Silvana Estrada - Como Un Pájaro

0:00You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Hrishikesh Hirway. Song Exploder is sponsored by Intuit TurboTax. I don't know if you have this feeling, but I constantly find myself daydreaming about finding an expert who can solve a very specific problem in my life. And one specific problem that comes up every year is filing taxes. But luckily, finding someone who can solve that problem is easy with TurboTax. They have dedicated tax experts who are there to help you every step of the way. With TurboTax Expert Full Service, you can match with an expert who will handle your taxes from start to finish, no matter how complex.

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2:14Silvana Estrada is a singer, songwriter, and producer from Veracruz, Mexico. She won the Latin Grammy for Best New Artist in 2022, and she's been nominated for three others, including for her song Como Un Pajaro, which is the song that we talked about for this episode. It's from her second album, which came out in 2025, but she started writing the song several years before that. So we talked about all the different versions of the song and a couple of versions of Silvana herself that emerged throughout the process.

3:11I'm Silvana Estrada Beberido. Thank you so much for sending me all the voice memos and demos that you made for this song. I have a lot, no? I would love to start with the first one, which says it's from October 21st, 2019. I remember that day perfectly. In the morning, I was rehearsing for a Dia de los Muertos show. And at the middle of the rehearsal, I was so sad I started to cry in a song. Because I was dealing with a really, really long, difficult relationship. and I was just very, very sad and like heartbroken. And then this friend, after the rehearsal, told me like, I'm going to leave you my piano so you can play the piano and do whatever you need to feel better.

4:02And I remember that night just like playing the piano and like vibing and I remember the quietness of the city.

4:21fishermen and Oh, cariño y por piedad mientras yo prendo velitas en fresquitos de cristal que es consuelo, das enlaces y al final puedo cantar mientras todo el mundo duerme. Yo me trato de sanar Could you translate the lyrics that you're singing? Now all the lights are off and the city is asleep. People is hugging. If it's not for love, it's for misericordia, pity. While everybody is sleeping, I'm just trying to feel better. And then it says, well, everybody is sleeping. I'm just trying to not love you anymore.

5:46As you were writing it, how were you feeling about what you'd come up with? Yeah, I really like this idea. I really like this sense of saudaging, like this impossible kind of nostalgia of the present. At the end of this voice memo, there's a little thing that happens that feels like a real document of what your headspace was in that moment.

6:16Pobrecita. it was one of those relationships. You never know if you're in or out. I don't know how to say it. Have you ever tried that? It's really bad for your health. But I guess I was starting to understand like, whoa, I'm going to be very miserable in this relationship, but I don't want to live. One thing that was interesting to me is that you said anyway in English. Yeah. I feel like as a Mexican, we don't have that attitude. Like, we never don't care. We always care. So, yeah, that attitude, it's more accurate to say it in English. There's also a lyric in this first version that only exists in this version.

7:04There's a line where you say, déjeme seguir cantando.

7:16I'm saying, please let me sing even if it's about to sunrise. But I changed it because when I started to do the chorus, I was going to talk about singing. So I need to hold the idea of singing because I was going to say, Te canto como un pájaro en la bruma. I'm singing you as a bird in the middle of the fog. and I really want this image of a singing bird to be like boom the strongest moment that it's gonna kind of glue all the verses and now the song's more dramatic it's like please leave me alone even if I'm crying because what else can I do if I love you and you don't love me so basically I was like drama drama drama drama drama and then singing birth And where did that idea of the singing bird even come from?

8:13You know, a few months before the pandemic, I was like, oh my God, I have my first apartment. I'm going to do so many parties and like, I'm going to have the time of my life. And then two months after it was like COVID and the lockdown. And I was kind of starting to finally ending this super toxic relationship. And the pandemic was like this really difficult mirror that confronted me. It was like, you know, what am I doing with my life moment? My insomnia went so bad that I was like waking up at 6 p.m. spending the whole night trying to learn how to play guitar and falling asleep at like 8 a.m.

9:03in the morning. So my highest peak, it was like at five in the morning and I was in this eighth floor. All my windows were looking directly to the trees. Even some branches of the trees were like entering my apartment. So I started to feel like a bird because, you know, they don't sing for anybody. So that was definitely like stuck in my mind. Like, oh my God, I'm part of this group of birds who are completely lonely. And we're just singing our sorrows, not for anybody, but for ourselves.

10:02This feels so different from the first version. The music feels so much less melancholy. I was trying to sound happy, which sounds a little bit pointless since the words are so sad. I guess I was just trying to find some light in the chords.

10:34So this was in 2020, but the song didn't come out until several years later. So what happened in the meantime? Then a bunch of things happened. You know, that year I toured like, I don't know how many countries. I won my first Grammy and really bad things happened. also my best friend he and his brother they were murdered that same year and I was so sad like the amount of sadness I'm carrying is not even possible but at some point I was also feeling a bunch of pressure to do something else like let's do another album because like okay I know you're sad but like Like, you need to do something, right?

11:26You need to do another album. You have the songs. So I guess part of my healing process was, you know, producing this album and producing Como un Pajaro and just trying to find the right sound. Because I was so lost and afraid that it took me a while to come back to me. So the next demo that I have is from September 2022. What was happening then? I was in Spain. I was with my band doing this residency.

12:12I have a really cool band, so I was like, I'm going to use your skills to try some ideas out. I think that was the moment where I said, like, should I work with the producer? No, this is something I need to do myself because it's so personal and it's me that it's lost. So it's me that needs to find the way back. My conversation with Silvana Estrada continues after this. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full length, and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishikesh Hirwe. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career.

