1940 Carmen

“I’m in a different moment,” Mon Laferte tells Apple Music. “The pandemic rolled over me and there were many changes.” Chief among these was a fertility treatment that finally fulfilled her maternity dreams. Even though she wasn’t certain of her pregnancy until after the album was already completed, motherhood is an essential part of her new songs on *1940 Carmen*, maybe never more so than on the lullaby “Niña.” From the first chords of “Placer Hollywood,” a sparkling ode to California, her new album reveals itself as different from the folk leanings and lyrical turbulence of *Seis*, recorded in 2020 and released in 2021, just months before this album. “There is a different energy in the lyrics, and I think it comes from the way I was feeling then, very brave and free from so many things,” she says. Musically, *1940 Carmen*—which takes its title from the LA address where she lived while making the project—sounds inspired by Laurel Canyon folk rock, the gentle Californian psychedelia of the late ’60s and early ’70s, with a second half that is something of a return to the retro balladry of her early albums. “California shaped these songs into what they are,” she explains. “When I started writing, I was thinking of making an album with just guitar and vocals, but I was in a place with a deep musical history, and that poured into the music. It’s my sound; it’s the way I dreamed these songs would be.” Read on as she takes us through *1940 Carmen*, one track at a time. **“Placer Hollywood”** “I was staying right next to the Hollywood sign, right below those hills. I used to see it every time I went out of my apartment. One day, I went driving up to see how close I could get. I was listening to music on the car radio and this melody just came to me. I wrote it the day after Mother’s Day. I remember because there’s a line that says, ‘*Qué bueno revolcarnos en el Día de la Mamá*’ \[How good it feels to play around on Mother’s Day\]. I wanted to open the record with ‘Placer Hollywood’ because it’s the song that belongs to that place more than any other one.” **“Algo Es Mejor”** “I wasn’t pregnant yet, but as the song says, I could feel there was something better in me. Because, pregnancy or no pregnancy, I had made the decision to be a mother, to make a definitive change in my life. You need to be very brave to try to be a mother in such a way. And this is a song that I wrote because I felt brave, and I felt free. I was driving around Malibu, windows rolled down, down the Pacific coast, and it was impossible to not feel that freedom.” **“Good Boy”** “This is my favorite song on the album. Some parts I wrote originally in Spanish, but they didn’t sound as beautiful as in English. I translated the lyrics in Google, literally, and I started fixing and moving things around. It’s the first song I ever wrote in English, and I wasn’t even going to record it at first. Then, with the drive and the freedom that I found in LA between the pregnancy and the hormones, I told myself, ‘No, I’m going to record it. It’s my song.’ The end is like an orgasm, an explosion of love, happiness, and pleasure.” **“Supermercado”** “My hormones were going nuts. I was feeling very sensitive, and I went to Target with my partner. We had an argument, and at the same time, I kept thinking about how you can buy guns pretty much anywhere in the United States. You can buy bullets at a Walmart. I started writing the lyrics as notes on my phone then. It’s a simple song about what it seems to be about.” **“Niña”** “When I wrote this one, I didn’t know for sure that I was pregnant. That’s why it says, ‘I’ve waited for you’ and ‘I’ve dreamed about you.’ I called it ‘Niña’ \[girl\] because there are more beautiful words that rhyme with it than with ‘niño’ \[boy\] or ‘bebé’ \[baby\]. I found more poetry in ‘niña.’ It’s a love song and a lullaby. It was a hard decision to make, because it could be painful if I didn’t get pregnant in the end, but I was determined to have it on the album anyway.” **“Beautiful Sadness”** “I wanted a very simple song, with simple lyrics and a simple melody that was easy to play and remember. A lot of the albums I like have these kinds of gentle songs that anyone can get. It used to be called ‘Do You Really Love Me?’—after the first line—but it was too long. In the end, I felt that ‘Beautiful Sadness’ sounded more poetic.” **“Química Mayor”** “I’ve always loved music from the ’60s, and it’s very much a part of me. I was also listening a lot to the soundtrack for *The Man in the High Castle*, which is all ’60s songs—Brenda Lee and such, done by Beck, Angel Olsen, and other contemporary artists. ‘Química Mayor’ is a love letter, a love explosion, and a hormonal explosion at the same time. When I listen to the album now, I’m surprised that I was feeling so many different things—lots of anger, lots of frustration, and lots of happiness—in such a short period of time.” **“A Crying Diamond”** “The hormonal thing shook me so much that I ended up writing my own story, which is something that I normally don’t talk about with anyone. My hypersensitivity at the time is what allowed me to do it. I find it embarrassing—maybe a little tender, too—because I can’t really understand English. I really don’t speak the language. I can communicate basic things, but I couldn’t have a meaningful conversation with anyone. I feel that I don’t fully understand the lyrics, even if I wrote them myself. That’s what makes it less embarrassing.” **“No Soy Para Ti”** “This one came from an argument too. My partner is a little younger than me, not by much, but there’s this thing about age which tends to be harder on women. And then hormones complicate everything further.” **“Zombie”** “It’s about my altered states. I’ve been on antidepressants for a long time, and they leave you flat, so you don’t feel anything. Then, you stop them, and you feel everything. Plus, I don’t have my thyroid, so I take medication for that too. Sometimes I feel nothing at all, sometimes I’ll feel every single thing, and then there were the hormones. Pharmaceutical drugs are insane. It’s sad, but I’m another victim of this crazy world and all the medication I’ve taken my whole life.”

Since releasing Desechable, her 2011 debut album, Chilean singer/songwriter Mon Laferte has created an ever-evolving pattern across popular music.