Samantha Hudson: "I'm not a transvestite because I want to be, but because that's what you've allowed me to be."

Samantha Hudson was born twice. The first time was in 1999, in León. But she truly came into the world in 2015, at a high school in Magaluf (Mallorca), when she proclaimed to the universe: "I'm gay." Since then, she has grown and multiplied as a singer, actress, activist, polemicist, and constant presence in the audiovisual world representing the trans community. "In that monstrous birth that produced this girl in front of you, perhaps I began to value my proposition. And to realize that I was a superstar even if no one could see it ," she recalls of that birth.

She's now finalizing the release of her third album, Música para Muñecas (Music for Dolls ), the title of which is a reference to the slang used to refer to trans women. A term, "dolls ," has recently gained prominence in the face of the decline of queerness. That anti-euphoric feeling also flutters throughout the album, like a flip side to the expansive partying of AOVE Black Label (2023).

"If that was a tribute to partying, to uninhibited hedonism, I like to think that Music for Dolls is the hangover," Hudson sums up. The album, which is released on Friday the 23rd (that same day she will present it live at the But venue in Madrid), features collaborations with Zahara (on Liturgia , the opening track), La Zowi , and Villano Antillano . "I feel like each track is very well suited to each of them, and in some ways I like to see it as a kind of epiphany," she explains. Three figures who may appear to be quite distant from her career but who share a lot. "Because Zahara has also been a highly persecuted artist, in her case by Catholic organizations, and La Zowi has been criticized left and right for her tone of voice and the explicitness of her lyrics. And what can we say about Villana?"

What is the album about?

It's a kind of personal diary, but also quite universal, that recounts the misadventures of a gender dissident pursuing her dreams in the big city. It's a very contrasting album because the song may have a frenetic rhythm and electrifying sounds, but it still touches on topics that are a total downer after the AOVE party.

Along those lines is "Me la pela ," a song that hides the opposite message beneath the guise of celebrating the early morning. "It doesn't champion the after-hours , but rather suffers from it. Me la pela , but in a defeatist sense, that maybe I'm in a self-harming pattern and I'm giving in too much to that excess that promises a guaranteed escape from everything that worries me, but it's no longer satisfying."

Because?

All this development of the club scene has made me realize that sometimes that escapism is only meant to block your mind from the questions you don't want to ask. For me, the whole album is like dancing with my head down.

Another cut from the album is titled 'Dysphoria'.

She doesn't speak from a place of guilt or victimhood. It's not about me feeling it, but about what everyone expects me to feel. And instead of thinking the problem is that I have a body that doesn't suit me, she talks about how my gender expression is "a deep mystical rhetoric that doesn't fit into their clinical alphabet."

What do you think of the current discourse that everything 'trans' is already tiring?

This is a flawed approach. If we weren't battered by the mainstream media, which spreads perverse narratives that seek to defame us, pervert our existence, or brand us as the devil himself, we wouldn't have to be so peevish. All people who suffer specific violence because they belong to a specific group of people would like to live in peace and tranquility. But sometimes it's impossible.

When did you know you were a star?

I never intended for people to idolize me, but I did work hard to shake off all those perfidious narratives I was talking about and learn to demand the dignity I deserved. I've always given something that people perhaps didn't want to see or weren't asking for. Especially at the beginning of my career, I really enjoyed wearing those eccentric makeup looks and having that drastic attitude, consciously exaggerating what no one wanted to see in me.

For what purpose?

By exaggerating ugliness, you expose beauty; by taking dissent to the extreme, you expose the norm. Because it's a way of taking all that incessant verbiage that's been thrown at us throughout our lives, stitching it together, making a dress, and wearing it like a banner. As a way of showing the world its own filth. Because if such a rigid category of what a man or a woman is didn't exist, I surely wouldn't be a transvestite. I'm not a transvestite because I want to be; I'm a transvestite because that's what you've left me. And not only am I going to appropriate it, but I'm also going to exaggerate it to show you the garbage you've thrown into the world.

The album closes with 'Something Very Strange', which sounds like a church song.

I've always been deeply influenced by the Christian religion. At one point in my life, I connected deeply with that spirituality, which is something people don't know because they simply think I decided to attack the Church because I'm provocative and love to stir up trouble. I've experienced it and, above all, I've loved it. Until you finally realize that you're being kicked out for a very specific reason, and that's a problem that needs to be addressed.

What do you think of those who set themselves up as protectors of Christianity in Spain?

They've hijacked a narrative and used it to do the exact opposite of what Jesus Christ's teachings would be. In general, most symbols today are inverted. That's why being labeled an antichrist simply for trying to defend a much-despised group and speaking out about social causes I consider important makes me realize that maybe being that isn't as bad as it might seem. That they speak in the name of God to perpetrate the greatest atrocities in existence and legitimize the most perverse hatred leads me to think that the one they believe to be the antichrist is actually closer to the Christ they boast about. That Samantha Hudson is the antichrist and then Vox is the pinnacle of heaven seems outrageous to me.