To the Los Sebastianes Band, what has worked to connect with their audience is singing about ruptures, disappearance and the pains that often cause love relationships.
“I think a lot of people don’t talk about that,” said Saúl “Choco” Plata, leader and founder of the band, in relation to “Por salud mental”, the song that is the lance point of the combo’s new EP. “And I think it’s very important to talk about everyone’s mental health.”
The Sebastians invited the Mexican pop group, Matisse, to record this song, which is included in the EP that is also called “For mental health”. This musical project was created with the intention of appearing on the nomination lists — and possibly winning some prize — in this season of awards.
And for the first time, the strategy has given some results because Los Sebastianes received four nominations for the Lo Nuestro Award and one for the Youth Awards. On this occasion, the combo of Mazatlán, Mexico, left with empty hands.
But the intention was to make noise, Choco said, because when an artist gets a prize, there’s a profit in the middle, and not necessarily monetary.
“Having a prize is the fruit of the work you’re doing, the recordings you’re making,” he said.
This EP explores several emotional stages, but “For Mental Health” offers a narrative about divorce from a personal care perspective. The other five songs go by the same line, such as “Primero enséñate a querer”, which they recorded with Julio Preciado, and “Al chile no sé”, with Gerardo Coronel. The EP is completed with “Looks like a joke” and “Cucaracha”.
So far, “Al chile I don’t know” has been the most successful theme of this production. The official video has more than 27 million views on the band’s YouTube channel and reached number one on the Billboard lists of Regional Mexican Airplay and Monitor Latino.
This week, the band surprised with the announcement of the debut of “Por salud mental Deluxe”, an album of twelve songs that continue with the line of the EP that the group released a few months ago. In addition to the mentioned songs, they include Imagine, with Carolina Ross, “Why You Believe Me”, “It Looks Like a Joke”, “They Lost Me” and others.
In this case, “Why you believed me” is the theme that promotes this luxury edition, and the song speaks of a relationship in which, despite the warnings, someone decides to continue with a person who does not intend to change.
“I don’t know what’s going on between a man and a woman who last a little bit well in their relationships,” Choco said. “There are more people who suffer from lovelessness than people who are in love, I don’t know why.”
But what matters is to enter the studio, “to give him heart, to put all the ‘feeling’ and choose the themes well” from among the two thousand that the band received as proposals.
Going up on a stage, seeing people sing their songs and getting a prize, “that’s the real reward,” Choco said.
