Reaching for the Top
Mexican beauty Thalía marches to global pop stardom
By Mark Holston

She’s scored a string of best-selling albums since her debut as a solo artist a decade ago, and has become a household name throughout the Spanish-speaking world and in such far-flung corners of the globe as Greece and Indonesia. Starring roles in Mexican telenovelas have made her beguiling visage familiar to millions of adoring fans. She’s created a signature line of apparel and other products for one of the world’s major retailers, Kmart. And her recent marriage to one of the music industry’s most influential moguls, Tommy Mottola, has all but guaranteed her rising pop music preeminence. She is Thalía, and anyone who today doesn’t know the name or recognize the face soon will.

Thalía joins a long list of Mexican bombshells whose beauty and talent have made them highly marketable commodities far beyond their country’s borders. The pantheon of lovelies extends from María Félix, the sultry actress whose conquest half a century ago of the silver screen made her a global cultural icon, to such singers as Lucía Méndez, Gloria Trevi and Paulina Rubio. While all have dreamed of expanding their fan-base beyond the Hispanic world to the enormous English-speaking market in the United States, few have managed to register more than a momentary blip on the radar screen of North American pop culture.

Thalía, however, seems poised to personally re-write the history of Latinas in the global, corporate entertainment business. Her marriage to Mottola, former president of Sony Music (and singer Mariah Carey’s ex), gives her virtually unequalled clout on the music front. Her exclusive arrangement with Kmart to sell a branded line of apparel, footwear, lingerie and accessories may be the boost the ailing firm needs to keep it off the bankruptcy rolls and will help solidify her image as a pop culture icon.

When Hispanic caught up with Thalía, she was fresh from a video shoot for her new English-language CD (Virgin Records) coming out in July—titled “Thalía” like her Spanish one—and on her way to accept an award at the annual Billboard Magazine Latin Music conference in Miami. All in a day’s work for an on-the-go artist whose hectic schedule leaves little space for downtime. “I’m more like a gypsy,” she confides. “Our main residence is New York,” she adds of her new abode with hubby Tommy. “I love the city’s energy.” She also frequently alights in Miami, which she adores for its tropical vibe and warm climate, and Mexico. “But,” she asserts, “I’m always doing promotional trips and touring, so basically, I’m a gypsy.”

Interviews with the non-Spanish language media are something new to the singer, but she realizes she’ll need to get used to fielding questions in her second tongue as her stature grows. She frets about her ability to speak English, and occasionally pauses, searching for the correct word. When her pronunciation is less than perfect, she tries valiantly to correct it on the fly. But her slight accent and less than total command of the language likely won’t inhibit her from her aggressive assault on the bastions of the U.S. pop music and film scene. From her dazzling, flirtatious smile to her prowess as a vocalist and actress and plethora of friends in high places, Thalía seems fully in command of her own destiny.

“My new album (out this month on the EMI label) is an opportunity to expand my music, my message and my love for life in English,” she says. “I feel more comfortable now, talking in English and singing in it.” The album, she explains, is a blend of many rhythms and contemporary styles. “Today, music fans are open to many possibilities, and that’s the beauty of it—you can put the rhythms that you like in a shaker and you have the best music cocktail in the world.”

With the master plan of her music crossover career seemingly well on track, Thalía ponders how to replicate in English-language films or TV, the kind of acting success she’s scored on such Mexican soap operas as María la del barrio and Rosalinda and the film Mambo Café. But she wants to avoid the trap other Latina actresses have fallen into—succumbing to cookie-cutter roles that play off of long-held, unflattering stereotypes.

“I am reading some scripts and am reviewing proposals for TV projects,” she explains. “But I want to be sure about the next project for Thalía as an actress, and not to just do a crazy, stupid Latina role with a red dress, just talking about sex. Unfortunately, that’s all too often how Latinas are portrayed in films. So, when I have a great part that will put me on a higher artistic level,” she adds confidently, “I will take it.”

