Photo Courtesy of Cole Santiago
If you don’t know Girl Ultra, she is Mexico City's R&B queen, and she’s about to be your favorite artist. Her [COLORS](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKqfvelbb6w) session has seen more than 1 million views, and her single "Dame Love (feat. Cuco)" has 10 million total streams. She is a proud Latina, and has made it her mission to promote the evolution of the R&B genre in Latin America.
Girl Ultra returns today with a new single and video, “Rosas”, that plays with the genres of Mexican bolero, club music, and street pop. When explaining the song the artist says, “\[it’s about\] that mumble that you make when trying to get the words out, when you are all passionate and nervous about something or someone.”
With an EP coming out later this year, Girl Ultra’s power is just beginning to set off. Read below for an in on her persona, her inspirations, and her creative process.
**How would you describe your sound?**
My sound… Maybe an obsession for nostalgia. Trying to fit in into a brighter future. I am really obsessed with nostalgia, and I recognize that.
**How would you describe yourself as a singer?**
I am going to get a little bit technical but I have a pretty nasal voice and I feel like it’s so bright that it reminds me of the Michael Jackson and Janet era, it’s just very silky. That’s on the technical side, and as a singer, I don’t know, I feel like I am a vessel of the message that I try to carry, from my most realistic and honest persona to this diva that I try to shape into. So myself, as Mariana, I design the whole thing, and the singer, Girl Ultra, is who puts it out there.
**Where did Girl Ultra come from? How did the persona come about?**
I feel like she was an alter ego I always had, and throughout the years I just found out that she’s more part of myself than I thought. I don’t know, it’s an overpowering thing that comes out sometimes. I am a pretty shy person most of the time, and Girl Ultra is not. I am not going to say she is the complete opposite, but she just has it out there, she knows her shit.
**Why did you choose “Rosas” as your next single?**
“Rosas” was the first song that I wrote last year while I was trying to find this very raw sonically and lyrically feeling, and I wanted to experiment with a genre that I grew up with in my family, that is bolero, Mexican bolero, but I was in a pretty experimental phase, and I still am. I am also a DJ so I love club music, and street pop, and all of these deconstructed sounds, jungle, UK garage, I really like those little elements that are unsettling, so I was like ‘I might as well add some street pop textures, and then a jungle callbone here and there,’ and it just deconstructed into this beautiful piece that I never thought I would come into. That’s why I chose “Rosas,” it was a very raw experiment. Also vocally, I used to add a lot of effects on my voice, like recalling all of these reverses from the 70s and 80s, and Lee Simon was like ‘no, the voice has to be on top of everything, and very raw.’ That’s what it’s all about, the rawness of the song.
**What was the inspiration for the music video?**
Actually, it became a community inspiration. At first, I wrote the video by myself, and then I presented it to this girl, Santiago, who is a producer and director from Los Angeles, and she took my treatment and reached out and we started working from there, deconstructing the emotion of the video. It was all about the emotion and making it bigger as the video goes on. This idea of laying roses for somebody, this tribute. Lyrically the song is about trying to find the words to express something to somebody, that mumble that you make when trying to get the words out, when you are all passionate and nervous about something or someone. We just wanted to make it exponentially big, with the fire, and burning the roses. We shot on film, which I was very excited about.
A pretty important thing about the video is that I never expected to be in an all girl crew, they were all mostly girls, and I was topless and felt completely comfortable being around women and being comfortable with my body. I think it’s a power move for myself, and how I see myself.
**Can you tell us a little bit about your creative process when writing a song?**
It fluctuates a lot. Inspiration changed a lot for me last year, cause I usually like to drag things from stuff I hear on the street, or crazy nights out, or things that happen in the city on that surrealistic basis. And now I try to find all that surrealism in my head, or in my house. I usually write a lot of stuff, not necessarily songs, and then I make music, I start with a producer and go back to my drafts and go ‘okay, this definitely sounds like this,’ and I put them together and start shaping from there. Sometimes I write a song with no music, it just changes a lot.
Photo Credit: David Orlandy
**What has been the biggest influence or inspiration in your music?**
As an artist I recently recognized that Björk is such a key point of what I want to be as an artist. I really love all the phases and development that she’s been through, and I love how eloquent she is about her emotions and what is happening around that. She filters all of the outside factors through her. I really love her vision of life and love.
**How did you start singing? Was it always a dream?**
Yes, it always was. I could never picture myself doing something else. But I like things that compliment that, I really love cinema, and directing videos, but yeah nothing ever made me feel like making music does. I never went to school for music or anything, I just started writing in my room when I was probably 14 or 13, and it came into a reality when I was in high school and I met this guy and we started a band and we skipped school and never went into classes because we had to register our songs and stuff, and it started from there.
**What did you grow up listening to?**
That’s tough. Uhm. A lot of Mexican rock. My dad was very into Rock en Español. My dad is pretty musical, but he is a dentist, but he has the biggest collection of music. He got me into Aretha Franklin. But then he would come with Pink Floyd and say ‘you have to listen to this!’ My parents got divorced and every 15 days that we used to hang he would be like ‘okay I brought you these CDs, you have to listen to these,’ so he just gave me this musical criteria that was pretty diverse. And my mom was all about cheesy pop from the 80, and baladas. So I just dragged inspiration from everywhere. And I am grateful about that because there’s no guilty pleasure or anything. I enjoy all kinds of music. I listen to everything I can.
**I know you have an EP coming out, I don’t know how much you can say, but if you can give us a hint or something about what we can expect?**
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So “Rosas'' is the first experiment of this EP. I’ve been experimenting with a lot of genres and I feel like this time off the world gave me time to actually understand what I can take from different genres and how to incorporate them into what Girl Ultra is right now. So it’s going to be pretty experimental with a pop factor. It’s going to come out probably around the half of the year, but it’s a crazy time so I don’t know. But it’s definitely coming out this year, and I am pretty excited about that. All of my compositions have been turning into a very honest part of myself and I am excited about putting that part of me out there, and yeah I’ve been working with in-house producers that are also my friends and I feel comfortable about that.
**Is it only in Spanish or is it a mix of Spanish and English?**
Mostly Spanish. I feel like English is a big part of my life. I have a lot of friends that spoke English since I was very young, so it’s part of me but my music is mostly in Spanish. What I want to do is develop the genre of R&B in Spanish, I feel like the development is not sonically, the music is always going to develop itself, but the language is more difficult, and I feel like that’s my responsibility. Articulating words and ideas in Spanish is raw and beautiful. ‘Es muy crudo, es muy bello.’
**What are some steps we can take to make the industry more open for Spanish singers?**
Getting rid of the idea of competition. Women everywhere, we are always in competition. Not because of ourselves but because people put us there. Right now we need to provide opportunities to other women, and I feel like competition just makes it too narrow for that to happen. I feel like there’s space for everybody and the more the merrier, and the more opportunities you, as a woman, can create for other women, the better.
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