The mythical starlet of Mexico - Thalía

Thalía is, arguably, Latin America’s most popular female singer. She also happens to be the official queen of telenovelas, and thanks to this her popularity in many parts of the world has been steadily increasing over the years. Philippines and Eastern Europe in particular, have rapidly warmed up to her, so much so that, in 1997, she released a CD specifically for the Philippine market, the massively successful Nandito Ako, and her sales in Poland, Hungary and Russia are impressively high. Thalía has also contributed to maintain her prominent position in the pecking order of the Latin world by becoming involved with a string of influential (and increasingly powerful) men throughout her life. Thanks to her ever more sophisticated public image and an apparently innocent and carefree demeanour in spite of her wealth, her legions of adoring fans can only be happy and admired at Thalía’s slow, but steady, climb to the top of the Spanish-speaking music world… especially when one has in count that she only had a severely limited talent to begin with, and isn’t exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Born into an affluent family on August 26, 1971, Thalía belongs to a short, but very successful tradition of entertainers: her much older sister has been a very popular soap opera actress for decades, and her mother fancied herself a proficient pianist during her youth. Thus it’s normal that, in such an environment, she would start working on television from an early age. In 1984, aged thirteen, Thalía participated in a stage production of Grease along a few members of Timbiriche, then a massively popular (and awfully bad) teenage-oriented band. Thanks to this, she would become a part of the group’s line up, eventually overshadowing most of the other members. I’d like to mention that the people behind Timbiriche ought to be tried for crimes against humanity, since not only was their music shit, but some of the worst Latin pop singers ever have come out of it. By all means, do not buy any of their albums (I bought their greatest hits, and am still regretting it).



However, where does Thalía’s appeal lie? From the very first moment she set foot on a scenario with Timbiriche and started proffering wavering whines (which were often mimicked by her eternal rival and overt enemy, the disastrous, yet much more commercially successful Paulina Rubio), the public became enthralled by the same childish smile, shrill voice and air of Lolita-esque sexuality that she preserves to this day. As her determination to be taken seriously as an artist strengthened more and more, Thalía was seen making concise efforts to improve her hideous voice, to the point when nowadays she can sing live without inspiring laughter. It is thus in that combination of infantile traits, discipline and a certain vulgarity that she carefully injects in her speech and manners that Thalía’s enormous appeal resides. Simply put, she just appears like a salacious, populace-oriented and harmless version of the ideally white next-door-girl that many would like to marry.

Anyway, in 1990 Thalía was popular and well-known enough as to be able to afford leaving the band, which she promptly did to pursue a career as both an actress and singer. While her participating in telenovelas is excusable up to a certain point (let’s face it, they aren’t exactly examples of sublime artistry), her first three albums are simply dismal: I never thought it was possible to find an album where all songs were rubbish, until I heard Thalía’s first ‘musical’ perpetrations. Still, they all became enormous hits. By 1992 she had already become the queen of soap operas (a crown that she hasn’t relinquished yet in spite of the fact that it’s been almost a decade since she last acted in a telenovela), and great changes took place. Her until then lover, producer and manager died (it is rumoured that he died of complications caused by his frequent overuse of drugs, but nothing has ever been clarified regarding this matter), and Thalía’s career took a turn for the better. She signed for EMI and started working with quasi-legendary producer Emilio Estefan, who gave her good material for a change!



From then onwards, Thalía has gone from strength to strength, releasing a string of increasingly good albums with even better singles, which came to an abrupt halt when she decided to cross over into the English-speaking market. Uneasy with the language and given the sort of lifeless songs that only a catatonic person would find exciting, Thalía gracelessly stumbled and fell flat on her face, not before making an embarrassment of herself in what has to be the tackiest and most pretentious wedding in history – from Tommy Mottola’s ridiculous overweight, washed up Il Padrino-styled looks to Thalía having to be held in place by her retinue due to the enormous weight of her absurdly large dress… with a 16 metre long veil (please, just please). Oh, and the wedding took place amidst a legion of screaming fans! That’s classy.

Well, I think that I’ve spoken enough about Thalía. However, I can’t finish this article without recommending you to buy her latest album El Sexto Sentido, which is a simply fabulous return to form, and feature’s Thalía’s best vocals ever. Well, here’s the selection I’ve made, which I hope you’ll like! Her albums are available almost everywhere, but Amazon is always the safest bet.

Mujer Latina/Latin Woman

This song was the biggest hit from Thalía's 1997 enormously successful album Amor A La Mexicana/Love Mexican Style. Far from the surprisingly dull rubbish that people like Ricky Martin, Jennifer Lopez and Thalía herself would release a few years later to try to break the American market (apparently, the concepts ‘good music’ and ‘crossover’ don’t go well together), this is a simply infectious song that shot to the top of the charts virtually everywhere, including the market which is most reluctant to warm up to Latin American artists, Spain. Evidently, this song did deserve the success it was given, and it is one of Thalía's few truly magical moments. Video.

Piel Morena/Dark Skin

This exceptionally beautiful cumbia is perfectly respectful of the canons set by the most traditional form of this glorious Colombian folk genre, which is surprisingly unpopular in its country of origin, but has found a new home in Central America and especially in Mexico, where it is loved by many. It is also Thalía's one and only classic, in spite of the fact that it has been one of her least successful singles in the Latin Billboard charts, only managing to reach the number 7 position. Still, all of her fans concur with the fact that it is her best effort ever, and it was voted 'best song ever' in a 2003 poll from vastly influential Spanish language channel Univision in the US. Video.

Tú Y Yo/You And Me

The first single for her eponymous 2001 Spanish language album (the second one with this title – be careful, do not buy the first one!!!!) this bouncy soft rock/pop song is one of Thalía’s most original tracks – combining cheerful, fast verses with a somewhat dark and repetitive piano-driven chorus. A truly interesting track (not to mention, incredibly fun to dance to) it’s my favourite from the album! It also happens to be one of Thalía’s most successful singles in the Latin Billboard charts. Video.

Reencarnación/Reincarnation

This spectacular dance song is one of the highlights of Thalía’s most successful album ever, the dramatically uneven Arrasando/Ravaging (2000). Full of spectacular dance numbers, it only contains two atrociously mediocre ballads, and the theme song from her last telenovela, 1999’s Rosalinda. This song in particular creates an oppressive, hazy atmosphere with distant chants and what sounds like whispery incantations, only to flood your speakers with a techno storm after a few seconds. From the booming brass section, the impossibly heavy and fast beat to the hook-saturated melody, everything about this song is perfect. It also has the originality of having two endings: a climatic explosion of trumpets and beats when the dance part of the song ends, and then distant tribal beats accompanying the echo of far away voices. Amazing song. Inexplicably, this wasn’t successful at all as a single. Could the atrocious video be to blame?

Un Sueño Para Dos/A Dream For Two

Finally, I’m offering you this impossibly catchy song from Thalía’s last album, the bizarre Kabbalah-meets-bubblegum-pop pastiche El Sexto Sentido/The Sixth Sense. In spite of the previous description, all I can say is that it is a WONDERFUL album full of impossibly catchy and fast pop-rock and dance songs, with the occasional ballad. This track in particular is a superb mid-tempo dance number with a sinuous melody that keeps playfully swirling around electronic bleeps, only to explode into a rock-tinged chorus. The end is lovely, with Thalía reaching her highest notes in years (although they are pushed to the background by a sea of harmonies). Excellent song.