Maria Arnal: "The death of my cousin is the first wound to my heart"

BarcelonaThe promise was quite explicit. in the concerts he gave last year to present the songs that have ended up on the album Love (Atlantic Records, 2026). Maria Arnal (Badalona, ​​1987) had extraordinary material in her hands to launch a new stage after ending her partnership with guitarist Marcel Bagés. All of this is also the result of diverse stage research with the dance company La Veronal (Death and Spring at the TNC and the film's soundtrack They will be dust, by Carlos Marcas-Marcet, both with death as their central theme) and a long-term project with artificial intelligence applied to her voice (which originated from the fascinating collaboration with Holly Herndon at Sónar 2021There is also a palpable admiration for the organ's sound and an enthusiasm for the secular polyphony of madrigals, as well as a love for traditional folk music. And with this musical backdrop, she projects one of those forbidden gardens of memory: the death of her cousin from AIDS, a family story full of silences and contemporary with what Carla Simón recounts in her films. Summer 1993 (2017) and Pilgrimage (2025). The conceptual weight is powerful, but Maria Arnal's success lies in conveying it with lightness and poetic and musical sensuality, because often the best avant-garde is the one that doesn't seem to be.

Why is your generation, which is also Carla Simón's, so interested in artistically expressing the impact of AIDS?

— I think we're a generation that lived through that silence, but we didn't understand it because we were children. You perpetuate a very uncomfortable silence that makes the wound less healed. You didn't understand the illness or the stigma either. Now, from our artistic perspectives, we can talk about it, find words and images that heal a little of that silence that couldn't be spoken at the time. That's why the album begins with a verse from Sappho: "What you have left to say will remain to be cried." Tears are a release, because we don't only cry from sorrow.

In your case, the wound is the death of your cousin when she was 15 and you were 13.

— I wanted this new chapter to be very different. I wanted it to feel very much my own, and that's why I decided to draw on a strength that felt very personal. And my cousin's death is the first wound in my heart. I was 13 years old, which is why there are thirteen songs on the album. She died of AIDS [she contracted the virus through breast milk], as did my two uncles, who contracted HIV in the nineties. I didn't know she had died of AIDS until years later, and I didn't even know if I could talk about it. There was a silence from family and society. Now it was a matter of putting a name to that wound.

He speaks of liberation. Artistic liberation as well?

— Yes, in this sense there's also a liberation: this is who I am, and I don't hide behind anything, not behind grand pronouncements, grand concepts, or grand stories. It's music I've made from the heart, dedicated to that first wound, but also with everything I've learned over these years and all the things that have made me feel alive and fall in love with this craft all over again. I still consider myself a singer-songwriter, although I feel I've refined both my voice and my music production somewhat through my research into AI technology.

Is it Maria Arnal and only Maria Arnal?

— After working with Marcel [Bagés] for so long, I felt I'd become comfortable doing only part of the job, and now I wanted to do the whole thing, 360 degrees. And what would this María be like? How was I going to compose? I decided I wanted to do it in ways I hadn't done before. For example, I've created almost all the songs from the music itself, that is, from the voice as an instrument, not as a carrier of text; very anti-songwriter, if you will. And I finished the lyrics last. There are some that I didn't, like That they take from me, that the first time I sang the melody over the chords the verse was already there "Leave me what I have"This album is exactly who I am now, made with a maturity that helps me sustain this vulnerability of saying 'this is who I am now, and if you like it, great, and if not, well, no big deal.' But it's an album I've made primarily for myself."

And how has the project evolved since you presented it live at festivals like Sónar and the Vic Live Music Market?

— It's evolved quite a bit. In those concerts last year, I didn't want to include any songs from the old repertoire, because I'll have time this year to include some, like You who come to haunt me, Meteorite either The Red Virgin. I wanted to fill the entire concert time with new material to see how people connected with it and how I felt. One frustration I had, especially with the album Clamor (2021)The thing is, we released the songs practically without them having been performed live. I like to keep changing things up, and suddenly I found myself with songs that were already finished before they'd even been played live. Also, since I didn't want to do things the way I'd done them before, it was inevitable to compare the processes, and I wanted to be able to use the stage as the final space for songwriting before finalizing the songs. And the same goes for the final tracklist for the album; it was incredibly difficult to decide which songs to leave out.

In fact, there are songs like Little cornerswhich has wood from hit, Mirror and Mole that you performed at the 2025 concerts and that are not on the album.

— These are songs that are part of this creative period, but I felt they didn't have a place on the album. They're songs made for live performance and to connect with the audience during the show, which isn't necessarily the same journey as the album. It was a very unpleasant revelation for me when I realized that all the work I'd done to develop the songs for live performance wasn't working on the album. The songs felt so comfortable live, and the concerts were going so well, that by removing all the surrounding spectacle, some of them didn't fit into the album's journey, which is more introspective. Therefore, it made sense for the album's emotional arc to be a synthesis of what I considered to be best as a whole. And these songs didn't fit.

