A Guide to Natalia Lafourcade

A defining voice of 21st-century Latin American folk, Natalia Lafourcade’s work is an elusive blend of traditional styles and deeply personal songwriting that defies easy categorization. This is the story of her career and wide-ranging discography.

Lafourcade was only 18 in 2002, when she released her remarkable self-titled debut. The rollicking energy of hits “Busca Un Problema” and “En El 2000” immediately confirmed her as a guiding light in the Latin alternative movement. “It was many things and none in particular, yet it connected,” Lafourcade tells Apple Music. “And that remains in the way I make music—exploring, shifting directions, going against the current. Movement is part of my intuition, my way of creating.” Even then, she had the gift of crafting songs that felt timeless—marked by her carefree attitude and a sound influenced in equal measure by bossa nova, rock, jazz, and pop. Lafourcade did not belong to any single genre; her music stood alone, expansive in its influences and sense of grandeur. “To some people, I was snobby and had nothing to do with rock; to others, I was too alternative,” she reflects. “I was striving to perfect a mixture of jazz, electronica, and singer-songwriter stuff. I wanted to feel alternative but my songs to be heard on the radio.” Three years later, her second album, Casa, embraced an edgier sound, with a torrid version of the bolero “Piel Canela,” a playful reading of the bossa classic “O Pato (El Pato),” and a wondrous new band: La Forquetina. “Everything can shape my style of songwriting and arranging,” she says. “Even the location, the food, and the people surrounding me. There were many active ingredients in the Forquetina album: the musical influences of my bandmates, the albums that we listened to, and everything that we aspired to be.”

After experiencing success at such a young age, Lafourcade decided to continue looking for new sounds. “Sometimes I get bored, or start feeling a bit too comfortable, and that’s the moment when I realize it’s time for a change,” she explains. Released in 2009, Hu Hu Hu marked a turning point in Lafourcade’s evolution, an album that turned inward while also embracing a more intricate and textured approach to sonics. Songs like “Ella Es Bonita” and the title track, a duet with Julieta Venegas, showcased lush, orchestral arrangements that reflected her deepening exploration of sound and storytelling. “I was restless about allowing my music to take flight,” she recalls. “We decamped to a house with my two producers and filled it with weird instruments—everything from marimba and xylophone to synth pedals. Anything that could make some sort of noise was placed in that house, which also happened to be haunted. We were definitely spooked by the ghosts in it.” In what was a period of reinvention, Lafourcade took a decisive turn toward her musical heritage. In 2012, Mujer Divina became her first deep exploration of the Great Latin American Songbook, paying tribute to Mexican composer and songwriter Agustín Lara. This project not only connected her with the region’s musical history, but also reshaped her own artistic identity, merging tradition with her distinct voice. Through collaborations with Babasónicos’ Adrián Dárgelos (“Mujer Divina”), Devendra Banhart (“Amor, Amor de Mis Amores”), and Miguel Bosé (“Si No Pueden Quererte”), she proved that honoring the past could also mean forging a new creative path forward. “I discovered that I had a voice of my own, and the songs of Agustín Lara challenged me in new ways,” she says. “It was a different universe, and it helped me understand the richness of a song—a musical structure that evokes other musical expressions. It was then that I said to myself, ‘I want to be like him. I have to be better acquainted with the songs of Mexico.’”

With Hasta la Raíz, released in 2015, Lafourcade hit a new creative peak. The album looked beyond Mexico and signaled a new path for Latin American music. Its sound—polished and highly detailed—was an amalgam of folk elements, jazz harmonies, and the spirit of alternative rock, and proved irresistible on tracks such as “Nunca Es Suficiente” and “Lo Que Construimos.” At 31, she had become a key artist for 21st-century pop culture. Perhaps needing to take a break from her own creative frenzy, Lafourcade devoted 2017 and 2018 to the two volumes of Musas, a heartfelt celebration of Latin folk recorded with guitar duo Los Macorinos. The warm, rustic sound of these sessions offered a quiet intimacy. “I wanted to build up a whole world with Los Macorinos,” she explains. “Before we started recording, I told my producers, ‘I don’t want any synths or electric guitars—only the sound of wood.’ We traveled to a studio in the Los Leones desert, where everything was wooden: the floor, the ceiling, the beams. This helped us to immerse ourselves into that kind of ambiance.” Not knowing that the Musas albums would enjoy significant commercial success, Lafourcade assumed that her label wouldn’t get behind this new direction. “I made that album in hiding,” she admits. “No one told me to go after that music.”

In 2019, Lafourcade extended her influence into social change. She organized a fundraising concert for the restoration of the Centro de Documentación del Son Jarocho in Jáltipan de Morelos, a cultural institution in Veracruz that had been badly damaged by an earthquake. That show evolved into the two volumes of Un Canto por México, where the singer’s own compositions are interspersed with standards “Veracruz” and “Cien Años” (the latter presented as a duet with Pepe Aguilar). “We were a huge group of people leading the reconstruction,” she says. “That process made me understand the importance of cultural preservation.” Seven years had gone by without Lafourcade releasing a full album of her original compositions. In order to reconnect with her inner world, she found inspiration in the paintings of French impressionism and decided to record 2022’s De Todas las Flores at a Texas studio, using a live band and analog tape. The result is a haunting, spiritual album steeped in beauty and nostalgia. Songs such as “El lugar correcto” and “Canta la arena” celebrate their Latin roots, from son jarocho and cumbia to bolero and bossa nova. “It’s an album that reflects not only my musical universe, but also my private world of possibilities,” says Lafourcade. “My greatest ambition is to find anything that moves me to the point where I’m completely overwhelmed. Something that makes my hair stand on end and forces me to get off my chair and continue making music. That would be my most accurate definition of success.”