Silvana Estrada - Como Un Pájaro

Introduction

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 Rishikesh Hirwe.

0:10I'm going to be on tour for the next few weeks, and all the dates are at songexploder.net slash live. I'm going to be playing songs from my new album, In the Last Hour of Light, with a full band, and I'm going to be talking about the making of my album with a special guest moderator in each city. I get to be the interviewee instead of the interviewer. So I'm going to be joined by Jason Manzoukas, Samin Nosrat, Allison Russell, Joshua Molina, Ken Jennings and John Roderick, Min Jin Lee, and Adam Scott. It's a really personal album, and I hope you can make it out to one of the shows.

0:41You can get tickets and more info at songexploder.net slash live.

Silvana Estrada

0:51Silvana 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 versions of Silvana herself, that emerged throughout the process. Te canto como un pájaro en la bruma

1:27Y todo lo que fuimos lo lamento I'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?

First Demo

1:57I 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,

2:31I'm going to leave you my piano so you can play the piano and do whatever you need to feel better. And I remember that night just, like, playing the piano and, like, vibing, and I remember the quietness of the city. Se apagaron ya las luces, ahora duerme la ciudad, se entrelazarán las piernas por cariño,

3:06y 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,

3:32yo 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 hogging. 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.

4:05I'm just trying to not love you anymore. As 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 saudade, like this impossible kind of nostalgia of the present.

4:39At 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.

4:53Pobrecita. 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,

5:24we 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. There's a line where you say, déjeme seguir cantando. Déjeme seguir cantando aunque vaya a amanecer. I'm saying, please let me sing even if it's about to sunrise.

5:58But 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 going to kind of glue all the verses. And now the song's more dramatic.

6:30It'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 bird.

6:46And where did that idea of the singing bird even come from? You 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

7:17that 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. in the morning. So my highest peak, it was like at 5 in the morning. And I was in this eighth floor.

7:50All 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.

Later Version

8:25This feels so different from the first version. Just 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

8:56to find some light in the chords.

9:11So 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. And, 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.

9:43Like 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 you need to do something, right? You 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 Pájaro

10:13and 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. I have a really cool band,

10:51so 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.

Production Process

11:14My conversation with Silvana Estrada continues after this.

11:20Song Exploder is sponsored by the game Mixtape. And to learn more, I talked to one of the creators. My name is Johnny Galvatron. I'm the writer and director of Mixtape. It's about three teenagers on their last day of high school going to their final party together, listening to the greatest mixtape of all time. And where did the idea for this game originally come from? Just wanting to make a game based around That's Good by Devo, which is the greatest song of all time. There's just something alive in that song that speaks to me. And it's very much a game

11:50about being a music lover and someone who appreciates music and knows where to place it in their life. And then game-wise, there are different kinds of mechanics. There's different kinds of music. There's different kind of art style. So the game as a whole should be viewed as a mixtape and kind of this artistry of arrangement. And so how is the game itself like a mixtape? So usually in a video game, you will have a standard set of mechanics, which might be fighting. But in a mixtape, there's different people

12:21saying different things with different vibes. And you want each song to be given its own experience, its own life. And you want to use the medium. That's what's kind of important about making video games. You want to use the medium to show what the music is showing. We have this song, BJ Thomas, most of all, where a friend gets betrayed and she floats back through town and just kind of knocks everything out of her way as she floats through town and you control her. And like, what a beautiful way to kind of use that song and to use a mechanic and input to show

12:51the betrayal and the despondency and the sadness. And when you can get all those things mixed together and hit those crescendos where you hit between video game, music, narrative, that's the goal, that's the diamond that you aim for. I think you would really dig it. Mixtape comes out May 7th on console and PC. Check it out at mixtape.game. You know why I love summer? All those plans we made, they finally make it out of the group chat. Seems like there's more time to fit everyone in.

