On a recent evening in Manhattan's Meatpacking District, a small group of publishers, booking agents, journalists and other music industry insiders gathered in the Vinyl Room at Soho House to hear a rising singer-songwriter make her New York solo debut.
Andrea Bejar is twenty-five years old. Born in Mexico, raised in Miami and now based in Los Angeles, she's part of a generation of artists who built an audience online before ever stepping onto a club stage. Her songs have found millions of listeners on streaming platforms, but in person she comes across as something more intimate: thoughtful, disarmingly funny, and remarkably comfortable living between two languages.
When I asked whether she feels like a different person in English and Spanish, she didn't hesitate. She told me, "As silly as it sounds, I think I'm happier in Spanish. Whenever I speak in Spanish, I'm with my family. It reminds me of Mexico. In English I'm more serious."
Bejar grew up listening to contemporary singer-songwriters alongside Fleetwood Mac and Mexican artists like Natalia Lafourcade. But she says it wasn't until she wrote her first song in Spanish, "Despierto," that she realized lyrics could matter as much as melody.
Now she lets the songs decide which language they want to be written in. She says Spanish feels more whimsical, more metaphorical. English takes longer. She tries not to force either one.
But living between languages has shaped more than her writing. It has also shaped the emotional world her songs inhabit.
"I'm a very nostalgic person,” she says. “I think that's where my music gets a little bit of its sadness from. There are so many people who feel like they're torn between two places - that's where a lot of the nostalgia and homesickness comes into my songs,” she told me.
Back in the Vinyl Room, Bejar closed her set with her latest single, “Te Vas A Arrepentir” which translates as "You'll Be Sorry." Judging by the reception in the room, nobody there was.
