Entertainment
Belinda cannot be tamed. Her latest album, 'Indómita,' proves it
There is no containing a star of Belinda’s caliber.
In the making of her fifth studio album “Indómita,” the Mexican singer and actor began to understand that what made her hard to contain — in life, in love and in her career — was worth writing an album about.
“I was reading a book and all of a sudden the word ‘indómita’ appeared,” says Belinda in an audio call from her home in Mexico City. “For two days, I kept dreaming of that word. ‘Indómita, Indómita,’” says Belinda during a recent audio call from her home in Mexico City.
Out on June 5, “Indómita” is an assortment of corridos tumbados, reggaeton, rock and pop ballads with exciting collaborations — ranging from the American rock band Thirty Seconds to Mars to Latin stars like Tokischa and Tito Double P.
“This album is very special, not just for women but for everyone who feels untameable, who feels strong, who feels like a warrior,” she explains.
The title directly translates to indomitable, or untameable, a term that seems to perfectly suit the 35-year-old artist, whose long and prosperous career made her an international household name.
Born in Madrid, Spain, as Belinda Peregrín Schüll, but known widely by her mononym, Belinda began her legacy in Mexican television, taking on lead roles in early 2000’s childhood telenovelas like “Amigos x siempre,” “Aventuras en el tiempo,” and “Cómplices Al Rescate,” where she played a set of twins who has been separated at birth. She also broke through the Disney sphere, appearing in the popular 2006 sequel of “The Cheetah Girls 2” as Marisol, a Spanish pop star and competitor of the titular girl band.
Belinda’s music career has been equally as fruitful, including a stint as a singing coach on the TV competition “La Voz” and dozens of hit singles, such as the popular “Amor a Primera Vista,” a 2020 collaboration with Los Ángeles Azules and Lalo Ebratt. Her previous studio albums, 2003’s “Belinda,” 2006’s “Utopía,” 2010’s “Carpe Diem” and 2013’s “Catarsis” have all graced Billboard’s Top Latin Albums chart.
Her new LP marks a personal artistic triumph for the artist, given its unique regional Mexican edge. “300 Noches,” her 2024 corrido track with Natanael Cano, made No. 4 on the Mexican Billboard pop chart and appeared on the Billboard Global 200, making it Belinda’s first appearance on the chart. Other corridos tumbados, like the rugged “La Cuadrada” featuring Tito Double P and the blistering “Mírame Feliz” with Xavi, unleash a new alter ego of the famed singer known as “Beli bélica,” the latter of which means “warrior” in Spanish.
“With this album, I’d like to open up the door to more women to sing corridos tumbados of heartache,” says Belinda.
The record is already scorching hot, with songs like “Cactus” making a subtle, prickly nod to her past relationship with Mexican crooner Christian Nodal, who famously tattooed her eyes on his chest. There’s also the reggaeton-corrido fusion called “La Mala,” which coyly addresses the rumors that Belinda is a cold, calculated lover — which heightened in the wake of her high-profile relationship.
Still, her notoriety as a heartbreaker has simultaneously granted her sainthood status from fans, who created fake prayer cards of the enchanting star to bolster their own love life.
“This album was made up of things that we live every day,” says Belinda. “Someone breaks our heart, we feel better, we fall in love, they break our heart again and so forth. Life is like that.”
But “Indómita” is much more than Belinda’s foray into regional Mexican music; there’s also “Jackpot,” a dazzling club alongside Kenia Os, a tribute to lightning-fast cars in “Rayo McQueen” — and even her love of anime in “Death Note.”
“I’m a versatile artist and this record reflects that,” says Belinda.
This interview has been edited and shortened for clarity.
What motivated you to release this album over a decade after your last one, “Catarsis”?
I know it might seem like it’s been a long time, but I never left. I’ve always been involved in music. I’ve done collaborations with Los Ángeles Azules, “Amor a Primera Vista,” that was super popular, with Ana Mena in “Las 12,” Lola Indigo and Tiny in “La Niña de la Escuela,” with Juan Magán and Lapiz Conciente in “Si No Te Quisiera.”
