The productive Mon Laferte pandemic: Painting, Grammys and motherhood – Fotech.cl

Mon Laferte knew how to take advantage of the pandemic. He made two controversial murals in Valparaíso, he gave us interesting songs both alone and in collaboration with other artists, he recorded two albums widely valued by the public and critics; and ended up fulfilling the dream of getting pregnant.

The beginning of the pandemic caught Mon Laferte just coming out of his successful presentation at the Viña 2020 Festival, and being part of a tribute to Soda Stereo led by the surviving members of the iconic Argentine band, Zeta Bossio and Charly Alberti. As happened to the entire culture industry, its schedule of live shows was frozen. However, he continued to make interesting musical proposals. In mid-2020 he gave us “Biutiful”, a great rock song and artisan production very well received and that earned him his third Latin Grammy by winning the category Best Rock Song at the awards ceremony that year. Around the same time, a collaboration with La Sonora Dinamita appeared singing “No one knows my suffering”. At the end of that year, he made a collaboration with the Spanish icon Raphael for his album “Raphael 6.0” doing a remarkable cover of “Frente a Frente”, classic eighties landmark of the Spanish-British singer Jeanette.

At the beginning of 2021, Mon went to Valparaíso to develop another of his talents: painting. Together with his team, he made two separate murals that caused controversy at the national level, either to criticism for the quality of his work or to issues with the municipal permits to carry it out. Her active role in supporting the social outbreak of October 2019, and in particular her remembered performance at the Latin Grammys of that year, earned her the resentment of certain conservative sectors in Chile, who took advantage of this event to take their toll on her. All this managed to position her as a plastic artist. The Spanish painter and youtuber Antonio García Villarán dedicated two videos to the event, the first commenting on what happened, Y the second with a long and pleasant interview with Mon. It is not less than a novice plastic artist has attracted the attention and received good feedback from the most popular Spanish-speaking art critic on YouTube, known for his harshness in criticizing what he does not like and who in his videos has mercilessly destroyed the work of many totems from the art world such as Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Salvador Dalí, Vincent van Gogh, Frida Kahlo, Yoko Ono, Bansky, Jackson Pollock and Bob Ross. In the end, it all ended in free God-level advertising for Mon and for Valparaíso.

In 2021, Mon Laferte broke through making two notable albums. At the beginning of April he published “Six”, a beautiful tribute to Mexican music, which includes collaborations with Alejandro Fernández (“Let our love be known”), Gloria Trevi (“The Woman”), Mujeres del Viento Florido (“Se va la vida”) and La Arrolladora Banda El Limón by René Camacho (“My heart is going to burn”). This album earned him his fourth Latin Grammy in the recent installment, in the Best Songwriter Album category, and allowed him his first Anglo-Saxon Grammy nomination in the Best Regional Mexican Album category. Later this year, as an initially unplanned product of her successful pregnancy process, launches “1940 Carmen”, an album that includes his first three songs in English, “Good Boy”, “Beautiful Sadness” and the crude “A Crying Diamond”, in which he recounts an experience of sexual abuse that he suffered at the age of 13.

In between, he collaborated with Nicki Nicole on the song “Pensamos” and was part of “The Metallica Blacklist”, a tribute album to the metal band Metallica, where various artists covered the songs from their iconic “Black Album”. Mon Laferte dared with “Nothing Else Matters”, song to which he gave his own stamp when interpreted in Spanish and with a delicious orchestral arrangement of Andean inspiration. In this song the talent of the Chilean (and her collaborators Manú Jalil and Sebastián Aracena) is appreciated to appropriate songs from other artists and take them to their world. They transformed a classic metalhead into an exquisite Andean fantasy that is perfect for Los Jaivas, Inti Illimani, Illapu or Quilapayún. In this time, Mon has managed to give us several covers such as “Guilty or No” (Luis Miguel), “Love” (Zoé), “La Gata Bajo La Lluvia” (Rocío Durcal), “Bachata Rosa” (Juan Luis Guerra), “Tantas Veces” (Andrés Calamaro) and “Wish You Were Gay” (Billie Eilish)

Mon Laferte did take advantage of the pandemic. She is taking advantage of doing the last backboard concerts in North America before the break to have her daughter. She put down a lot of advance work to keep her career going while she dedicates herself to the beautiful work of being a mother.

On more than one occasion I have heard about the “Holy Trinity” of Chilean music, formed by Violeta Parra, Víctor Jara and Jorge González. I believe that we must make room on that podium for two more icons: the recently deceased Patricio Manns … and Mon Laferte. I don’t think we have dimensioned the world-class artist that we have in her. Portentous voice, songs that bristle the skin, quality music, artistic versatility (he does rock, ballad, funk, cumbia, bolero, reggaeton, ranchera, metal,… ..and everything works out for him). Every album I make is better than the last, which were already excellent. Mon is still the best singer in Chile today by massacre, and I hope we have her for much longer.