Danna Embraces Her Darkness and Ends Up Shining on ‘Childstar’
On her new album Childstar, the Mexican pop star Danna introduces herself to fans in Latin America who thought they already knew everything about her.
To start, the 13-track concept LP, which dropped last week, is the singer’s first project under her new stage name “Danna.” (She’s removed the “Paola” from her original moniker.) It’s her way of stripping herself from the chica buena — or good girl — role that she felt forced to uphold since she started acting at age 4.
“From a young age, I was put in a bubble of ‘No one touch her. No one talk to her.’ I started to be a very lonely girl,” she says, referencing the work she did on telenovelas as a kid. (She starred as characters like Patito on Atrévete a Soñar and María on María Belén; more recently, she appeared on the Netflix series Elite.) “My emotions were being manipulated. ‘You’re going to cry in this scene because your dad died.’ As an adult, you can discard those feelings but as a kid, it’s very hard to do that.”
“I built my entire life and created my existence around these characters,” she continues. “I created an individuality and an obscurity that was hidden by fake joy.”
At 28 now, Danna’s album-making process became a second adolescence after her isolated childhood and young adulthood where she had to live up to this picture-perfect “Danna Paola” persona. For Danna, Childstar is a look inside of the darkness she overcame and captures her — while effortlessly sliding between English and Spanish — singing from a new, fully unfiltered perspective as an adult.
Over R&B, house, and her signature synth-pop, she openly embraces her sexuality in ways she never dared before. It’s also a moment of closure and healing for the pop star. “I’m making peace with who I am and what I went through after going through therapy,” she says. “You don’t know shit about me. What people know about me is what was decided for people to know about me.”
From her home in Mexico, Danna shares secrets from the making of Childstar, including a hidden appearance from Omar Apollo and that one time she fell in love with a girl. “With this album, you’re going to really know me,” she says.
“The Fall”
It was very liberating to create the intro. It starts with me saying, “I have fallen.” It’s the first thing you hear when you enter. Everything around me had fallen down. The fantasy castle vanished. It’s like when Tinkerbell turns off and all the people have to yell “I believe in fairies.” That’s how I felt: turned off and that’s pretty heavy to start to the album. I wanted to speak directly about everything that happened when I was a child. I think it’s more like “enjoy the fall”and clap for it. I have always been under the spotlight and under the public opinion. I’ve always been seen as this good girl so people wonder, “Why this dark era?” And it’s everything that’s added up all of these years. Part of the monologue was a mix between a writing session and some improv. It’s the start of the Childstar story. It tries to make you change your perspective.
“Atari”
This is a song that expresses my more sexual, free side. This song came out after a session at 4 a.m. after some drinks so it was sick. The chorus came out in English because it flowed that way. It began to transform and transform, so when we finished that song became the focus track of the album. And it’s a very sexually liberating song, removing the taboo of speaking of sex because only in reggaeton do they sing about tits and ass, so I was thinking how I would express that? How do I remove the taboo? But qué rico. We need to talk about it without any taboo. I’m an adult and I like to talk about these things in my songs. I’m quite suggestive and have double meanings in all of it. The song ends with reggaeton because I don’t think there’s anything more sexual than perreo. It takes you to this sexy ending that is so hot.
“Platonik”
This one is my first experience singing about how I fell in love with a girl, how I was dreaming of her, and understanding that love can also present itself through a girl for me. I never told her. She doesn’t even know I liked her. It was cool there was this empowerment. It was an experience that I lived in Spain after a lot of failures in my life love, My current boyfriend hadn’t arrived yet. It’s a story I’m glad I could express. It was originally called “Friendly Request” but the magical part of the song was that we made it so quickly. We knew it needed to be R&B. There are some trap melodies. The song had the original demo vocal from 2021 because it had a magical feel to it. You sometimes lose that essence if you re-record so we kept that in. It turned into one of my favorite tracks. Maybe she’ll realize it’s about her. And if so, we’ll figure it out.
“VTR3”
“VTR3” has a very cool story because its was born on the XT4S1S tour. We used these audios to introduce the era during the performance. People loved it so we decided to make the sound into a real song. It was a sassy, vogue-y, auditive journey. It’s the perfect way of changing our journey on the album. And Steve Aoki gave it a great remix to end the album. I can’t wait to dance to this song.
“Amanecer”
This is like the sunrise of the album. It feels like a hug. It’s folk-pop. It’s thanking someone who is not there anymore. My ex appeared to say happy birthday to me. And I realized at that moment that I had realized I had already healed from that. “I’m in a better place. You’re not here. But I’m happy.” This one was born in 2021 after a few recording sessions. Fun fact: There’s someone hidden on this song. We don’t have any collaborations but Omar Apollo is credited as a songwriter and his vocals are on this song too. I admire and love him so much. We haven’t even been able to see each other. I am dying to talk with him and I hope one day to make a song for real. I love what he’s doing, he was also in the process of making his album and we both were wishing each other luck. Making an album is a lot of stress! He let us use those melodies and he is there in the credits. I’m so happy.