony, after the group’s reunion, José María Cano unilaterally and unexpectedly announced the definitive breakup, to the surprise of his bandmates.
“I am not me without Mecano and Mecano is not me without me. It is impossible to separate from that shadow, but I don’t want to”, says the artist before ‘La maleta’, in which she talks about that “no farewell”, something that, she says, at that time was what hurt her the most.
The result is an honest album, in which “sweet things” are not always said, but in which Torroja declares herself at peace with herself, “so fragile on the outside, so strong on the inside, made of layers of time”, as she sings in ‘Rosa del desierto’.
“I don’t regret anything, because all the steps I have taken, whether wrong or right, have led me to where I am today and to what I am. And I really like the way I am,” said Torroja, who, according to Agencia EFE, will begin her tour in Mexico on April 4 and return to Spain in June.
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