On October 1, having just finished the tour commemorating his 20-year career, Alex Ubago (Vitoria-Gasteiz, 43 years old) addressed his followers with “a bittersweet feeling,” according to the singer in a video published in the stories from your Instagram profile. “I have a certain nostalgia or well, I don’t know, melancholy, but above all a lot of gratitude for what you have given me on this tour,” he opened up to his 805,000 followers hours after his concert at the Gran Teatro CaixaBank Príncipe Pío in Madrid. Nostalgia, melancholy. They are two terms that have been associated so many times with Ubago’s work that he has already made them his own. “Let’s see, I think that no one likes labels, but it is true that it cannot be denied that there is a component of melancholy in my voice and in my way of interpreting, which is perhaps a little part of my trademark,” he acknowledges. to EL PAÍS just six hours before the release of his new album. “I’m not trying to deny that,” he confirms.
Starting this Friday, October 18, it is now available galethe new album by the Basque singer. The five songs on side A, he says, represent that sudden and violent storm that gives the album its name and is so characteristic of San Sebastián, the city that he has considered his home since he was four years old: “They are songs and rhythms that change quite a bit compared to what I have done in previous jobs.” Side B, on the other hand, is defined as the calm that comes after the storm. “It is a more traditional part of the album, more organic and with a sound closer to what I have done in the past. It has two parts, one a little more risky and the other more conservative,” he explains.
Before going up to the room where the interview takes place, Ubago allows himself to be photographed on a central but remote street in Madrid.
“You’re the same!” -says a man who passes by in the middle of a photo session-. I say this because you are from my country.
“That’s because he hasn’t seen the inside of me,” he jokes after returning a smile.
When he recorded his first studio album, in 2001, he was 20 years old. “He was a kid who only had to worry about taking care of himself,” he remembers. He considers that he has lost innocence and gained experience since then, but that he still retains a lot of the Alex that started in the music industry, the same enthusiasm “or even more” for making songs, concerts and connecting with people through music. “Today I am a man with two children (Pablo, 12 years old, and Manuela, 8, who smile on the wallpaper of his mobile phone), with a woman (María Alcorta, his lifelong girlfriend, with whom he married in 2011) and with a concept of what success is and what my priorities are in life in which the company of my family, my friends and my parents has more weight, who are what sustains “To this day, my happiness,” he recounts as one of the main changes in his life in the last two decades.
Alex and María got married in a very intimate ceremony at San Sebastián City Hall, attended only by their closest family and friends. Among them, the late Pau Donés or the members of La Oreja de Van Gogh (with Leire Martínez). “They say that you can count your real friends on the fingers of your hand and in the music industry there are also few friends of those that you can consider real friends. The guys from La Oreja or Amaia (Montero, former vocalist of the group), are one of them,” he says. The roads of Ubago and The Earas he calls them, have always gone hand in hand. It was Íñigo Argomaiz, the band’s representative at the beginning, who first opted for the talent of the man from Vitoria by birth but from San Sebastian at heart. In 2012 they released the song together be with younot to mention that Without fear of anything, sung by Amaia Montero and Alex Ubago in 2001 and whose success remains immune generation after generation. “I have always considered Amaia my godmother in music, because she decided to participate in my first album with that iconic duet, which remained a bit in history, when I was a totally unknown artist,” he confesses. Last July, after the singer’s reappearance at Karol G’s concert in Madrid, Ubago He published a photo of the two artists hugging on his Instagram profile. “How happy I was to see you shine like that and remind everyone how great you are and how eternal your songs are, friend,” she celebrated in the accompanying message.
Amaia had not been on stage for five years when she appeared by surprise at the Santiago Bernabéu alongside Karol G, a break that has never crossed Ubago’s mind. “Unfortunately for me haters“No, I have never considered it,” he says, smiling. Even so, it is enough to listen to his new album to realize that the kilometers that separate him from his home when he is on tour or promoting are not easy for him to carry. “Fucking life of an artist, to see me you need to buy a magazine and that’s not what I want, but I don’t know how to divide myself between love and money,” says the lyrics of Idiot. “seven seas and I don’t forget you (two other songs from gale) speak clearly about long-distance love and absences, about spending time away from home and about those feelings that one has when one is away from one’s people. Many of them are like letters that I write to my partner, my children or my people to tell them that I don’t forget about them when I’m away,” he confirms. “I am lucky to have a partner who has always understood very well what it means to have a profession like mine and I think that is partly why we have been together for so many years, because it makes it easy for me,” he admits to his wife.
Ubago responds to everything very calmly, even though he has had a marathon day of interviews on different radio stations and still has a couple more left. “I have days when I am calmer and days when I am unleashed,” he warns. The bad thing, he says, is that many people identify his personality with his tearful ballads. “I consider myself a very sensitive, calm guy… I’m Basque,” he explains with amusement. “But those who really know me sometimes laugh because many people think that I am a very introverted, sad, dull guy… and not at all. I think I am the complete opposite, very sociable, quite a clown and quite given to laughter, to jokes,” he defends.
Recently, the singer heard a question that he liked: Are you a fly or a bee? He is very clear about it. “If you are a fly, you are always looking for shit and if you are a bee, even if there is a lot of shit, you look for the positive, you look for the flower from which you can get nectar. I think I’m a bit like that, I always go where I feel comfortable and I always remember the positive, I’m quite forgetful about the bad,” he admits. He doesn’t remember bad experiences in the industry or big disappointments on anyone’s part. He maintains practically the same team as when he began his career two decades ago, apart from young additions that have been added. “I am, as they say in football, a one club manright?”, he laughs.
The press release for his new album says that it represents “a new era for the artist,” but Alex Ubago’s secret is, precisely, that he is very comfortable as he is. That the only thing he seems to ask of life is that his new eras be essentially similar to the previous ones and that is why he continues to live in San Sebastián, with his usual friends, away from traffic jams like the one that has made him arrive late to the interview. “Donosti gives me the feeling of belonging to a place, of having a nest, especially in a profession like this in which you are constantly traveling. I really value having the feeling of having a home to return to, where you put on your house slippers and pajamas and feel at home,” he comments. “That’s a feeling that I think we all need to feel a little at peace. And that place for me is Donosti,” he comments with conviction. This Saturday, October 19, Ubago has a record signing in Madrid and next Tuesday he has another, already in San Sebastián.
