This is Y December 2020 Digital Edition

MUSIC
in her basement, allowed her the chance to push herself
artistically more than ever before.
“Well, I think being at home meant I was completely
uninhibited with wild abandon, in a way that I am not
when sound engineers are looking at me. “Also, I wasn’t
afraid to make mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes
land in places that are wonderful, and I wouldn’t make
them if someone else was there. So, I feel like there’s more
intimacy in this record, and that there’s more truth in the
way that I am singing,” she explains thoughtfully, noting
that the album is very much focused on motherhood and
the pressures, hopes and expectations that it brings.
While the 39 year-old singer has been frank about the
challenges she endured to bring her daughter into the
world, a clearly understandable desire to shield her child
from media intrusion has been misinterpreted in some
quarters as being a conscious decision to raise her as
‘gender neutral’. While it’s led to an at times uncomfortable
relationship with the media, her engaging and refreshingly
honest manner remains greatly endearing to her fans.
“It is so great being a mum and I feel very lucky, as the
lockdown meant that we’ve spent a lot of time together as
a family, which has been a positive. Usually, it had just been
one or the other of us looking after our daughter, who has
now started really learning about family,” says Paloma of
her now three-year old.
As she adds, the record’s title track, Infinite Things, is
about her youngster, and was inspired from previously
reading Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borge’s short
story, The Aleph, in which its central character experiences
the full spectrum of human emotion, from pain to joy,
within a single moment.
“With the title track, it’s about seeing things through my
daughter’s eyes and is about becoming a parent, and how
that it is all about continuing humanity. You experience the
worst heartache with it. “The album is also a commentary
on society as well in respect of issues raised by living in
the pandemic, and also knowing people who have
lost loved ones.
“It’s also about enduring love, as we’re most used to
hearing about the initial parts of a relationship on that first
spark, so it’s an area that that’s under-represented. I think
there’s a big cultural hole there that I’m aiming to address,”
notes Paloma, who isn’t afraid to tackle some difficult
subject areas that many would shun. This is most notable
on one of the early tracks on the album, Monster, which is a
reflection on the darker side of the music business.
There’s certainly a bittersweet edge to one of the album’s
standout tracks, the spinetingling ballad If Loving You
Were Easy, which would not seem out of place on a James
Bond soundtrack – “I was born to do Bond” she asserts,
yet is also acutely aware that the more she mentions it, the
less likely it will happen. But in spite of whatever occurs, it
seems there’s a strong level of support out there for her.
As she explains, she and her other half Leyman Lahcine, a
French artist, have endured a lot in recent years, including
handling a total of six rounds of fertility treatment. While
they may have challenges ahead, including Paloma
revealing she’s prone to postnatal depression, they’ve
demonstrated a strong degree of resilience.
“I’d pretty much resigned myself to giving up with this
latest treatment, and I thought that this just wasn’t going
to happen. It felt like it was the last chance saloon and I
was thinking to myself, where am I going with this?
“With IVF, I think it’s sad that men don’t really talk about it
in public, and it’s one of those things where society always
assumes that it is a female issue. It’s something that can be
hard on relationships,” she admits, keen to put across the
fact that they’ve split their childcare as evenly as possible.
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