12:58And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists, and it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabond, Fen Lily, and the producer Phil Winerope. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me.

13:31So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city. Like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzoukas, Josh Molina, Min Jin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Kleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage. And then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website. rishikesh.co or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live.

14:10Thanks.

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15:38And more recently, I've gotten a couple of rugs, a circular rug for under my dining table and one for outdoors. Right now in my cart, I've got these expandable bamboo dividers so that I can organize my dresser drawers. Honestly, you can find so much stuff there. And coming up, they've got Wayday, which is the sale to shop the best deals in home. We're talking up to 80 % off with fast and free shipping on everything. So head to Wayfair.com from April 25th through April 27th to shop Wayday. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R dot com. Wayfair. Every style, every home. Song Exploder is sponsored by Gusto. And here at Song Exploder HQ, aka what used to be the garage at my house, we don't have an HR department or anyone running payroll or benefits or onboarding.

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17:23You know, all my composer friends are always like, Silvana, you need to do breaches. You only do verses and chorus. You never do breaches. But, you know, I come from jazz and folkloric music and there are no breaches. So sometimes breaches to me sounds like this moment where you're actually not saying anything specifically, you're just doing the breach. And I was like, no, I don't want to do that. I'm just going to whistle.

18:02It's not singing, but sounds different.

18:21Since it was a demo, I wasn't thinking much about doing like a professional whistling or whatever. And then at the studio, I tried so many ways of doing it. Like I even called a friend of mine, which is like a professional at it. and he whistled the melody, and it was so perfect. And we were like, nope, we still prefer this whistling. So when you went to make the final version of the song, the version that's on the album, where did you end up doing that? In Casa Estudio El Desierto, which is Daniel Vitran's studio, the engineer of the album and a really, really dear friend of mine. I went to the studio, and I remember I took the guitar, and I was like, Danny, I don't know if this is going to be the day because I'm feeling tired.

19:11And he was like, okay, but let's try first. I already set the mics, just take the guitar and sing the song and let's see what happens.

19:37I take little beads in crystal bottles that cover the penumbra everything is fine and everything is fine while everyone sleeps I try to heal me We were like, oh, it happened. let's not try it again let's keep it like that and it was really a magical moment for us it was like, great let's keep going

20:22Roberto Verastegui my piano player I was showing him the song and he started to play those chords very simple just to learn the harmony and I was like, just do that for the beginning, no? And he was like, for real? Like, it's boring, no? And I was like, no, no, no, no, keep it, keep it. It's really nice to establish, like, this is their harmony. After that, you can open.

20:50We put together the drums and the piano at the same time.

21:02The drum is like a transcription of the sound of like a Brazilian zurdo. It gave the song like something really playful, like musically playful. There's a really deep rhythmical conversation between the drums and the piano.

21:35What made you decide that you wanted to have upright bass on this song instead of electric bass? This is funny because actually the first mix my dad told me like, oh, it's crazy that you're using a synth instead of upright bass. Because my dad, he's a double bass player, like an upright bass player. And I was like, dad, that's an upright bass. And he was like, oh, it doesn't sound like it. and we actually had to do something like mixing. It was too clean. Anyways, I really, I just, I love it. Grooving in a really folk way.

22:30Mientras todo el mundo duerme, yo te dejo de querer. It's interesting to me that as you're building this arrangement, you still only have one lead vocal. There's like no harmonies, there's no backing vocals, no double, anything like that. I always keep my vocals as simple as I can. And I don't know why, I guess that's my singer-songwriter vein. Like, I never want anything kind of compitiendo with the words, you know, the kind of the universe of the song. It's always in order to support the message. And for a song like this, I think it's so important to protect and take care of that truth and that transparency, because it's not something you can fake.

23:58Could you translate those last words in the chorus? After you say, I sing to you like a bird in the fog. And everything that we have been, I regret it. You know what? This song comes from a really angry place. Like the words are really harsh. That's where I started the song for sure. But then when I came back to the song, I was like, I want this to be more about solitude and contemplation than just a heartbroken song. To me, it was very cinematic, just the idea of loneliness. And like the problem with being alone is then you need to see all your demons. You need to face all of them. And this reminded me so much to like the Hayao Miyazaki movies.

24:55Like My Neighbor Totoro, like El Viaje de Chihiro. I don't know, spirited that way. I think it's in English. that I was like, oh, I need that kind of orchestral sweetness on this because I need sweetness to face all my ghosts and my demons and my pain. And life in general, it's pretty much sadness and pain. But I think the thing that keeps us alive, it's sweetness. And this song, it's full of like this vulnerable moments. So for me, it was like, no, this needs an orchestra.

26:00Y todo lo que fuimos lo lamentó.

26:19So we're talking now and it's 2026. The song came out in 2025. You know, from that first moment in 2019, I'm wondering what is your relationship to the song now, both in terms of the evolution that it had and just, I guess, what it's about? Yeah. It's crazy because the other night this song made me cry, actually. But now it's a different feeling. You know, something really interesting happens with songs. It's like some songs are there for you and you're not ready for them. I feel it but I don't know yet where this is gonna lead but I need to kind of be patient I see myself in this eighth floor in the middle of the pandemic just hanging with birds and nobody else and singing for nobody and I see this song as a testimony of this young girl just trying to figure out her life and figure out what to do with solitude and sadness and pain and finding beauty in that.