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14:15Thanks to Function for supporting Song Exploder and my general health. I've been traveling these days a lot for my album release shows, and I remember that someone once said to me, part of the job of a touring musician is to make sure that you don't get sick. I do have a tendency to get sick when I travel a lot. And the Function tests that I took revealed that I was deficient in vitamin D and magnesium. So I made changes to my diet and my vitamin intake. Because it's one thing to say, oh, I'm trying to be healthier, and another thing

14:45to actually have the information that lets you do something about it in a targeted and effective way. So check your health the way that I do, with 160 plus lab tests a year for $365. Plus the ability to dive deeper into your results through Functions connections to platforms like ChatGPT and Claude. Join at FunctionHealth.com slash SongExploder or use the gift code SongExploder25 for a $25 credit towards your membership.

15:18You 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.

15:57It's not singing, but sounds different. Since 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.

16:28Like 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

16:59and 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. And he was like, okay, but let's try first. Like I already set the mics, just take the guitar and sing the song and let's see what happens. Se apagaron ya las luces, ahora duerme la ciudad. Se entrelazarán las piernas por cariño y por piedad.

17:31Mientras yo prendo velitas en frasquitos de cristal que me cubre la penumbra todo bien y todo mal Mientras todo el mundo duerme Yo me trato de sanar We were like, oh, it happened. Let's not try it again.

18:02Let's keep it like that. And it was really a magical moment for us. It was like, great, let's keep going. Roberto Verastegui, my piano player, I was, you know, showing him the song and he started to play those chords, you know, like very simple just to learn the harmony and I was like, just do that for the beginning, you know, and he was like, for real?

18:33Like, it's boring, you know, and I was like, no, no, no, keep it, keep it. It's really nice to establish like this is the harmony. After that, you can open.

18:44We put together the drums and the piano at the same time.

18:57The drum is like a transcription of the sound of like a Brazilian surdo. It gave the song like something really playful, like musically playful. There's a really deep rhythmical conversation between the drums and the piano.

19:30What 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 an 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.

20:01It was too clean. Anyways, I really, I just, I love it grooving in a really folk way. It was interesting to me

20:37that as you're building this arrangement, you still only have one lead vocal. There's like no harmonies, there are no backing vocals, no double, anything like that. I always keep my vocals as simple as I can. 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

21:07in 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. could you translate

21:54those 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 this song for sure. But then when I came back to this song, I was like, I want this to be more about solitude and

22:24contemplation 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, like My Neighbor Totoro and like El Viaje de Chihiro,

22:55I 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

23:26for me it was like no, this needs an orchestra got out I love you.

23:59I love you.

Song Reflection

24:14So we're talking now and it's 2026. The song came out in 2025. You know, from that first moment in 2019, 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.

24:41You 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.

25:11And 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. And now here's Como un pájaro

25:48by Silvana Estrada in its entirety. Se apagaron ya las luces, ahora duerme la ciudad. Se entrelazarán las piernas por cariño y por piedad. Mientras yo prendo velitas en frasquitos de cristal que me cubre la penumbra todo bien y todo mal.

26:21Mientras todo el mundo duerme yo me trato de sanar. Voy limpiando los caminos que me llevan junto a ti. ¿Cómo pudo ser posible las señales que no vi? Déjame si estoy llorando

26:52aunque vaya a amanecer que por más que yo te quiera dime tú qué puedo hacer mientras todo el mundo duerme yo te dejo de querer y yo que no soy más que un mar de dudas

27:23que sola con mis sombras me tropiezo te canto como un pájaro en la bruma y todo lo que fuimos lo lamento y tú lo que fuimos en todo

27:54Thank you.

28:24Y yo que no soy más que un mar de dudas, que sola con mis sombras me tropiezo. Te canto como un pájaro en la bruma y todo lo que fuimos lo lamentó.

29:09Y yo que no soy más que un mar de dudas. Y yo que no soy más que un mar de dudas.

29:41A network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts. You can learn more about our shows at radiotopia.fm. If you'd like to hear more from me, I write a newsletter, and I talk sometimes about the making of these episodes. I also write about music and film and the creative process. You can find a link to the newsletter on the Song Exploder website. And you can also get a Song Exploder shirt at songexploder.net slash shirt. I'm Rishikesh Hiraway. Thanks for listening. Radiotopia from PRX.

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