Maria Rodés: "People appreciate it when someone opens up and explains their problems."

BarcelonaMaria Rodés (Barcelona, ​​1986) closed out 2025 with a very special album, What happens to me (Elefante), constructed under a confessional guise to reflect on the glories and catastrophes of love in a broader sense. Musically, it maintains the ease demonstrated in previous albums for grafting pop onto different musical aesthetics, from rumba to bachata and trap, and with collaborations from artists such as Soleá Morente, Delafé, and Bronquio, among others. "It's one of my favorite albums," says Rodés about this album, which she will present on February 25th in Barcelona, ​​at La [2] del Apolo at 8:30 p.m.

You've made an album about love, but above all about women who love and who, as in the great melodramas, can come to live only to love.

— Yes. Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say "live to love," but kind of. There are many open conversations on the album, and this is one of them. There's a reflection on the fact that women have received an education so focused on romanticism that romantic relationships take on a very significant weight. When so much pressure is structurally placed on women to be this way and achieve that goal in life, if they don't succeed, or if there's a disappointment or abandonment, it can be really tough psychologically. In contrast, for men, although there's also a romantic culture, it doesn't occupy as much space. Men aren't as dependent on external validation as women are.

You start the album with First timewhich has a certain tone, and you finish it with Monte Perdidowhich has another practically opposite.

— It begins with absolute innocence and ends with a reflection on the mythology of Romanticism. The last song deals precisely with this: it tells of a Pyrenean legend about a fairy who falls in love, and when her lover leaves her, she waits and waits and becomes a water enchantress.

The album also includes characters like Lidia from Cadaqués.

— Lidia de Cadaqués was the spark that made me start thinking a lot about the subject of romantic love, because she had a disorder, erotomania. I discovered this later; before that, I knew the story of how she fell in love with Eugeni d'Ors because he went to Cadaqués to visit her. She thought he was also in love and that Eugeni d'Ors's chronicles in The Voice of Catalonia These are messages for her.

Do you remember the first time you truly loved?

— True love is very relative, isn't it? I don't really know what serious love is. I remember the first time I felt truly in love, completely swept away by infatuation. I was a teenager. Another theme that runs through the album is that many girls often have many emotions suppressed, like anger, and then infatuation becomes a kind of sack into which all emotions can be channeled, like a refuge where you can develop your emotionality.

And do you relive that early feeling in any other song on the album?

— Spell It is the one that speaks of that moment.

In The park You do something very interesting: you talk about the mistress of a married man, the great forgotten one in love songs, the one who trusts a man who cheats, the one who has bad press because she participates in a betrayal.

— Exactly, yes. I wanted to talk about the figure of the lover, neither defending nor criticizing them, simply to examine them more closely to explain that they too are a victim of triangulation. Perhaps they, too, have hopes that will not be fulfilled or have been deceived by romantic illusions. It's about trying to empathize a little with that third person.

I like that you set the action in a park, a seemingly innocent place...

— She may dream of being a mother and sees children in the park. He does have a family. And there's a nod to the betrayed woman. For me, the beauty of the song is that she asserts herself: she declares that she no longer needs his gaze, and a sense of complicity with the betrayed woman emerges, because perhaps they should be more supportive of one another.

Musically, I want to control It is one of the most unique songs on the album.

— In I want to control Albert Cases sings, who also sings in the rumba What happens to meI like the contrast between her voice, more flamenco and outward-facing, and mine, which in I want to control I recite more than I sing. I don't really know what this song is. I asked my guitarist, Isabelle Laudenbach, if the song had any flamenco style, and she told me that she had invented a new style, which sounds like some things without being any of them.

You had already collaborated with Isabelle Laudenbach, who founded Las Migas and is part of the LaboratoriA project, right?

— Yes, I play with her often because she's a super good guitarist who can play any style.

Also interesting is the expressiveness of Marta Roma's cello in I'm thinking of you.

— One of the great things about music is that you meet amazing people, and Marta is fantastic. Whenever I can, and if she's available, I count on her because she's so talented. I give her some guidelines, but I also give her room to be creative because she always has great melodic ideas. I'm thinking of you There's a tango moment where she takes center stage, but she's also in more songs.

In I want to control You talk about the feeling of being aware that there are emotional reactions that distance a person from the people they love.

— The album deals somewhat with emotional dependency, with that romanticism that makes women more emotionally dependent. And here the specter of jealousy appears. When you place so much importance on not losing someone, the fear of loss, the obsession, can be what makes you lose someone. In this song, the album's protagonist fights against the impulse of jealousy.

And right after that comes Badwhich completely changes the perspective.

— Bad This perfectly reflects the toxic love of someone who loves: they are being hurt, but they can't leave because they are hooked. One of the first steps to getting out of a toxic relationship is being able to identify the person who is hurting you. You love someone very much, and they are hurting you, and when this happens, it's a problem; it's the framework that should tell you this is a problem.

You've worked with genres like copla, which have a strong undercurrent of heartbreak: they're songs sung while looking the other person in the face. Which songs do you think work better, love songs or heartbreak songs?

— I think that heartbreak generally works better, or at least when I sing about it, people connect more with heartbreak. For example, from the album What happens to me The song you listen to the most is I'm thinking of youThe first, which is very much about heartbreak and very classic in that sense. And the second, rumba, which is also about heartbreak. I think people appreciate it when someone opens up and explains their struggles, because it's harder to do that. We talk more about the positive side, but we hide the negative ones more.

What is your best memory related to music?

— My first concert was at the Vilassar de Mar town festival, singing covers with a local band. I sang songs by Bob Marley and Sting, and I thought it was the best day of my life, and that doesn't happen every day. I realized that what I really wanted to do was sing live.

And what memory would you like to forget?

— When you have a really negative memory, you forget it without meaning to... But when I was little, I studied at a music school, and there came a point when they asked me to leave. It was in a very ambiguous way because they told me, "It's not that you sing badly, you do it very well, but you don't go through the things we've told you about." And they added, "Sometimes developing an artistic persona can be incompatible with musical education, and you have too much of a personality." It was a really twisted line of reasoning. If they think I'm not following the rules, well, I don't know, maybe they should educate me better. But you can't penalize me for having a personality, and even less so for whether I'm doing well. It was as if they thought I was doing well but only by luck.