America, Meet José Madero
America, meet José Madero. Now those of you who already know him – don’t fault us for not tapping in sooner. I attribute my discovery to my husband, Ever, who introduced me to Madero through his former band, PANDA, over 12 years ago. And even then I was late to the party. When Ever was growing up in Mexico, all that his cousins could talk about was PANDA, and so that was his world. Since then, we have both followed Madero through all phases of his career as he continues to evolve.
PHOTO BY WISTO MADERO
Madero was a founding member of the Mexican pop-punk band PANDA (sometimes stylized as “PXNDX”) — whose music is like an energetic blend of My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy and Weezer. That’s partly because they were contemporaries with those bands in their height of production and popularity in the early 2000s – PANDA’s origin dates back to 1996. That’s only two years after the Blue Album by Weezer was released! The lore goes crazy. And so do their fans — the band and their respective members have had an ardent following since its inception. They’d sell out shows, had platinum records, and ushered in the pop punk movement in Mexico.
That fervor has translated seamlessly into Madero’s solo career — and it was no more evident than when I was able to see it firsthand at his July 7 show in New York City. A sold out show, fans came in droves, with the line for entry almost wrapping around an entire city block. Not to mention it was hot — I had a thick layer of sweat upon entering, as I imagine everyone else did.
Not a single person was seated for the entirety of his set, passionately singing along to their favorite hits, plus his newer work. It was like a choir of elder emos, and Irving Plaza was the church.
Sarajevo is Madero’s sixth studio album – the purple installment in his ever-growing oeuvre of rainbow album covers released on September 27, 2024. Sarajevo is his most diverse album yet, a collection of introspective songs, ranging in subject matter from self-struggles to the femicide epidemic in Mexico. Traditionally, Madero approaches writing albums in more of a concept album format to guide him. This album started out that way, but he tells Pleaser it had become more personal than he initially realized.
“I know that my subconscious had this imprint on my lyrics, but I didn't want to accept it back then,” Madero explains. “So it became personal, but it wasn't [initially] personal. It became personal after the fact.”
Maybe this is the result of Madero’s preference of writing in solitude. The theory is, if he removes all outside influences, his writing can only be reflective of his subconscious; something innate that involuntarily escapes. In the past, he had ventured up to Camden, Maine, to sequester himself in nature and write. A fan of Stephen King, he chose this destination to both inspire him and immerse himself in the town that influenced many of the author’s classic novels. The result was his fourth solo album, Psalmos –– the blue installment in the rainbow.
Madero found himself in a different part of the world when conceptualizing Sarajevo…you guessed it: Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The writing process operated much the same way, though – removing himself from his usual environment and providing new experiences to draw from.
“It's kind of a feeling that comes from that place. I had a vacation in [formerly] Yugoslavia last summer, 2023,” Madero recalls. “I was there visiting those countries like Croatia and Montenegro and Bosnia, and I passed through Sarajevo and I got this real weird feeling being there, about all the war in the ‘90s, the ethnic war and how it destroyed all the city. They rebuilt from scratch, you know? There's some stories about that. So I left the city and I had this weird feeling. Like a good feeling, but mixed with [personal] emotion.”
Originally, Madero intended to write a song entitled “Sarajevo,” but felt like that was too succinct for the feelings he experienced. He then decided to name the entire project Sarajevo to encapsulate the spectrum of emotion he felt while he was there. Because while the story of this album started in Sarajevo, it took shape closer to home. Madero traveled to San Antonio, Texas, to pen the majority of the album, a second home to him. While it provided a comfortable place to create, it still removed him from his everyday life in Monterrey, Nueva Leon, Mexico, where he is a native.
“I spend a lot of time in San Antonio because my family kind of lives there. I go to the house and I spend some time there. It's in the woods, in the middle of nowhere. So it's kind of quiet, kind of peaceful,” Madero reflects.
The crux of this album is built around the dichotomy between the curated peace of his outer environment and the inner turmoil that he feels. He uses this to structure some of the most poignant songs on the record, especially the opening track, “Hablemos del Campo” (“Let’s Talk About the Field”). It chronicles a struggle of self-sabotage — which can draw comparisons to the ethnic war Madero described in Sarajevo — destroying everything and starting from scratch. Even the title could be referring to a metaphorical “battlefield.” The chorus drives this comparison home with the lyrics: “Aplana la tierra, no pongas señal / Que no sea fácil de encontrar / No puedas recordar en dónde / Y no puedas recordar mi nombre” (“Flatten the land, put no sign / That it is not easy to find / You can't remember where / And you can't remember my name”). It’s a heavy opener for the album, but very aligned with Madero’s style.