And haven't you thought about doing a vinyl edition that includes the songs you left out?

— I knew I didn't want to make a long album. I didn't want to make a 25-song album. For me, it's like a debut album, and I didn't want to overwhelm anyone either. I'm a stage artist. I've worked my way up on a thousand different stages. The other day I was thinking about some local festivals in Madrid, where we sang on top of a truck, with churros and everything. The stage is my home base. And I wanted to start this new chapter from there. I'm glad I did it this way, because at these concerts I've learned a lot about how the audience connects with the songs, or doesn't, which ones work really well live and which ones don't. Three years ago, if you had told me I'd be here, I think I would have found it hard to believe, because I was so exhausted and felt creatively stagnant. I felt I needed a change. heavyAnd now I'm glad I did it. It's my personal success, being able to say, "I did it!"

?Letter Is this the song that best summarizes the album, both musically, due to the polyphonic treatment of your voice and the percussion, and because of what the lyrics explain?

— My cousin left a letter that I never answered, because, of course, she was no longer here... But since her death, I've always felt a strong connection to her, as if she still had a powerful presence. I'm very aware of her. And that idea of ​​a physical presence without a body was very interesting to me on the album. I explore it with synthesized voices, which are my voices without my body. Organs, the instrument that attempts to imitate the human voice from a place of mystery, are also very important on this album. The synthesized voice connects me to everything we don't know, to that mystery, but I also wanted the songs to be light and playful. On this album, I didn't want to choose just María; I wanted them all to be there. I wanted to be MadrigalI wanted to be polyphonic.

The song Madrigal It has that playful yet profound character.

— It's a song I love. The madrigal is a type of polyphony typical of the Renaissance, when polyphony ceased to be a way of communicating with God and the idea of ​​interiority and exteriority began to develop—the world within, the world without—and that idea of ​​an inner voice that isn't God, but rather oneself. In the song, we have a girl listening to music in the street, and she feels amazing. You don't know what happened during the night, but she had a blast and exudes a very natural sensuality. And there's a reference to Ausiàs March in the lyrics, which is a very strange combination, but for me, it makes perfect sense; it's natural.

It's natural that Madrigal in Catalan?

— Yes, I think so, absolutely. This one was in Catalan from the beginning. The thing is, at first I wanted to have a song without lyrics, just vocals. And with this one, I had one of the album's crisis moments, because without lyrics, it didn't fit into the album's overall feel. I could manage it live, but on the album, I have to rely on the lyrics; I can't do without them. But I had the image from the start: a girl walking down the street with headphones on, feeling like she owns the place. Madrigal I connect it with My [the Valencian lullaby version] My little girl is the boss], which says: "My girl is the mistress of the farmyard and the street."

AND Tic-tacowhich is the song with a more spirited feel radishWhat do you connect it to?

— I integrated it into the album with the sound of organs and thicker electronics, although it also has more ethereal vocal elements. Conceptually, it speaks of death as a stage of something greater. It's the most Buddhist, so to speak. We haven't been together in this life, but we will always be together in the ones we live, more or less. There's also a touch of nostalgia: what would it be like to meet you again? A step back that is a step forward into a new life.

Those of us who do not believe in God have the memory to remember those who are already there and we trust that transcendence will be the memory that others will have of us.

— Exactly. When my cousin died, I had a huge breakdown. Before she died, my family and I had been going to church a lot. I always remember praying and asking, "Get well, get well." And when she died, it was like, "Screw God."

What was the first song on the album that I composed?

— Lovewhich features percussion made from a metal ladder. Many of the elements in the album's percussion are spaces of communication. For example, using a ladder to move from one place to another. In Pinch There are many doors. And in If you look out, windows.

In the album title, LoveYou're playing with the polysemy of the word in Spanish, right?

— Absolutely, yes. Now I feel like I own my voice, just as I want it to be. I'm the one who decides how to sing, how to speak. I also feel like I own the artistic vision: I can tell this story that has been told to me in silence, with my own sensitivity, choosing the words myself, driven by the imperative to love, by the power of love, which is what connects me so deeply to something that is very much a part of my essence: death, that person who is always with me, who isn't always there.

There's also a Maria Arnal with anger. The one from That they take from me, which unfolds verses about violence and stigmatization: "Let them throw me onto knives, / that deprive me of my voice. / Let them burn me at the stake, / let them nail me to the cross. / Let them impose a destiny upon me..."

— It's a song I couldn't write ten years ago. I had to write it now, at this age, because of everything I've experienced and how I'm now more aware of how things work. Before, I didn't have that maturity as a woman. Now I can sing it, because I've lived through many of the things I talk about. Or I've come to understand them from a much more feminist perspective on what a woman's body is; as a woman, simply for being a woman in everyday life, but also for being a woman's body in a project where you're the leader, and in the context of the music industry. I list the psychological, emotional, and physical torments that women's bodies have endured for centuries under patriarchy, but without sounding preachy. I don't want literalness, I want poetry, but truth.