I’ve made a lot of music, but obviously this record means so much to me. It’s not the same to work on collaborations and music for other artists as it is to do it for myself. The album is full of collaborations with Thirty Seconds to Mars, who are one of my favorite bands of all time. It also has Kenia Os, Tito Double P, Neton Vega, who’s a hard-hitting act in the world of reggaeton and corridos tumbados, and Natanael Cano, who I can’t forget either. It’s a complete album, with lots of different styles.
Many of the songs on this album are corridos tumbados. Why did you dive into that style of music?
It’s a really stigmatized genre, and a genre that is specifically for men and for certain kinds of lyrics. I wanted to break that [idea] and say that instruments used — like the trombone, the alto horn, tololoche — aren’t just for men or for specific lyrics or a specific market. There can be more romantic lyrics, a mixing of sounds like pop with urban music. The challenge was also getting my collaborators to believe in this too, since they are used to other topics, but everyone trusted me and believed in the song[s] since the beginning and it was organic.
Tell me more about your collaborations. What did you learn from them and what did you teach them?
They’re so talented and play instruments very well, especially Natanael Cano — you can tell him to play any instrument. He’s very talented. We were in the studio and he started to play a Metallica song and I was like, “Wow!” Although we might pigeonhole them into this genre, they’re very versatile and talented. I admire them.
One of the singles of this album, “Cactus,” talks about your feelings toward an ex. How did it feel to release your emotions? And would you say that it helped you heal, as the song suggests?
I love healing through music. The first phrase of the song goes: “Therapy helps, but music heals more bad-ass.” Perhaps I couldn’t express with words what I can through music. As a composer we express our emotions through our lyrics. But it’s also important that people remember that not everything is based on experiences. It’s music so that people can identify themselves in love or heartache. I never mention anyone by name, but people can make their own conclusions or deductions. At the end of the day, I make music for people who can relate to the lyrics.
You’ve been in the spotlight for so many years. Do you believe there are two Belindas that exist? As in, one that is for the public and one that’s just for close family members?
Of course, I can guarantee it. There’s also a song where I express that idea that many times people have categorized me as a bad character, “La Mala.” At the end of the day, I know who I am and the people around me know the heart that I have — my feelings and intentions, my day-to-day. That’s what counts for me. If I paid attention to every comment [people made of me], my God, I’d be locked up in a room without an exit, which sometimes does happen to me.
How do you tune out those outside critics?
I try not to see these things. Sometimes it’s inevitable but I’m also not going deep into the web to find what people are saying. I do other more productive things that nourish me.
Obviously it hurts, because even if certain comments are not true, they still hurt because they carry negative energy. I don’t want to give into these comments as truth, but that energy of negativity or insult or humiliation or anything that comes from a negative side, obviously has a consequence. So one has to be careful about how they express themselves, because there’s so much negativity that exists, so it would be nice if we could just throw a bit more of love.
I heard you’re a big anime fan, and you show that in your song “Death Note.” Why was it important to include that?
I’m [an] otaku, even if people don’t believe it. I really like anime. I’m a fan of “One Piece,” “Death Note,” everything, “Attack on Titan,” but “Death Note” is my favorite. It’s pretty dark, but Ryuk is one of my favorite characters in life. I’ve always been a fan of terror, because within the darkness, there’s always some light.
You were born in Spain but were raised in Mexico. How have you navigated both identities?
I can’t pick one or the other, but I’ve always considered myself Mexican, because I was raised in Mexico and my accent is Mexican. I’m very, very much Latina.
What advice would you give your younger self?
Don’t take everything so personally and enjoy life. When I was little, I would think too much about what the world thought. I was always like, “do you like it? Oh you don’t, why?” and I would suffer. And now if I like it, OK, and if no one else likes it, then too bad, I like it!
