ALAINA CASTILLO RELEASES CHRISTMAS SONG “WISHLIST”
Critically acclaimed bilingual artist on the rise Alaina Castillo released her provocative Christmas record “Wishlist,” ahead of the holidays. “Wishlist” showcases a confident tongue in cheek Alaina and encourages listeners have some (real) fun over the holidays. In the virtual visual she teams up with influencers from across the globe. Alongside herself, the video stars Japanese Anime artist Kizuna AI, Influential Australian artist Wengie, Audrey Ochoa of Mexico and Destiny Caldwell from Canada.
Alaina about the song said, “”wishlist is my own take on spending the christmas holidays with your boo. it’s about the classic christmas vibes while adding a suggestive twist to make it a song that talks about fun ‘love’ during winter time & all the risqué things one might think during cuddle season. i wanted my fans to have an xmas song from me that they could feel the holiday vibes from while also bopping to a sexy twist of the classics. it’s now available on all streaming platforms and i hope u enjoy it!! 😌🎄”
Most recently, Alaina debuted the music video for her latest Spanish single “¡párate!” last month. The video is a fiery e-girl blue and red toned visual and includes a wide range of imagery contrasting from dark to glimpses of beauty. The elaborate editing is at the forefront of the video, matching and layering new images with the rapid beat of each chorus.
The song and video were just another example of the singer’s phenomenal versatility by bending genres while enlisting her Latin roots. The track talks about a change or a movement that comes out of trying to overcome challenges. Click HERE to stream/download. “¡párate!” followed the release of the artist’s antisocial party anthem “tonight”, another transitional song for Alaina taking her from introvert singer-songwriter to bedroom pop star in the making. “tonight” has amassed over 2.5 millionstreams across platforms and over 800K views on the music video to date. The song is currently Top 20 on the airplay charts in Mexico alongside “¡párate!” at Top 40. “tonight” was recently featured in a European Coca-Cola ad which is set to run over the next year.
FEATURE INTERVIEW
I’ve loved seeing more and more of your songs now being in Spanish, especially I’m a huge fan of ‘mensajes de voz’ and I wanted to ask you about what your personal experience has been like making r&b in Spanish in the US music industry?
Alaina: For this EP I was kind of scared at first because Spanish is not my first language, so I was like, what’s gonna happen? Because you know, speaking Spanish I kind of f* up, so it was nice being in the studio and just focusing on the musical part of it because we had help from Ale Alberti and she would kinda put those messages from the English version into the Spanish version which helped translate it a lot. She was really helpful to get those exact feelings out, which I really really liked because this EP was a lot more vulnerable, so to put it out and kinda do English and Spanish at the same time and have people be like: “Oh I love your English stuff, and then, I love your Spanish stuff as well”. It’s fun for me because it is combining the two worlds, which a lot of people don’t really combine or maybe can’t really combine but here I am just doing a little bit of both and putting them into my music because you know, it’s what I wanted to try.
Since Spanish is your second language, do you feel music helps you improve your Spanish? For example myself, I learned French and Portuguese through music!
Alaina: Yeah, music definitely helped with that, because before whenever I was listening to music in Spanish I would listen to stuff like ‘Despacito’ and all these songs and that would help me with speaking and also learning new vocabulary. So I feel like it definitely helps, especially now that I’m having to write in it and think what I want to sing, so yeah, I feel like singing definitely helps.
Sometimes it’s fun I guess to like translate your feelings into multiple languages. On a similar note, I wanted to ask you what music styles you have been inspired by lately, bc I’ve been listening to ‘wishlist’ and it has that low-fi r&b, but then I’ll listen to ‘tonight’ and you will have me feeling myself while literally just walking my dog!
Alaina: It is all over the place because I grew up listening to (I love it that you said that) so many different artist! My parents had me listening to christian music and classics and stuff, but then also stuff like Usher, R&B, etc.
So yeah, we do have a big mix, I released ‘tonight’ which is like a dance-disco and sassy kinda trap-pop thing going on. But I guess for me it’s like I will put music out depending just on how I feel. I started with my first EP over a year ago and now it’s kind of, a time to experiment with music and sounds, because you know, that’s what music is about. It’s nice to just try different things, expressing whatever I was feeling whenever I walked into the studio and then put it out there.