Although she chafes at accepting a film or television role based solely on a sexy persona, there’s no denying the fact that her hot image has helped her win over new fans in the U.S., Europe and Asia. Indeed, her visceral sex appeal has captured rapt attention from quarters that wouldn’t know a cumbia from a cucumber. AskMen.com, a men’s website that rates women like the latest generation of sports cars or high tech gadgets, recently swooned over the Mexican chanteuse. “You think Jennifer López can melt ice with one wiggle?” they asked, followed by the query, “Then what do you do when this hurricane of sexiness comes your way?” Rating her “natural beauty,” the site’s editors fantasized, “Thalía has the kind of face you just want to kiss over, and over, and over, and over again.”

Had she come along five decades earlier, the 30-year-old entertainer, born Adriana Thalía Sodi Miranda in Mexico City, might have had to be satisfied with a role as a model for toothpaste ads in Life magazine. But in today’s MTV world, the combination of hair and hips Thalía boasts has been translated into a hypnotic visual language of instant, universal appeal. What makes her uncommonly attractive to fans of both sexes and many generations is that sublime combination of “girl-next-door” freshness and untamed sensuality of an exotic tempress.

“I’m a blend of all of that,” she says unselfconsciously. “The ‘girl next door,’ because that’s my true personality. The sexy woman, the animal—on stage—yes, I can be that, like a savage. At the same time, I can be sweet—a dreamer. All of those characters are one—it’s me. I’m very honest with myself and I respect myself. That’s why I carry all of those Thalías inside of one.”

No matter how popular she becomes to non-Spanish-speaking pop music fans, Thalía remains pura mejicana at the core. Significantly, while strategizing her move into the English-speaking market, she recorded an album that took many by surprise—a survey of her country’s raucous banda tradition, setting a program of her hits to the brassy style that’s all the rage among northern Mexico’s rural folk. “It was such a great project for me to do, because I always liked this kind of music,” she comments. “My grandmother was from La Paz in Baja, California, and I’ve listened to this kind of music since I was a kid. It was great to bring the music of my Mexican roots to countries that already know who I am through my pop music—places like Spain and the Philippines.”

For inspiration, she looks to two of her country’s greatest artists, Pedro Infante and María Félix. “Pedro was to me this very handsome Mexican guy with the biggest charisma—the most amazing magic you can ever imagine. At the same time, he was a terrible guy with women. In his movies, he’d have three girls at the same time. But at the end of the day, the way he acted and performed, you accepted that and loved him. His voice is tender and romantic on the boleros—a voice to die for. And María—she was so fantastic and left such a legacy for the movie industry. She was such an inspiration—so strong and feminine at the same time.”
Like virtually every other artist whose ongoing popularity depends on maintaining the loyalty of the broadest possible base of fans, Thalía has deftly avoided taking controversial political or social stands. But the harsh realities of her country’s violent culture of drugs and organized crime suddenly invaded her world of privilege last fall, when her two sisters were snatched by kidnappers from a Mexico City street and held for a ransom that may have run into millions of dollars. The tormenting period of their captivity, with minute-by-minute agonizing over their fate, proved to be the most trying time of the singer’s life.

“It was a terrible situation,” she says when pressed to comment on her family’s tragedy. She chooses to keep private the details of the kidnapping and the heightened security measures for herself and other family members that have certainly been put into place since the crime. Rather, she talks about the personal triumph of her sisters, who, she says, are putting the emotional trauma of their ordeal behind them. “I’m very happy that my sisters are alive and they are enjoying life and trying to put everything together again,” she adds. “And they’re doing a very good job of that.”

Although she refuses to point a finger of blame or to frame her comments about Mexico’s increasingly violent society, Thalía is quick to express her hopes for the country’s future. “I want to see a violence-free Mexico,” she states, “a Mexico where people can walk free on the streets and feel secure. I want my country to shine again and stand up again from all of this terrible cloud of violence and terror. I think we’re doing it—step by step. But it has to start from the people themselves.”

In Greek mythology, Thalía is the Muse of comedy and pastoral poetry. While her namesake may not be the precise living reflection of those artistic attributes, there’s no disputing the fact that Thalía is poetry in motion, smiling every step on her confident march to global pop stardom.