Entertainment
Bob Spitz proves the Rolling Stones are rock’s greatest band in magnificent new biography
By early 1963, the Station Hotel in London had become an epicenter of the burgeoning British blues scene. On a blustery, snowy night that February, the Rolling Stones’ classic early lineup took the stage for one of the first times, dazzling the audience with ferocious renditions of blues standards like Muddy Waters’ “I Want to Be Loved” and Jimmy Reed’s “Bright Lights, Big City.”
Multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones, the band’s founder and leader, synchronized guitars with Keith Richards, who favored a distinctive slashing and stinging style. Drummer Charlie Watts, the group’s newest member, a jazz aficionado and an accomplished percussionist, propelled the music forward with a rock-solid beat.
Anchoring the rhythm section with him was bassist Bill Wyman, who was recruited more for his spare VOX AC30 amp that the guitarists could plug into than for his musical skills. The stoic bassist proved a strong and innovative player. Together, he and Watts would go on to form one of rock’s most decorated rhythm sections.
Ian Stewart’s energetic boogie-woogie piano style rounded out the sound. Months later, manager Andrew Loog Oldham kicked him out of the band for being “ugly,” although Stewart continued to record, tour and serve as the band’s road manager until his death in 1985.
This April 8, 1964, file photo shows the Rolling Stones during a rehearsal. The members, from left, are Brian Jones, guitar; Bill Wyman, bass; Charlie Watts, drums; Mick Jagger, vocals; and Keith Richards, guitar.
(Associated Press)
Fronting the group was Mick Jagger. Channeling the music like a crazed shaman, Jagger shimmied and sashayed, owning the stage like few lead singers have before or since. By the end of the night, the Stones had the crowd in a frenzy. Although only 30 people had made it to the gig because of the treacherous weather conditions, the hotel’s booker had seen enough: He offered the Stones a regular gig.
“The Rolling Stones had caught fire. The music they were playing and the way they played it struck a chord with a young crowd starved for something different, something their own… It was soul-stirring, loud and uncompromising,” writes Bob Spitz in “The Rolling Stones: The Biography,” his magisterial work that charts the 60-year journey of “the greatest rock and roll band in the world.”
Spitz, the author of strong biographies on the Beatles and Led Zeppelin, as well as Ronald Reagan and Julia Child, captures the drama, trauma and betrayals that have kept the Stones in the public’s consciousness for more than six decades. It’s all here: The Stones’ evolution from a blues cover band to artistic rival of the Beatles; the musical peaks — “Aftermath,” “Let It Bleed” and “Exile on Main Street” as well as misfires like “Dirty Work”; Keith’s descent into a debilitating heroin addiction that nearly destroyed him and the band; the death of the ‘60s at the ill-fated Altamont free concert; Marianne Faithfull, Anita Pallenberg, Bianca Jagger, Jerry Hall and other lovers, partners and muses; the breakups, makeups and crackups; and perhaps most important, the unbreakable bond between Jagger and Richards at the center of it all.
Although Spitz unearths little new information, he excels at presenting the Stones in glorious Technicolor. Spitz homes in on the telling details and anecdotes that give the band’s story a deep richness and poignancy.
Take “Satisfaction,” the Stones’ 1965 classic and first U.S. chart topper. The oft-told story is that Richards woke up in the middle of the night, grabbed the guitar that was next to his bed, and recorded the iconic riff and the phrase “I can’t get no … satisfaction” on a cassette recorder in his Clearwater, Fla., hotel room before falling back asleep. But as Spitz notes, the song initially went nowhere in the studio. That is until Stewart purchased a fuzz box for Richards a few days later, which gave the tune a raunchier sound that perfectly matched Jagger’s lyrics of frustration and alienation. A classic was born.
Piercing the Stones mythology
Spitz’s deep reporting often pierces the mythology surrounding the band. Contrary to the popular belief of many fans, for instance, Jones bears much of the responsibility for the rift with his bandmates and his tragic demise.
