Nena Daconte presents her autobiography in Bilbao
the baffle
The singer Mai Menes created her book ‘I had so much to give you’, where she analyzes her mental health problems, and sang four songs in a Fnac full of young people
On Tuesday, the Fnac was filled to witness the visit of Nena Daconte, that is, the singer Mai Meneses (Madrid, 1978), the first expelled in the second edition of OT, the leader of a group that between 2005 and 2010 strengthened commercially well . Mai presented the autobiographical book ‘I had so much to give you’ (Plaza y Janés, 200 and a few pages of non-small print), announced that in March 2023 her next album will be released on Subterfuge, which will be called ‘Almost perfect’ («there are ten songs, in the lyrics there are many unrequited loves and the music is from the 90s, super guitar and super hard, because it is produced by Dani Alcover, the same one from Dover’s ‘Devil Came To Me’ album; this Friday the third single will be released» ), and as a climax he sang 4 songs in 19 minutes as a duet with Chema Moreno (guitar and backing vocals).
First there was a 22-minute talk held on two seats with her editor, Cristina Lomba (it was her birthday, the protagonist revealed, and ‘Zorionak zuri’ was sung to her). There Daconte said that she started with the book in April 2021, when she had not taken her medication and imagined her reincarnated soul telling the story of her clumsy body. But he wrote it in the third person and in Plaza y Janés he considered that an autobiography could not be in the third person. And they also recommended that the only two pages about the Nena Daconte group should be expanded to a third of a volume in which the author does not dwell on her problems with alcohol and drugs, but does go into her mental problems (paranoia, depression , various insecurities…).
And the singer declared: «The stigma of mental health affects me too, because I was afraid to tell things. You can tell someone that you have diabetes, but it is not well seen to admit that you have mental problems»; “I wasn’t looking for something literary lofty for the book, but rather a conversation captured on paper”; «In my songs I always talk about the same thing: love, lack of love, loneliness, the passage of time, illusion…».
Mai Meneses and Chema Moreno /
And after several little questions from the audience (a boy asked her to record the song ‘Vuelve’ again) and four minutes to change the seats for stools, Nena Daconte reappeared with the guitarist Chema Moreno and sang with style (a la Oreja and in a very country plan but in Spanish) those 4 songs in 19 minutes more than satisfactory. There were three classics of their own with great appeal and a new song that was a little inferior but also good.
‘Idiota’ followed one another in this order, a ballad in 90s indie style with a quivering voice that grew until it brushed against Izal; the new one, ‘Detrás de cada luz’, a composition between Paula Rojo and La Oreja with a very engaging chorus a la Jayhawks and with lyrics “that talk about people who are too sensitive” (it was the first single from the album scheduled for March; “the third single comes out on Friday, but we’re not going to play it today, to make it more of a surprise”); ‘In which star will you be’, “a well-known song but slightly changed due to Chema’s idea, so that it surprises something else”, a piece with a country voice that resonated with Dolly Parton, a certain sense of urgency and clapping requested by her; and to end their long-awaited big hit, ‘I had so much to give you’, also the title of the book, a generational song that will be heard at parties and radios 30 or 40 years from now, an endearing song conducted by the duo to cowboy honky tonk and with customary hippie choruses broadcast by the spectators gathered at the Fnac, many of whom recorded the moment with their mobile phones.