"Rock icon" and "legend" are often thrown around liberally when describing an artist’s stature or output. In the case of Argentine musician Fito Páez, the proof is there for anyone to see.
Páez was only 21 when he released his first solo album, Del 63; the highly influential . Giros came out just a year later and made Páez a household name in Latin American music. Released in 1994, his famed, era-defining album Circo Beat — with hits like "Mariposa Tecknicolor" — sparked undeniable hymns of the '90s and would go on to influence artists such as No Te Va A Gustar, Mon Laferte, and Nathy Peluso.
Páez is, without a doubt, one of the most important music composers, producers, and performers in South America. Throughout his four-decade career, the 11-time Latin GRAMMY winner has sold out arenas in his home country and internationally, and performed on distinguished American stages such as Carnegie Hall and Radio City Music Hall.
These accolades have made Páez a tireless, dynamic performer always in search of new worlds and ideas to put into song. On March 28, Páez revealed his 29th studio album, the rock opera Novela. An ambitious concept album, Novela revolves around a circus coming to a small town in Santa Fé, a province in Argentina where Páez was born. Witches, magic, freaks, mobs, and evildoers all have their place in the lyrics of Novela.
While enjoying Novela takes just over an hour, for Paez, writing the album wasn't a short term process. The work of a lifetime, the characters and plot of Novela were, in fact, 38 years in the making. The artist’s road to the album can be traced back to the end of the '80s.
"I needed to free myself from the ghost of Ciudad de Pobres Corazones, which is a cursed record that I would have preferred not to write," Páez confessed in a recent interview with Rolling Stone. "So I started playing around and Ey! took shape, but parallel to that, I started working on Novela, which then aligned itself to Tercer Mundo, and to all the records I kept making."
Released in quick succession between 1988 and 1990, Ciudad de Pobres Corazones, Ey!, and Tercer Mundo helped establish Páez as one of the leading, most eclectic lyricists and bandleaders in Latin America. Tracks like Ciudad's "Gente Sin Swing," with its bitter lines about vultures and hangers-on, glassy, baroque synth arrangements, and the Ey! Cut "Por Siete Vidas," with an intro built around Afro-Uruguayan percussion and surreal nods to LSD, gave rise to Páez’s career as a daring, counter-cultural artist.
"One of the many things in my DNA is the storyteller, or the novelist, who sneaks in," said Páez in a 2020 interview with Rosario3, regarding the making of Tercer Mundo. "I always get in or try to tell some story inside the songs, which is not a medium prepared to tolerate whole stories. Sometimes it works. It’s not a pose, but a resource for me to work with."
Páez's storytelling reached its apex in songs such as "El chico de la tapa" and "Tercer mundo" — both tales about poverty and grit, which Páez filled with delirious tidbits about soccer, anti-police sentiment, and cues to the precarious economy of Argentina in the 1990s. In larger-than-life characters such as the young vandal of "El chico de la tapa" or the innocent, star-crossed lovers of "11 y 6," Páez laid the foundations of the outcasts and rebellious protagonists of Novela — teenagers, adults, and townspeople embarking in life-altering encounters filled with desire, passion, and wonder.
With the roots of Novela starting to take shape, Páez’s success continued. His 1992 album El amor después del amor became Páez's (and Argentina’s) biggest record to date, selling over a million physical copies and continues to rack up an absurd amount of plays on streaming platforms. Timeless love songs, such as "Un vestido y un amor" and "Brillante sobre el mic," became part of the Argentine rock nacional songbook, elevating Páez's artistic stature.
Always the rule-breaker, Páez followed the immense buzz of El amor with another prelude to Novela: a 13-track euphoric joyride he named Circo Beat. "What ended up being [the song] ‘Circo Beat' was originally a song named ‘As de póker,’ and it was about the circus that lives inside Novela," Páez told Rolling Stone. "But because [back then] Novela wasn’t going anywhere, Circo Beat became its own thing." Beatlesque, ambitious, with string arrangements, funky licks, and hilarious readings on fame, Circo Beat marked the end of Páez’s affair with the flamboyant glam production that defined his output in the '80s and '90s.
Released in 2000, Rey Sol, Páez's eleventh album, was a new chapter in his career. Opener single "El diablo en tu corazón, with its video of Buenos Aires at the edge of collapse, left many speechless. It featured a violent, massive street brawl, complete with enraged cab drivers and businessmen viciously punching each other. Most memorably, it also featured a then highly polemic, long close-up of two women kissing. In a country still plagued by the watchful eyes of Catholicism, and edging into one of its worst recessions in modern history, Páez’s video added fuel to the fire.
"I want to talk about my impression of what Argentina is going through," said Páez to Página 12 in an interview from 2001. "I feel that 20 years ago, the situation was flourishing, and now there is a big spirit of hopelessness and frustration."
Always the truth-teller, Páez spent the next decade releasing a stream of records that touched on romance (and the end of it) and explored his role as a bold, oftentimes unapologetic, cultural figure. Páez made adventurous albums like 2003's visceral Naturaleza Sangre and the heartfelt, piano-driven Rodolfo (from 2007). Tracing the influences of Novela, interviews from the 2000s all shine a light on Páez’s love for filmmakers such as Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, and Lucrecia Martel; all of them creators of colossal epics such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Last Temptation of Christ, and Zama, respectively.
Such epics would ultimately inform Novela as an album and a film. This dual format, innovated by bands like the Who, captivated Páez at a young age. "The imagery of Novela is based on a record, Quadrophenia, that my dad bought for me at a record store in Rosario, and on how I was fascinated by the Who while living in that lower-middle-class home, stuck in the heart of the city," elaborated Páez in a Rolling Stone cover story. "It takes flight with my hometown, within Rosario, with all its imagery. That becomes part of you more than the country’s culture, right?"
While his youth in Rosario is one of the elements behind Novela, the album is the product of four decades in record-making. Páez’s brilliant world arrives in lyrics like "Brujas Salem de Prix," where "every moon of Pentecostes / incarnates a perfect romance," and "Universidad Prix," where characters recite "We are not afraid of power / we yearn for freedom / that which is not for everyone." Crazed disco accents, soul/funk arrangements, and Páez’s household vocal bravado glide through in an album mostly rooted in rock n’ roll. Catchy singles "Cuando el Circo Llega al Pueblo" and "Superextraño" serve as anchors to Novela’s overall script, and as reminders of Páez’s love for giants such as John Lennon, Charly García, and Luis Alberto Spinetta. Evoking "Strawberry Fields Forever," track "Cruces de Gin en Sal," with thick, diamond-like guitar riffs and heartfelt vocals by Páez, serves as a consistent reminder of Páez's innate ability to create colorful, lasting fantasies.
Through its 25-song tracklist that clocks around an hour and ten minutes, with interspersed monologues that tie Páez’s vision together, Novela becomes an immersive listening experience. Closer to becoming Páez’s own "Ulysses," Novela finds a home near works such as Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky’s "Santa Sangre" and Goya’s 1798 painting "Witches’ Flight." Best enjoyed, according to the artist, "relaxed, and in the company of friends," Novela is a lovely ode to slow living and make-believe, co-existing along sped up TikTok tunes, fleeting chart toppers, and "chill" background music.
"Novela is a chant to hope and love," said Páez to Rolling Stone. To us, a delightful win.