The most musically adventurous member of the group — he plays sitar on “Paint It Black” and dulcimer on “Lady Jane” — Jones wasn’t a songwriter. That stoked his jealousies and insecurities, along with frontman Jagger stealing the spotlight from him. A monster of a man, Jones impregnated multiple teenage girls and physically and emotionally abused several women, including Pallenberg. Perhaps that’s why she left him for Richards. Over time, Jones made fewer contributions in the studio and onstage, becoming a catatonic drug casualty. The Stones fired Jones in June 1969 but would have been justified doing so a couple years earlier. He drowned in his pool less than a month later.
Author Bob Spitz
(Elena Seibert)
Similarly, Stones lore has long romanticized the making of “Exile on Main Street” in the stifling, dingy basement of Richards’ rented Villa Nellcôte in the South of France, where the Stones had decamped to avoid British taxes. In this telling, Richards, deep in the throes of heroin addiction, somehow managed to come up with one indelible riff after another built around his signature open G tuning — taught to him by Ry Cooder — leading the band to create one of the best albums in rock history. That’s not entirely accurate, according to Spitz.
Yes, Richards came up with the licks for “Rocks Off,” “Happy” and “Tumbling Dice.” But it’s equally true that a strung-out Richards missed myriad recording sessions, invited dealers, hangers-on and other distractions to Nellcôte, and repeatedly failed to turn up to write with Jagger. Far from completing the album in the druggy haze of a French basement, the band spent six months on overdubs at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles, where Jagger contributed many of his vocals.
Beatles vs. Stones
One of the more interesting themes Spitz develops is the symbiotic relationship between the Beatles and Stones, with the Fab Four mostly overshadowing them — until they didn’t.
John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote “I Wanna Be Your Man” and gave it to the Stones, whose 1963 rendition, with Jones on slide guitar, became the group’s first UK Top 20 hit. The Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership inspired Jagger and Richards to begin penning their own songs. In early 1964, the Beatles came to the U.S. for the first time, making television history with their appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and playing Carnegie Hall. A few months later, the Stones kicked off their inaugural American tour at the Swing Auditorium in San Bernardino. In 1967, the Beatles released “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” a psychedelic masterpiece. The Stones responded with “Their Satanic Majesties Request,” a psychedelic mess.
The Rolling Stones: The Biography cover
As the Beatles began to splinter, Spitz writes, the Stones sharpened their focus. The band released “Beggars Banquet” in late 1968 and “Let It Bleed” the following year, albums every bit as innovative and visionary as “The White Album” and “Abbey Road.” For the first time, the two groups stood as equals.
When the Beatles broke up in 1970, the Stones kept rolling. With Jones replaced by virtuoso guitarist Mick Taylor — whose fluid, melodic style served as a tasty foil to Richards — they produced what many consider their finest works, “Sticky Fingers” and “Exile on Main Street.” More impressively, the band, with Taylor’s successor, Ronnie Wood, has continued to dazzle audiences with incendiary live shows, touring as recently as 2024 behind the late-career triumph “Hackney Diamonds.” The Beatles, by contrast, retired from the road in 1966 and devoted their energies to the studio.
Hundreds of books have been written about the Rolling Stones, but few sparkle quite like Spitz’s. For anyone who loves or even likes the Stones, it’s indispensable.
Like most of the band’s biographers, Spitz gives short shrift to the post-“Exile” period after 1972. He curtly dismisses 2005’s strong “A Bigger Bang” and 2016’s “Blue & Lonesome,” a back-to-basics album of blues covers, as “adequate endeavors that signaled a band living on borrowed time.” That critique is both off target and under-developed. Spitz ignores the band’s legendary live album, “Brussels Affair,” recorded in 1973, or why the band waited decades before officially releasing it.
These are small quibbles. Spitz has written a book worthy of its 704-page length; another 50 or so pages covering the later years would have made it even stronger. To quote the Rolling Stones: “I know it’s only rock ‘n roll, but I like it, like it, yes, I do.”
Marc Ballon, a former Times, Forbes and Inc. Magazine reporter, teaches an advanced writing class at USC. He lives in Fullerton.
