We caught up with KALTBLUT favourite Baby Yors ahead of the release of the eagerly awaited album, AMERICANO. Crafted as a Spanglish project, AMERICANO delves into Baby Yors’ experience as an immigrant in the United States. This album masterfully weaves themes of love, criticism, hope, and passion, presenting a powerful collection that effortlessly blends Latin rhythms, infectious pop anthems, and a rock core that epitomizes Baby Yors’ distinctive perspective and voice. A genre-defying artist, Baby Yors has performed globally, enchanting fans and followers who resonate with his freewheeling spirit and emotionally charged songs and videos. From his music to his films, Baby Yors is dedicated to creating art that challenges established norms while embracing his rich multicultural heritage.
KALTBLUT: Your new album AMERICANO was released on July 4th. Can you tell us more about the significance of this date and what it represents to you?
It’s Independence Day in the US. What is more patriotic than that day? This album is a bit of a love letter to the place I chose as my home. The place I kept choosing for the last 14 years. The US.
KALTBLUT: AMERICANO has been described as a Spanglish project that captures your experience as an immigrant in the United States. Can you share how your journey from Jujuy, Argentina to New York City has influenced the themes and sounds of this album?
Yes, for sure! It can be overwhelming to move to a country that’s so different from where you’re from. Even though I grew up consuming American media, the way of living I was used to was very different, and the US felt like this dream-like place from afar. The home to Hollywood and the magic of the movies. It was bigger than life. So once I moved to the US it felt very surreal. I was willing to go through anything to achieve my dreams and become part of it. It wasn’t easy at all, after all I was just a kid with a bunch of ideas and no one to help me accomplish them. My english wasn’t great, my family wasn’t near and I had no friends. So it took all I had to make it work. And slowly I started conquering one thing at a time.
New York is cute for a minute but it becomes rough real quick, and you either grow up very fast or you leave. Pretty much every friend I made left at some point for one reason or another, but I stayed. I was a waiter, an extra in films, and did catering. Highs and lows, life happened very intensely and it shaped me. Baby Yors is a bit of a metaphor to what New York made out of me. It was like being born again in a way.
So when talking about this album and its inception, I think it all started as soon as I stepped onto the concrete jungle. It broke me and it built me back up. I’m still Marco, but I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you it changed me. It changed the way I think, how I interact with people. My identity. From the outside, a lot of people say that I feel the same as when I was a kid, but internally I feel very different, which also comes with the years. If we don’t change then we are not growing. I now live in Los Angeles, but I’m always visiting New York. It’s been a few years now since I started feeling like this is my place, whichever coast I’m on.
KALTBLUT: The making of AMERICANO is intertwined with your deep collaboration with producer Bram Inscore. How did working with Bram shape the direction of this album?
Bram was such a special artist. He didn’t talk much, but I almost feel like he spoke through music. I would talk about each track for so long and he would just nod in agreement and occasionally smile and laugh at my jokes. Most of the tracks are in Spanish, so I always wanted him to understand what I was saying. Whatever idea I brought to him, he just made it better. He was so efficient that it made it so easy for us to flow. We would either meet in person at his or my studio or just do Zoom sessions and email new bounces of the songs and instruments back and forth. We had found a cool way of working together, and that’s why we were so prolific together. I think that he had an innate talent to listen to something and know exactly what that piece needed. I remember one time in his studio looking at him while he played with his collection of vintage keyboards. He had them stacked on top of each other, and would change from them back and forth. Everything he played worked. I would have kept every take, but he wasn’t sure. So he kept playing, and that’s how the whole ending of Bombon came about. I just loved every moment we spent creating.
KALTBLUT: Can you share a bit about the creative process behind the lead single, “Bombon,” and what you hope listeners take away from it?
Bombon talks about surveillance and some other topics. There’s a question that I always ask myself and I think we should always have in mind. Where does safety end and our freedom start? In other words, we are often surveilled for our safety, but how far do “they” have to go until we don’t have agency anymore? – I end the track by saying pretty much “what’s the point of being a good person if being a bad one isn’t possible?”
KALTBLUT: Is there a particular message or feeling you hope listeners take away from AMERICANO?
