Following on from the previous “Seremos” (2021), Ismael Serrano continues on his new album “The Song of Our Life” (2023) to “dismantle the cliché of the singer-songwriter and, above all, a pose that consists in it being a permanent loser and a culture of defeat.
“Firstly, because it does not correspond to reality, because I am doing well, although I still have my conflicts and struggles, and then because we have to learn to win, we have to claim success and strive for it, allow ourselves . “Celebrate our small victories in life,” he emphasizes in a conversation with EFE on topics such as “knowing how to win”.
He finds that this propensity for failure is very present in the left’s narrative, a narrative “that the right has invented to delegitimize the opponent and damage his reputation, as if you had to take an oath as a left-wing voter.” Poverty and live in absolute misery and give explanations when you are well.’
“In this country it also happens that someone else’s victory is seen as a personal defeat and we must recognize that there are indeed some privileges that explain some defeats, but that not everything is like that and that the fact that “It doesn’t hurt that someone is doing well.” “Live as if you were a failure,” says Serrano (Madrid, 1974), after ironically speaking about the paradoxes of the left in “The Fable of the Three Rabbits.”
About “The Song of Our Life” (Sony Music), the eleventh studio album of his career, he says that, although it may sound cliché, it is “an album of maturity”, both in terms of the themes it deals with and his own ” Effort to reconcile with the passage of time”.
“I’m not saying I can do it, but when I sing a song like ‘I love myself,’ it’s an exercise in self-esteem, to understand that it’s okay for time to pass, even if I don’t “More the boy am promise, and that makes me invisible in terms of seduction and work, because at this professional age, even taking your record to a radio station is punished,” he reflects.
It recognizes a way to defeat time, namely the search for timeless songs in the footsteps of the one “who allows you to make peace with the universe and understand the world and your life,” in short, “the song of ours life”. ‘, as the title and the cut that opens the album say, a search that remains.
“I don’t know if mine will be as immortal as one dreams, but I think they will last a while and outlive me, also because they don’t stop renewing themselves as soon as they deal with universal themes .”, even if it wasn’t their purpose, as is the case. of “Dad, tell me again”, which was about Bosnia and Vietnam and which has been renewed for more than 25 years because it seems that we cannot overcome certain obstacles,” he analyses.
He admits that when he was younger, he acted like he was too old (“When you’re inflexible and chubby and vain and think you have all the answers,” he insists), but that he now understands the “true.” has dimension of the routine of love” with which he was concerned. in one of his first songs, “Un muerte encierras,” which he now wanted to renew “with a different look, a simpler and rawer, more serious arrangement.”
“Over time you become more flexible, especially with parenthood, because you understand that you’re not the center of attention, which is very healthy for mental health and creativity because you’re no longer the center of the story,” says he says. Highlander.
This approach is clearly evident in “Un pedacito de tierra,” which deals with the destruction of the environment and the legacy left for children, but with a “window of hope.” “I believe that we are not up to the challenge of climate change, but that things will change when it is their turn to take responsibility in politics.”
Even if he maintains a certain epicness instrumentally that he inherited from “Seremos” in songs like the opening song or “Tiempo”, which features the rapper Nach, this album takes him to a place where he feels “comfortable”. feels, and that is so “that touch of folk that the song has with guitar and vocals, with different melodies than the usual ones in the author’s song”, as in “The Invisible Lovers” and the aforementioned “Saber Ganar” and “I Love Me” is the case.
He is even trying to bring a well-known bachata, “Burbujas de amor” by Juan Luis Guerra, to the area. “Someone once told me that if I listened to his demos, I would see that they sounded like Silvio Rodríguez songs; “They are great songs with an interesting poetic flight that have renewed the content of the genre and this song particularly appealed to me because it has a beautiful melody,” he argues.
An extensive “tour” through Uruguay and Argentina begins on October 7th with a first concert in Córdoba and recitals in cities such as Buenos Aires (from October 27th to 29th), followed by two stops in Mexico (in the capital). December 1st and in Puebla on December 2nd).
From December 15th he returns to Spain to play at the Salamanca Congress Palace and other places such as Madrid (Teatro Circo Price, January 27th and 28th) in a very acoustic and theatrical tour that seems like a dialogue with the “Breaking the fourth wall and a beautiful production seem to the audience, almost like a musical comedy.”