Aire (Versión Día)

“We're very protective of our craft,” Joy tells Apple Music. “If it were possible, we would've put our album out there years ago. We hate making people wait.” Coming nearly five years after the award-winning Un Besito Más, Aire, the Mexican American brother-sister duo’s fifth full-length, finds them reaching for positive vibes in times when their fans might need them the most. A family affair from start to finish, Aire arrives bookended by contributions from their respective children while some of the biggest names in urbano pop drop in as well. But mostly, the album represents their enduring artistic vision. Jesse & Joy sat down with Apple Music to discuss every track on Aire, including the making of its high-profile collaborations with J Balvin and Luis Fonsi.

Noah’s Intro
Jesse: “Family is the foundation of our band. It’s inevitable for that to have that impact on our lives. We did the intro for the album with Joy's baby Noah's heartbeat. We're celebrating all these beautiful things that give us life, so we thought it was a no-brainer to make them part of the album.”

Aire
Joy: “‘Aire’ was originally written in English. The first time we wrote it, it was called ‘Airborne’—it talks about how we wish that love could be airborne and be something so intoxicating that you could just breathe it in. It's a little different from the English version, because what we wrote in Spanish could be interpreted more as a couple kind of love, but at the same time more universal. We want this album to be a breath of fresh air, because that's what it was for us.”
Jesse: “We went with a more minimalistic sound. With that air, that space, it made sense in many ways to have that song be the title. Sometimes without making things intentionally, they end up falling in the right place.”

Alguien Más
Jesse: “We were in Miami writing this song—Joy, Jhay Cortez, and me. Someone called it the respuesta to ‘Te Boté,’ the female standpoint. We didn't think of it like that when we wrote it, but it has that self-confidence. It’s just acknowledging that power and just making it active.”
Joy: “When Jesse and I are in creative mode, we're used to going into the studio, writing a song, and finishing it up in the same day. Whenever we started 'Alguien Más,' there were no lyrics written that day. We concentrated on the melodies, because it has hook after hook after hook. Months later, we were in LA and actually wrote the lyrics in less than a couple of hours. We came ready to hear it with fresh ears.”

Te Esperé
Joy: “We did the whole Aire concept as a journey. ‘Te Esperé’ is part of the same journey, even though it took us two years to reveal the other stops. Some songs just took a bit longer. Everything about this album is to showcase our individuality. Me and Jesse, we can be so alike, but at the same time we're so different. For the first time, we were able to capture each other's individuality in each song. 'Te Esperé' is a dual song: The first half talks about how we feel whenever we have a broken heart, but in the end, every single wound will heal with time. Sometimes, we’ll be lucky enough to find love in a different place, or maybe even self-love along the way.”

Fuego
Jesse: “This song just feels like a movie to me—the way it starts, the way we bring contemporary sounds into our world, same as we did with ‘Te Esperé.’ It feels like a traditional singer-songwriter ballad, but we're bringing some urban elements to our folky vibe. And I am fire. 'My soul is fire, so you better watch out if you play with me.'”

Mañana Es Too Late
Joy: “During an awards show, we ran into José [Balvin]. He's friends with Jesse, who showed him the song. He wanted to be part of the track. It was literally just muting my second verse, having him write a different one that he would feel comfortable with and that would actually fit into the story of the song.”
Jesse: “He's like, 'Wow, this sounds like you guys, but it has this different urban flow that I haven't heard before.' He brought his vibe when it comes to his singing. I think it's cool when we collaborate with other people. We took him to our world and we ended up doing this fusion. We ended up loving the outcome. If somebody invites us to be on one of their songs, we obviously bring our vibe, our essence. But we will live within their universe and their sound.”

Lo Nuestro Vale Más
Joy: “This one has the full impact of nostalgia. It's the perfect song to tell people, without sounding preachy, that we're all in this world together, that we’re sharing the same space and not even realizing that we're not the only species on it. Music, at least for us, is a way of sharing a message that is way more important than entertainment. 'Lo Nuestro Vale Más,' as much as the rest of the album, is inviting people to look within.”

Hanna’s Song/Tanto
Jesse: “When [Jesse’s daughter] Hanna first showed me this song, she’d started writing it in Mexico City. There was just something about this song that I sort of felt that made sense with ‘Tanto.’ Without even thinking about it, the chords that it ends on made sense with the percussion that starts on ‘Tanto.’ Lyric-wise it made sense, and tonal-wise it made sense.”
Joy: “It's a funny story with Luis [Fonsi]. We had a lot of friends in common. And everyone would say, 'We just think that you would be really good friends. You guys have so much in common.' We would hear that so much. We obviously admire him, and he would always extend his admiration for us as well. It was like a professional kind of flirting, towards the music side of flirting. When we were about to release 'Tanto,' our label came to us saying, 'You know what, guys, I don't know if you thought of this at some point, but have you ever stopped to think that it could be a conversation between two people?' And we were like, 'Huh, we never thought about it that way.' Fun fact: We did not have to change key for the song or anything like that. He's literally singing it in my register. He sounds amazing in it, of course. He’s Luis, he has amazing pipes.”

Bésame (Como Un Pez)
Jesse: “On every album, we tend to have a song where we let our inner child take over. We always feel like kids playing in the playground, doing what they love to do, when we do music and when we do it together. ‘Espacio Sideral’ was on that first album, ‘Chocolate’ was on our second album, ‘Gotitas de Amor’ on the other album. We don't even do it intentionally. It just comes out and it ends up showing at the end of the record. We love the way that this song makes us feel. It really represents, vibe-wise, what we wanted to transmit through the sound of the album.”

Valió La Pena
Joy: “It's probably the oldest song in the record. Jesse came to me just right before our dad passed away. He showed it to me and I was like, 'I love it.' It's almost a play on words, and it did not come like that intentionally at all. It's about life, it's about the things that we love the most. It's about the ones that are no longer with us. And it's a song that Jesse mainly sings. It's also a very, very Jesse & Joy song, one of those that could be part of our first or our second or our third album, but somehow can live within this universe of Aire.”
Jesse: “I feel on this song particularly you can hear influences from Kanye, Bon Iver, but also Johnny Cash. It’s stuff that we grew up listening to. The funny thing is that at the end of the day they end up sounding like Jesse & Joy a little more freely.”

Love (Es Nuestro Idioma)
Joy: “When we were writing ‘Love,’ one of the biggest things happening around us was tension between Mexico and the US. We were literally immersed in that whole situation as we were writing this album. One of the things that we felt that we had to say was what love was for us. Love is inclusion. Love is diversity. How can we bring that into a song? It's a beautiful cumbia, so much like a party. It's a song that celebrates life, that celebrates people. It's a song that celebrates our diversity and how that makes life richer.”
Jesse: “We fully produced four different versions until we felt like we had the right one. It ended up being a cumbia with reggae. Love makes you feel good, so we associate it with the reggae, and it ended up being this mix between cumbia and reggae and folk and pop. It speaks for itself about diversity within the genres.”

¿En Qué Nos Convertimos?/Abby’s Outro
Joy: “What better way to end the record than with a question mark? We were talking to a friend that we were writing with, Poo Bear. We were saying how all these songs had us wanting to make the world a better place. We hate being preachy, because no one wants to be told what to do. We just basically wanted to make people feel good. We're trying to make some vitamins. Whenever people hear these songs, hopefully the vitamin will go into their system and give them a boost of energy or of something good.”