No. I want people to listen to it and take from it what they need. It’s not an album that glorifies the US, it also doesn’t hate on it. It lived at the intersection of experiences. And again, I CHOSE to live here, and I renew that choice every day when I decide to stay. Therefore I share my core values with it. I like it here, and I want it to be better just like I want anyone I love to be better.
This album has two voices in it: The one of the outsider that came in and observes everything for the first time, and the New Yorker that has become a man in the city and has seen it all. I will never stop being one or the other, and I think the mix of Spanish and English is a good way of expressing that.
KALTBLUT: You’ve mentioned that a deluxe version of AMERICANO is in the works, featuring additional tracks. What can fans expect from this extended release?
I wanted the original version of AMERICANO to contain all the tracks I finished with Bram. The rest are a collection of songs that I really really love. In fact, I am still deciding which ones to include and which ones to take out. They explore some ideas I didn’t want to leave outside of the album.
KALTBLUT: As someone who has defied genres and norms, what do you see as the future of your music career, and how do you hope AMERICANO contributes to your legacy?
I see Americano as a happy and exciting piece. It makes me want to dance, and it also paints a picture of my life at this moment. I am feeling more free than ever right now. I’ve always been a director, a musician, dancer, etc. and I’ve moved around these and other disciplines freely, but I feel like now I am getting the itch to go even further. I don’t want to be defined as a musician or a performer, or a filmmaker. I am an artist and I’m in the constant search for whatever will best communicate what I’m feeling and what I’m trying to say. So even though I’m always making music, performing, etc. I’m working on some projects that are a bit more on the film and TV side and also in the tech world. There’s so much happening right now, that all I want to do is take it all in and keep being inspired to share my thoughts. I believe artists and philosophers will be very necessary in this next chapter of humanity as we get closer and closer to AGI and other course altering events in humanity.
KALTBLUT: You’ve been named one of the 100 Most Influential LGBTQ+ People in the World by Out Magazine and have garnered millions of streams on platforms like YouTube and Spotify. How do you balance this broad recognition while staying true to your artistic vision?
I always focus on divorcing creation from its results. For instance, my album “VIVE!” didn’t do great number-wise. But I didn’t care. I know that it is a piece of work with so much truth in it that it needed to exist and it couldn’t have been different. I made that alone and I asked for no opinions from people. That can be tough in a world where everybody tries to maximize likeability, which in fact is what A.I. excels at! – what I’m trying to say is that I do what I do for the reasons that I need to do them, and whatever happens after has nothing to do with me. Here’s another nod to my name: My work goes from being a Baby that’s just mine and that I need to protect, to being fully yours. It’s a gift, a present with a nice bow that is given to whoever is on the other side listening. And I just believe that’s one of my little contributions to culture. It’s my religion. I believe in it and in the power of art to plant seeds in other people’s minds to then slowly change the world. Hopefully from a place of thoughtfulness, love and empathy without losing ground.
KALTBLUT: Your work has appeared in prominent publications like Rolling Stone, Vice, Forbes, and Billboard. How does this media attention impact your creative process and your connection with your fans?
It doesn’t. It’s nice of course, but at the end of the day that doesn’t fill my soul nor pay my bills. ;)
KALTBLUT: What are you most excited about for fans to hear in AMERICANO?
I just want them to feel the rollercoaster of emotions that I felt when I made it and when I listen to it. Some tracks are hilarious, some are sad, some are inspiring and some are fab. But they all mean something extremely important to me and they have been created with lots of attention and purpose.
KALTBLUT: Is there anything else you’d like to share about the album or any message for your fans as they experience AMERICANO for the first time?
Just try to decipher what it wants to tell you. Again, I see the process as a spiritual one, so I like to believe that the way lyrics and the music come out is just the way they are supposed to come out. And they are as much a message for me as they are one for the people listening. All the tracks talk to each other and they are a small piece of one big picture. The videos fill in some gaps and can even clarify certain parts, but sometimes they will do the opposite. And hopefully, they will also laugh with me… because in the end, I do believe in laughter.
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Feature photo by Joseph Adivari @josephadivari
AMERICANO is out now: https://snd.click/kwqd
