Alaina Castillo cannot explain how her father, who is Mexican, did not teach her to speak Spanish.
“He never spoke to me in Spanish as a child, ”said the Texas-born and raised singer. “So I had to learn it in high school.”
That, however, didn’t stop him from performing “Bésame mucho” at the Latin American Music Awards ceremony in April. The version of the popular song was so successful that several weeks after the event, his family – and especially his grandmother – kept talking about the song.
He chose that song by the Mexican composer Consuelo Velázquez because her dad used to sing it to her when she was little. Only the version in the LAMAs was more modern, with Alaina’s touch.
“It was a lot of fun”, said the interpreter of 21 years. “It meant a lot to me.”
In addition to celebrating her participation in the awards ceremony, the singer is excited because she recently released “Parallel Universe Part. 1 “, a seven-track album in English that mixes pop with R&B and other rhythms.
” I’m very excited, I don’t think so yet, “she said. “It’s my first album, you know?”
The album has “several surprises”, from unusual sound elements in the songs to very different lyrics from one song to another. She wrote them all.
“I talk about topics like your energy, manifesting things and also a lot about anime and many references to games [de video] because I wanted it to be very me, ”he said. “This is me, not pretending to be anyone, but me one hundred percent.”
In other words, it proposes that “you be who you want to be, because at the end of the day you have to sleep with yourself same; You have to be happy with yourselves. ”
Alaina, 21, knew she wanted to be a singer from a very young age. I didn’t know how but I knew that would happen.
“There are three things I wanted to be, an astronaut, a singer and a teacher, and maybe a chef or a pastry chef,” she said. “But singing was always something I wanted to do.”
Secretly, in the closet of her brother’s room, she did small stages and performed for herself. The plan was one day to surprise her family with one of her shows.
In the end, the presentation was not as formal as she expected, but what was formal was the creation from his YouTube channel, where he started uploading original content. In a matter of weeks, I had already accumulated more than 800 thousand subscribers.
“Even though I had ten people writing to me for my videos, it was perfect for me. “, He said. “Because I wasn’t really looking at the numbers, I was just looking at the people who wanted to see more of my videos.”
His career took another level when a producer three years ago from Los Angeles sent him a private message. It was about Sam Roman, a creator who has been behind the hits of performers like Demi Lovato, John Legend and Clean Bandit. Romans, his stage name, suggested that he move to this city to work together.
“He discovered me,” said Alaina. “Usually he didn’t respond to many people because he didn’t believe in anyone, but with him he knew it was safe; and I came to Los Angeles. ”
For now, after more than a year in prison, Alaina already has a tour scheduled for several cities in the country in November. He hopes to be able to reproduce his little closet shows, but now in front of massive audiences.