I’m also really curious about the artists that inspire you or that you have been listening to lately? I know you like Ariana Grande, Billie and many more from your covers on your youtube channel!
Alaina: I mean, I listen to a lot of old songs from people like Rihanna, Drake, Ne-Yo. But I think that now mostly yeah, Ariana Grande. I listened to her songs whenever I was doing covers and it was all over Tik-Tok that she was making all these new songs talking about manifestation, and touching different topics, and I thought to myself, oh that’s sick, and I wanted to do some of that as well. I feel like it’s a great thing, just writing things about, just kind of putting your thoughts out in the world and create, so whenever I hear things like that I’ll be like “yes”.
Would you say your songs are based on your own experiences or maybe people around you to make your music?
Alaina: With my songs, it’s really weird but I have to feel whatever words I’m singing, and relate to it for some reason. So I definitely write about different experiences, but there’s a lot of times in which my imagination would exceed what my experiences would actually be. So that’s why I will write lyrics in different ways, and with metafors, and just kind of exploring those little things based on my thoughts. It’s from past experiences, and then I will go through my phone and find messages and words from those that I wanna sing.
I do get what you mean by exactly feeling what you’re singing, whenever I would listen for example to your song ‘un niño’ I would be feeling the exact atmosphere and go through all the emotions that the person that wrote the song is going through.
Alaina: Yeah! And that was the first song that I wrote about kind of being vulnerable about a guy, and I was showing my crazy side a little bit, so I was like, how can I write about this feeling.
As a woman in the music industry would you say you would be able or you think it is easy to go through all the stages up until your music is released working only with women? Is that something you aim for or something you try to put in your work?
Alaina: Whenever RØMANS reached out to me, the producer that I’m working with now, I didn’t know what I was getting in or how my music was going to be produced. And then RØMANS and I would be working together, and honestly it takes a long time to get used to somebody at first, and since he was weird and funny like me we got along well.
And that’s what I have been doing, because of quarantine especially, it’s just good to have a person who’s on the same path as you, because a lot of times I would just have many thoughts and it’s good to be working with him because I know that he’s going to put it into words and I know that I can share everything with him as a producer.
And you mentioned the quarantine, how would you say that impacted you as an artist?
Alaina: Oh man, in so many ways, I think before quarantine, everything I thought about myself and about the world was totally different. And now there are so many days in which I’ll think “what am I doing with my life” and I will be stuck in my own world, and then the days in which I would get to go out or go to the studio, it opened like a different side of me.
It’s just getting to experience that, and then also understand that I have to dive in and be that person. Because a lot of people that are trying see themselves through me, and it’s important to understand that my career is my career but is also the career of other people.
So I have to speak for myself and be myself to make sure that I pursue that as well for my music.
So you were mentioning that you have to embody that person when you make your music, then would you relate your music to a sort of sense of spirituality? Because, myself, I was recording a song just a few days ago as I watched the sunset (it’s already night time as you can tell where I am, in Paris) and I felt like I just had to embody whatever it was that my lyrics were, I have to put my body into what I was singing. Do you feel like something overcomes you as an artist?
Alaina: Exactly, 100%, I barely ever talk about what’s happening to myself and sometimes I’m not able to express my true feelings, but whenever I’m singing for some reason, you’re just in a different world, you’re just able to portray that. Even when you’re just singing at first and then putting that into lyrics, I will get those images of sunsets and nature and I would put that as well in my music, because those things make me be grateful and they are something that I’m feeling, and I love it.
Even sometimes what you express doesn’t even have to be through lyrics, it can just be a certain sound that expresses what you’re feeling.
Alaina: Oh yeah, the ad libs in a song can express different feelings like being sad.
Well that was all we wanted to ask. It was just really easy and flowing to do this!
Alaina: Thank you so much! Have good day!
Feature interview conducted by Eduardo Rolle and Shirley Reynozo.
Press Release provided by Guerrera Marketing & PR.
