On her latest album RRROMEO, the Mexican singer-songwriter revisits the sounds that informed her teenage years, works with some of her musical heroes and makes a case for a little more romance on and off the dance floor.

The songs you hear at home growing up with your parents; the tracks your friends show you at school; the bands you spend your teenage years obsessing over; the records you save up to buy tickets to see live. Each informs who you become as a music fan, as a character, as a person. For Girl Ultra – Mariana de Miguel – those influences have come full circle with her latest album, RRROMEO, and she makes clear she is not interested in working with just one sound. 

Having made a name for herself as one of the artists pioneering Spanish language R&B, Girl Ultra spent the past decade shapeshifting through genres and scenes. From her early EPs “Boys” and “Blush” to albums like Adiós, Nuevos Aires and El Sur, she’s taken her sound beyond Mexico City, performing everywhere from Coachella to Boiler Room, and appearing on platforms like COLORS and NPR Tiny Desk. 

With RRROMEO, Girl Ultra is once again taking a different route. This time she is leaning into the music she grew up loving: funk, synth-pop, garage rock, house and electronic sounds that work equally on your headphones or at the club. The album is co-produced with Dave 1 – one half of Canadian funk trailblazing duo Chromeo – with collaborations from Buscabulla, Empress Of and JeanTonique.

RRROMEO is for the Girl Ultra, a very personal album, built around real stories and acquaintances. Tracks like “Denisse”, “Tomás” and “Te Caigo” explore romance, friendship and growing up, but ultimately her message is about being less afraid of intimacy, inviting the listener to have fun, loosen up and make questionable decisions without a worry.

We caught up with Girl Ultra to talk about the making of RRROMEO, working with her teenage musical influences, the people behind the songs and why she’s never felt the need to put her music in a box.

How did you get into music?

I feel like that was something that was given, I never acknowledged myself, since I was very young, without being attached to music and without having a specific eye for noticing sounds. My father was involved in getting me to enjoy music, I was always consuming music and loving Mexican radio and I don’t know, I arrived at a certain point where I downloaded music.

You’ve been making music now for a long time, what do you think has changed since the beginning? 

Well I started 10 years ago, now it’s the 10 year mark. 10 years ago I started making R&B specifically not because that was the music that I grew up listening to, but because it was what I liked at the moment, at the time in Mexico where there was not a particular R&B scene, it was hard to digest whatever the hell we were doing at the time, but I always felt that I needed to learn along the way to actually make the music that I wanted to listen to. I’ve always been like a sucker for vanguard and I love rock music, I love punk, I love garage, I love club music, so as time went by I understood that Girl Ultra to me is a sound blender, where I can gender bend and do whatever the fuck I want.

What is it about switching between genres that you find attractive?

It has to be something very selfish, I always need to fulfil my need for sound. My approach to music and as a producer is always self-fulfilment, I let life happen and then that sound comes to me, for example, this album is a collaboration with a duo from Montreal, Chromio that I was a fan of during the Indie Sleaze era when I was back in Mexico City. They reached out and we started making music. My approach is always questioning ‘ what does Ultra bring to the table?’. 

You saved money to go to Chromeo’s concerts. How does it feel working with people who you once admired? 

It’s a very full circle thing, for starters, you think you know where you’re headed when you’re working with them because they have such a strong sound identity, I knew what I wanted from them I wanted that pristine, clear funk sound but also giving my take on that. To me it was exciting exciting to learn from them, they’re amazing producers they have such a respect for the craft and for the slogan I’m always amazed when I meet people that are in service of the song and not themselves and that’s how I clear myself it’s always for the music it’s never for oneself, it’s for the song, for the music.

Have you ever felt any sort of pressure either from your audience or from the industry to stick to one sound? 

Yeah, sometimes. I feel like now they understood what Girl Ultra is, and I will do whatever the fuck I want, there’s a bunch of people that are always pressuring me to go back to the R&B sound because it’s interesting because now 10 years after R&B is finally being intertwined with pop music in Spanish. It’s a bittersweet thing when you’re part of something that it’s not being understood in its time and it needs to marinate for years and you’re in a different spot and then they’re asking you to go back to that when I already did that. Music is interesting and it takes you to interesting places, and who knows, I might come back. I feel like I still have a lot of reminiscences of R&B in my music and my melodies and I feel like that’s the conducting pivotal moment of my music so yeah, who knows.

How do you respond when people expect you to stick to one sound? 

I see where they come from right now the scene in Mexico is very R&B heavy and yeah, I feel like I’m very open for people to say whatever they think about music but that doesn’t make me change where I’m heading towards of course as I told you, I’m a selfish person if I have the privilege of doing what I love to do for 10 years I’m gonna keep that formula for sure.

You described RRRomeo as sort of a meeting between your teenage self and the person that you are now. What do you think those two have in common or what do they disagree in?

I really really admire my teenage self the power of being amused by things especially about live music and relationships and first times and I would love to make a little capsule for that I was trying to find that within this album probably not sonically but like a little space for me to just like honour her and especially collaborating with my idols like Indies Lee’s idols it’s just a little gift for myself for that cute little punk girl in Mexico City.

How does Mexico City or the creative scene there inform your music? 

In every way I feel like me and Mexico City we are one, to me it’s got the right amount of garbage and grit and then there’s this counterpart of beauty. It’s a beautiful balance of having everything all at once and being able to witness that and just get lost in it and I feel like that’s my approach to music get immersed in it I didn’t study music I learned from listening and watching and youtubing and being there from mistakes and I feel like that’s what Mexico City feels like to me just go walk and see what happens.

One of the themes in the album is that people now are afraid to maybe be their real selves at parties or clubs and kiss people and dance because they’re worried they might be recorded. Why was this something you wanted to reflect on?

It was initially to just celebrate that little girl that went to clubs and smudged the eyeliner and was all sweaty, looking like shit but making out in the dance floor, it’s a celebration to that, to what I witnessed when I started going out initially in Mexico City and all of these tunes were there. I intertwined that idea with the 80s, if you listen to all of these erotic songs from then, it’s just very contained but it’s out there. I’ve always been a songwriter for romance and for desire and I celebrate that, now that I’m an older woman I just want to find my take on that. 

I read that you describe romance as a sort of rebellion. Can you explain this to me?  

I just want to celebrate as a woman that I want things, it’s okay to want a man or a girl, it’s good to want to feel another skin in yours and just find a reflection of one another, that’s basically rebellious now, we’re like so caged into our own selves and our own dreams it’s just hard to just pair it up with somebody else at least for one night and that’s what I see, I’m a serial dater now it’s just really hard to find people that actually want to show their true self and just celebrate the feral part of being human even if it’s for just one night.

Is this a specially good time to be making music in Spanish? There seems to be a boom.

It’s so good, I feel like music en español is not being compartmentalised anymore. It used to be always categorised as just Urban Latino or a couple of categories and we’ve been proving that music in Spanish is just music. You can do whatever and Spanish is such a challenging and beautiful language, when you find the words to say what you want to say in a song in Spanish it feels almost divine.

What are you excited for right now?

I’m excited to tour this album, taking RRRomeo everywhere, the final shape of a song is live performing it, and seeing how it starts to like develop into this little monster that starts to change day by day, and then you’re five years into playing the same song, and it sounds different but good in the same way. I like that exercise and I cannot wait to see where RRRomeo goes.

Photographer – Aana Mirdita
Stylist – A+F
Makeup – Mark de los Reyes
Hair – Sergio Estrada