Photo courtesy of Sofía Valdés.
"I was like, ‘That’s it?,’” Valdés laughs on a Zoom call from her bedroom in Panama. “I was happy, but I know under normal circumstances I would at least have a gathering of my friends at my house, making cookies as a celebration.”—a patchwork of songs written over the past six years, from her days at the UK conservatory, on FaceTime with producers “for five hours” during lockdown, doing in-studio sessions, and even with her friends during lunchtime at school.
Valdés is already at work on her next project, which she says contains more mature subject matter—for instance, one track touches on helping a friend who struggled with thoughts of suicide. This sense of growth is pretty typical for a person in their early twenties, but in Valdés’s case, it does stem from the moment she realized she needed to quit looking for self-worth in others.