In contrast to Madero’s former band, he strips back a lot of the heavier production and lets the lyrics take the front seat with his solo work. This leaves him open to vulnerability — he has no one else to deflect to but himself. While it can be cathartic, it can simultaneously be a pain point.
The track “Rey Ahogado” (“Drowned King”) discusses Madero’s relationship with his fans as a performing artist. Having been in the spotlight for close to thirty years now, he’s had time to mull this over.
“My sad song [“Rey Ahogado”] talks about my sad feelings, or my dark feelings, and how that song haunts me every day, every show I had to sing this song,” Madero said. “The fans just hear [it] once and they say ‘Oh a cool song,’ and then go on with their lives. You cried to it, but then you press stop and you continue with your life like nothing happened.”
He illustrates this well by simplicity stating: “Yo aquí estaré eternamente / Siempre abandonas a tiempo” (“I will be here forever / You always leave on time”).
While the initial opening of the song hits you right in the face with intense instrumentation, it scales it back just as quickly to allow for your immediate attention to the lyrics. This is another example of the dichotomous nature of this record — not only is it lyrically battling the outer peace with the inner turmoil, it does so sonically.
That’s not to say Madero is distant from his fans, though. Through his music, he opens up to them, much in the way that Taylor Swift does with her songs. She fosters a relationship with her fans based on her art, creating worlds within, and rarely ever leaving the atmosphere of those constructed realms. Madero employs this same strategy – separating his life from private and public, revealing little about himself, but art is where that line blurs.
“Personally, something that works for me is talking about my feelings in the songs, because I don't speak about them anywhere else. Not in interviews, not in podcasts, not anywhere. So, if my listeners really know me from someplace, it's from the songs, and I have no problem with that,” Madero offered.
While this record ended up being largely personal, Madero found himself doing something he normally avoids: making a political statement. For years, women in Mexico have been plagued with horrific deaths, most remaining unsolved and disregarded by law enforcement. With his large platform in Mexico, he felt compelled to shed light on the femicide epidemic, even giving writing credits on the song “Luciérnaga” (“Firefly”) to a victim’s mother, Becky Espinosa de los Monteros. While the song was composed and produced by Madero, he wanted Espinosa to share her perspective as someone directly affected.
“I invited a victim's mother to write a poem or say some words to her deceased daughter. That's the part she wrote, spoke and recorded on the song. Those are real words to her daughter from her.”
This is also what inspired Madero to use purple as the predominant color for this album — purple is the color of the women’s movement in Mexico and he wanted to honor them in that way as well.
Apart from this symbolism of the color purple, looking at it strictly through a color theory lens, it can tie into the dichotomy of the album intrinsically. Purple is a combination of red and blue – two colors which appear to be diametrically opposed as one is bright, intense, and eye-catching, while the other is more subdued and calming. Characteristically being the composite of the aforementioned colors, purple appears to be the only choice as the dominant color for this project.
The album lilts, it takes you in diverging directions both sonically and lyrically, much like kayaking down a river, never quite knowing what looms. And maybe that’s what I like best about it — while you’re ruminating on the lyrics of the previous song, the instrumentation of the next catches your interest, moving you along the current. It’s clear Madero is at his best when all inhibitions and distractions are removed.
In a way, Madero reminds me of Paramore frontwoman Hayley Williams. Her powerful vocals put a unique stamp on the band’s music, just as Madero’s did with PANDA. Both have expanded their catalog in their solo careers, with more subtle production and personal lyrics. While Williams is a bit more vocal in her political stances, Madero is a bit more reserved, but both have inspired a generation of young people for decades with their music. They both have immense staying power in an industry that chews up and spits out artists on a dime.
If this is your first time listening to José Madero, Sarajevo will be the perfect culmination of honing his craft and years of his history as an artist. If this is your hundredth time listening, the album builds upon his previous work while staying true to himself, adding to his anthology with a new edge. And if you listen close enough, maybe it can become personal for you, too.