For Natalia Lafourcade, every moment in life is a precise key to the fabric carried beneath the skin. Not only because it’s a conviction immortalized in her iconic song “Hasta La Raíz,” but because, when speaking with her, there is not the slightest trace of doubt.
Speaking from Mexico City, Natalia Lafourcade joins our call in a red jacket, her hair down, her face free of makeup, and the smile of someone who has traveled far enough to be deeply aware of the moment she’s living. Meanwhile, I had to contain my excitement at speaking face-to-face with the icon of adolescence for many Latin American women who grew up with her songs.
Natalia is doing press to promote her new single, “Amor Clandestino,” and to announce her most extensive North American tour since 2018, her “Cancionera Tour.” CREMA had the pleasure of speaking with Natalia about her career, her current project, and the importance of honoring the songs that have “sought her out,” as she describes, for over twenty years.
1It has been twenty-four years of career, eleven studio albums, four Grammy Awards, eighteen Latin Grammys, and an entire generation that knows “En el 2000” and “Nunca es suficiente” by heart. But for Natalia, her story with music isn’t summed up in numbers, but in an organic path filled with devotion, transformation, and intimacy.
Since releasing her self-titled debut album in 2002, her evolution has been profound, intimate, and constant. Her voice—a lyrical soprano with an unmistakable tone—has been the guiding thread of a career that’s taken her from pop culture to deeply rooted folk, from the stage of the Latin Grammys to the Oscars.
Today, at 41, Natalia Lafourcade says her path has been one of “a lot of love for music, a lot of devotion to my passion and my service as well.” She assures her career has been “very organic, very natural,” and that music has become her purest form of expression, almost like an intimate diary of her life.
“I believe that, just like all people who are constantly transforming, for me the reflection of those transformations I’ve experienced is in the music I’m making,” she tells us. “And that is reflected in each moment… all that is happening inside me.”
“Music has become my way of expressing myself, of releasing,” she says. “A kind of diary of my life, the things I live, what I process, my transformations.”
But also—and she says this with special affection—there is the complicity with the audience. That connection she has built from the beginning has given meaning to her creative process. “I always know that whatever I’m going to do, if I open the door and say ‘I want to show this,’ that has a port above,” she says.
2Her new single, “Amor Clandestino,” is not just a song: it’s a spiritual experience born from a dream and recorded in a single take, on analog tape, at Sony Music Studios in Mexico City. The track features flamenco icons Israel Fernández and Diego del Morao.
The collaboration emerged after a series of encounters between Natalia and Israel at events like the Latin Grammys and the Goya Awards. “I told him, ‘Take me to the flamenco party you’re going to.’ I wanted him to steal me away from my world.” And that’s how, alone with her suitcase, Natalia took a train to Jerez de la Frontera, where they spent days sharing life and music.
“I’m always surrounded by lots of people, but I arrived alone on a train with my little suitcase… and those days were very beautiful.” Natalia is drawn to what’s lived, what’s imperfect, what vibrates with honesty: that’s why flamenco captivates her. And that’s why collaborating with Israel and Diego was, as she herself says, “one of the most beautiful, emotional, and inspiring things” she’s ever experienced.
“I think I had a lot of stimulus. From conversations, stories, sharing experiences of love and heartbreak as friends,” she explains how the song was born. “And I got inspired. I woke up with the song in my head.”
3Speaking about her new single, Natalia told us how, once again, arriving at flamenco was organic. “It’s a music that demands truth, a lot of honesty in how you interpret it and how you allow it to pass through you,” she said. Despite her nerves, Natalia knew she wanted to live the experience from the roots: in the place, with the people, without filters.
She had already explored that deep connection in projects like Musas and Un Canto por México, where she reconnected with traditional Latin American music. The latter, released in 2020, donated its proceeds to reconstruct the Son Jarocho Documentation Center after the 2017 earthquakes.
“They ask me: why do you love folk music so much? Because that’s where the naturalness of things lives,” she explained.
After touring the world with her album De Todas Las Flores, Natalia returns to the stage with her most personal tour to date. The Cancionera Tour will travel to cities across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, including iconic theaters like the Chicago Theatre, the Kennedy Center, and Miami’s Adrienne Arsht Center.
For Natalia, this tour is more than a series of concerts: it’s a way to honor her story and the songs that have accompanied her.
“I had the dream of meeting my audience like in the beginning… just me with my guitar, my songs, celebrating the song and celebrating myself as a cancionera,” she tells us about her new tour.
With this tour, Lafourcade wants to share the intimacy she lives with her songs in her room, her intimate space, or her imagination, as if the stage were her own universe.
“The stage is a sacred place,” she says. “And this tour is a way of reconfiguring myself from there, of reconnecting with the songs and thanking them for arriving.”
4“Often I go looking for them, and they play hard to get,” she says, laughing. “But many times they come and knock on my door.”
Throughout her career, songs like “Hasta la raíz,” “Nunca es suficiente,” and “Tú sí sabes quererme” have accompanied millions of people. But for Natalia, those songs have also come to her with a purpose.
“It’s a collaboration. It’s inspiration. I value it greatly,” she assures.
Now, after more than two decades of career, Natalia can’t imagine herself off the path of song. “I still see myself spending a long time on the road of sharing music,” she affirms.
With every album, every collaboration, every intimate or massive concert, she reaffirms that she’s here to keep singing from the deepest place. As if every note, every verse, were a key to understanding not just her life, but ours too.
And while the world keeps spinning, Natalia keeps writing her story—one song at a time.
