Courtesy of La Reputada.

I first heard  Julieta Venegas on the radio when her album, Si, had just come out in 2003. Following widespread success, the album won a Latin Grammy Award for Best Rock Solo Vocal Album. It was rock enough to be in that category and pop enough to widen its audience. One of the songs, “Lento,‰” was my childhood anthem; it was about slowing down the pace of life to enjoy the little details and fall in love. Clearly, nine-year-old me needed this. 

Growing up on the U.S.-Mexico border, Julieta was influenced by various genres of music that involved  norte̱o and mariachi along with rock influences from the U.S. She has an incredible ability to blend all of these influences into her music so that it doesn‰’t become a “rock/mariachi/pop” album, but a “Julieta Venegas” album. 

When was the last time you saw a beautiful, Mexican woman holding an accordion on stage, holding it like a child and playing it with such gracefulness? Can you see the way her head follows the movement of the accordion? Can you feel her voice and every sound around her compliment her very being?

Following the release of her last album,  Los Momentos, Julieta did a small pop-up show at Amoeba in Hollywood. I was blessed to be front row in a majority Latino crowd and saw faces glow with nostalgia as her new songs with her familiar voice took everyone back to a better place, back when her hits were reminiscent of a finer past. 

Venegas told Art Beat, “I have always used a combination of both, of various synthesizers and drum machines and contrasting them with accordion and acoustic guitar.‰” If this quote does not make you want to listen to her work, then stop reading right now and go indulge yourself in every song Pitbull is featured on. For her most recent album, Venegas used more synthesizers than usual and featured French-Chilean rapper Ana Tijoux and CafÌ© Tacuba’s lead singer RubÌ©n AlbarrÌÁn. (Come see me for an exclusive selfie I have with him when we ran into each other on U Street.)

Although Julieta Venegas is bilingual and has an impeccable English accent, she sings only in Spanish. “My emotional life has been in Spanish,‰” she said, and to take that away from her would be to take away the emotion that arises from the lyrics she writes. The passion of her live performances would be removed. So even if you can‰’t understand what she says in her songs, you‰’re able to feel just as much as she is, and appreciate the synthesizers, accordion, guitar, drums and all other elements that make her music so unique.