‘4’, the opening track on Richard D James’ (Aphex Twin) self titled 1996 album is a piece of music that beautifully balances the chaotic with the serene, the oppressive and the freeing. It’s a trick that James has pulled off multiple times throughout his career and it is a huge part of what makes him such an iconic and influential artist. Many people have laid the “next Aphex Twin” label on musicians who do things slightly different and when you actually hear their music you realise that, once again, the label is flawed and applied with a lazy attitude. Why mention this? Well, it turns out we’ve been looking for James’ heir apparent in the wrong artform. We’ve so zoned in on music that we’ve not noticed that another Celtic son of Cornwall is rewriting an art form with that highwire balancing act between chaos and beauty. That artist is writer, director and composer Mark Jenkin who over his last two feature films has announced himself as an idiosyncratic voice who is creating his very own language within the world of cinema. Jenkin’s films are often centred around coastal towns or islands and whilst they are experimental or even unsettling, there is always a big heart at the centre of the narrative. A heart that cares about family, tradition, culture, and the pull of ‘home’. Even during the horror of 2022’s brilliant Enys Men you were anchored by the vulnerability and determination of its main protagonist.
This month sees the release of Jenkin’s latest feature film, Rose of Nevada, which is set in a fractured and diminished Cornish coastal town. One day the fishing boat of the film’s title arrives back in harbour after being missing for thirty years. The boat is unoccupied. And frankly that is all the information you are going to get because to discuss any more plot would be unfair on you and disrespectful to Jenkin and the team behind the film. You the viewer should be the one who decides what it is about because thematically there are so many wonderful threads to pull on. This writer’s opinions on what it is about have ranged from a theme of sacrifice for the good of a community to the conflict within when part of you wants to run away from your roots whilst the other half longs to stay and be a lifelong part of its tapestry. Is it about Brexit? Could be. Is it about our own relationships with time and our curation of memory? Could be. Is it about both the positives and negatives of nostalgia? Could be. As a side note, anyone in their mid-40s, like me, who came of age in the 1990s will certainly find moments of warm recognition. Is the film about ghosts and how they haunt families? Could be…I think you get the point.
The elements that make the film so well balanced between chaos and calm are many. It is there in the differing performances between the brilliant two lead actors George MacKay and Callum Turner. It is there in the sound design which fluctuates from being unbearably harsh and metallic, to lulling and warm. It is there in the editing where short, sharp close ups on seemingly unimportant factors are counterbalanced with shots that are held for just that little bit too long. For a film set around the sea, it is apt that it can make you feel like you’re rolling on a stomach churning storm one minute, or a calming low tide the next. Dialogue can be front and centre or blurred and buried under static. One shot is bathed in harsh sunlight whilst the next can be drowned in interior shadows.
Rose of Nevada is Mark Jenkin’s most ambitious film to date yet he has not lost a single iota of innovation, singularity of vision or his gift for telling the most human of stories. It is a film that will tell you different things each time you see it and whilst there are moments that can confuse or beguile, there is so much empathy and love that it can leave you crying tears of emotional understanding. It is chaotic. It is beautiful. It is life……
Rose of Nevada is released on the 24th April.
Mark Jenkin Instagram | Threads
Released through the BFI – Instagram | Facebook
Review by Simon Tucker
Keep up to date with all new content on Joyzine via our
Facebook | Bluesky | Instagram | Threads | Mailing List
Related
-
Politics3 minutes agoGovernor’s race wildly unpredictable two weeks before Californians receive ballots
-
Sports15 minutes agoRod Martin, Raiders Super Bowl hero and USC standout, dies at 72
-
World27 minutes ago‘Predators’: Amnesty slams Netanyahu Putin, Trump, as human rights decline
-
News57 minutes agoThe Onion has agreed to a new deal to take over Infowars
-
New York2 hours agoGotti Grandson Is Sentenced to 15 Months for Covid Relief Fraud
-
Detroit, MI3 hours agoWhy a Detroit family’s $300 brick repair job turned into a fraud investigation
-
San Francisco, CA3 hours agoSea lion pup found in San Francisco’s Outer Sunset malnourished but ‘feisty’
-
Dallas, TX3 hours agoDallas Cowboys 2026 NFL Draft debate heats up