In a world that spins faster every day, where attention spans last less than an Instagram story, Fito Paez chooses to go against the grain. At 62, the singer-songwriter from Rosario returns with Novela, a musical odyssey-essay-album that’s been three decades in the making. From the Sony Music offices in New York, wearing dark glasses and exuding an effortless presence, the artist spoke with CREMA about the long journey that led to this new chapter, the role of technology as an enemy of art, and why creating an album about love today is a subversive act.
1“This was born as a film and an album, like Quadrophenia by The Who,” said Fito Paez from the Sony studio. The seed of Novela began in 1988, but time and the chaos of life kept it from coming to fruition. It wasn’t until Sony Spain offered him a 24/7 studio for a month and a half that Paez was able to finish the work. “I composed 17 new songs and gave the album its final body through composition and arrangements,” he explained.
Music, for Paez, isn’t planned like an algorithm. “The construction of a work always has many stages. I always remember Stravinsky when he said, ‘Set yourselves a frame, because the ocean of music is infinite,’” he recalled. In Novela, there was intuition, structure, rigor, and also a lot of improvisation. “Between order and chaos is where I’ve created work. Now, chaos is not art. Art brings order.”
2The album didn’t start as a political statement. However, according to Fito, saying the word “love” nowadays can already make it a reality. “Coincidentally, talking about love today seems like a terrorist act,” he said. Novela is an ode to adventure, mystery, humor, and, of course, love. “There are ideas tied to power, to structures… but I don’t want to give clues. What’s interesting is that it seems political, but it wasn’t made that way.”
At a time when the industry prioritizes algorithms over melody, Paez walks the opposite path. “People don’t want to listen for endless reasons, but it’s not because we’re in the middle of a nuclear war. It’s a global mood… I don’t have that issue. Sorry, I won’t adapt to your new, conservative, ultra-conservative manners. Sorry.” For Paez, “conservative” isn’t about politics—it’s about complacency. It’s the loss of imagination, the fear of risk, the surrender of the revolutionary instinct that once drove artists to push boundaries, to challenge systems, to make history. In a world that rewards sameness, he chooses disruption.
3The recording of the album had an almost mythical nature: recorded at Abbey Road, mixed in Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, and Santiago. But Novela also revolves around a center: Circo Beat, that universe Paez created, now returning as a symbolic axis. “The circus comes to shake up those [bourgeois] structures a bit, and it causes a huge mess between the town and the circus. That’s also another major conflict within the work.”
In Fito’s words, Novela isn’t magical realism, but something more pagan: “I go back to the stories my Aunt Charito told me about the dead and the witches who wandered the villages at odd hours.” The work pits scholarly knowledge against folk wisdom. “In the end, pagan knowledge ends up solving everything. That’s the beauty of the circus’s symbolism.”
4“It means you weren’t domesticated,” he said without hesitation when asked about his need to keep composing. “I’ve never seen young people as conservative as they are now. It’s hard to say and to feel. But as an intellectual, I have to face it.” And he does—with action: with an album, with an essay titled Music in Times of Mass Dementia, with melodies that dare to exist.
“Guys, what’s up with melodies? What about ideas? Everything is about shaking your ass, giving money… Honestly, it’s pretty sad to hear the world’s popular music today with those ideas. It’s really sad,” he said bluntly. “The world’s popular music was The Beatles, Mercedes Sosa, Jobim, Dylan… Sorry, I have a memory!” Paez isn’t trying to adapt to the algorithm. He’s not here to entertain. He’s here to compose, to disrupt, to organize chaos. In 2025, making a work like Novela is a way of saying: not everything is lost. There’s still room for beauty, for the spirit, and yes—for disobedience.
