Chanel, life after Eurovision: "I'm not a puppet"

"I'm going to tell you a secret.

Something that I have not told anyone else”, confesses with a mischievous smile Chanel Terrero (Havana, 31 years old) —from now on, simply Chanel— comfortably seated in a designer leather chair in the meeting room of Pan Creative Studio, the agency that was in charge of polishing its image for Eurovision.

It's hot outside and the stately trees of Madrid's Salesas neighborhood sway as she, a petite, hyperactive woman dressed in Levi's overalls and a brown crop top, looks like a little girl.

Her image in private is far removed from the break-and-tear diva dressed in a black bodysuit full of shiny studs, designed by Palomo Spain, who achieved third place, Spain's best result in the Eurovision Song Contest in the last 27 years.

But the diva is still in there:

as Nathy Peluso says.

There are many things that I still have to learn, many that I still do not control.

But I am the leader of my team.

I am not a puppet, ”she says without losing sweetness.

The secret that she wanted to confess is the following: “The week I did the performance in Turin she was very sick.

Obviously it wasn't covid, because we were getting tested every day.

But I woke up every morning shivering, with a fever, unwell, and I didn't tell anyone because I knew that as soon as I raised the alarm, it was going to be a mess, and the last thing I wanted was for nothing to interfere at that time.

'SloMo' already has 24 million views on Spotify.

"That the song is not mine is not a problem, it's like when you play a character in a musical," says Chanel, who wears a Cartier rose gold ring in this photo. Txema Yeste

“That moment” was the culmination of four months in which she built what others take years: an artistic identity and international fame.

The day after her triumph in Turin, Chanel, far from resting and despite the fact that she was not feeling well and that her eyes showed acute conjunctivitis, performed with sunglasses and the energy she had left before more than 9,000 people at the Plaza Mayor in Madrid, a city that celebrated its patron saint festivities.

She greeted the mayor, José Luis Martínez Almeida;

to the spokeswoman for Ciudadanos, Begoña Villacís, and she took selfies with each and every one of those who asked her (Almeida and Villacís included).

But the thing is that the next morning she couldn't go to sleep either, as she asked for her body.

In a marathon day of interviews stipulated by contract with Televisión Española,

Among his plans are the recording of an album in Los Angeles in collaboration with his friend, the Spanish composer Leroy Sánchez.

The interpreter wears a Fendi feather coat. Txema Yeste

Although Chanel never abandons her tireless worker rhetoric, when asked if she was pushed too hard by those around her, she recounts: “There was a day when I came home after a whole week of traveling, rehearsing and shooting.

I lay down on the bed and burst into tears.

It is true that I hold the reins well and I usually say to myself: 'I am strong', but there was a point where I physically fell.

That day I literally couldn't get undressed.

There I did think: 'They go over or, well, the situation goes over', he explains about the hardest moments of a marathon that began in January this year, when Tony Sánchez-Ohlsson, an external consultant for RTVE who has been offering songs to the Eurovision Song Contest and that he knew her from her role as an actress in musicals, told her: "We have a song that hits you very much".

He was not mistaken, it is clear;

but at that time, although the singer, actress and dancer was known in her artistic circuit for having a complete profile that was very difficult to achieve (she sings well, dances very well, acts outstandingly, in the words of Nacho Cano, her great supporter) ;

She had participated in great box office successes such as

or

and was going to star in

the pharaonic work about the colonial history of Mexico that has obsessed the Mecano composer for years, she was for the general public a total unknown without own songs.

Chanel, the singer who led Spain to third place in the Eurovision Song Contest, wearing a feathered hat by Vivascarrión, a jumpsuit by Stella McCartney, platforms by Lorenzo Serafini and a white gold bracelet and ring with diamonds by Bulgari.Txema Yeste

Four days after his controversial triumph at the Benidorm Fest, Javier Doria, head of artists and repertoire at BMG (the company that manages Nacho Cano's catalogue), was knocking on the doors of Pan Creative Studio.

Those were the hardest days of the public lynching, when racist accusations and the cruelty of which only social networks are capable besieged the girl of Cuban origin but with a Catalan heart —and vice versa— who was going to represent Spain before all of Europe.

The mission was to reverse the situation.

"When we were presented with the challenge, we found it very interesting, but also difficult," says Melania Pan, director of the agency, "but when we met her, we had no doubt that in the end she would win over the public."

She was dressed in top designer clothes (not everyone can go from Balenciaga to

They put at their disposal Rubén Mármol, one of the most respected makeup artists in the world by the great fashion photographers, and they made sure that their dancers were at the same stylistic level.

From February to May, the singer did not rest for a single day.

It was not something new for her, since she came from a profession in which two daily showings of two and a half hours, six days a week in a total of 200 performances per season, are the norm.

The level of demand is summed up perfectly by Raquel Caurin, one of his dancers, seasoned for years on Joaquín Cortés's international tours: "I was used to working just as hard on shows that spanned months, but here, for a song by three minutes, we worked at the same level”.

Sitting in a chair, her eyes tired after a long meeting in which she has been talking about her future projects, among which is appearing in the next season of UPA Dance, Chanel admits that when she was finally able to close the door on crowds and going on a 10-day trip with her partner felt very strange: “It was like putting the parking brake on a car going at full speed.

I slept soundly, ate delicious things and swam in the sea, because I am very enjoying myself.

But she was very aware that when she came back she would have to start all over again.”

After the brief pause, she had no choice but to face the question that she never wanted to ask herself when she was on board the Eurovision locomotive: “Now what?”.

“I'm learning to be a 'business woman', I lead my team”, confesses the interpreter of 'SloMo', who wears a multicolored stole by Lorenzo Serafini in this photograph.

Txema Yeste

SloMo

already has 24 million views on Spotify.

But it doesn't really belong to you.

“That the song is not mine is not a problem.

It's like when you play a character in musicals.

You just make it yours”, says the singer, who is now facing another marathon in which summer performances are a necessary toll, but whose ultimate goal is to have more than one song, preferably several, to perform before it ends. year.

She naturally assumes that if Eurovision is the European song festival it is precisely because what is being submitted to the competition are songs, not artists.

"It can happen that a song presented does not have a singer who interprets it, as was the case," explains Leroy Sánchez, the composer of this tune that, before Chanel, he offered to Jennifer Lopez.

Sánchez left for Miami at the age of 17 from Abechuco, a small town in Álava where he already composed songs that he uploaded to YouTube.

"When the wave of hatred came, Chanel took the worst, but you don't know what nonsense they called me for being Basque!", he says with a smile on the phone from Los Angeles.

Similar outbursts had to endure Josh Huerta and Exon Narcos, the dancers of Latin American origin, and Chanel herself, who already experienced racist episodes when she was a girl and her rhythmic gymnastics classmates rejected her for “black”: “This profession is curious.

My skin color, which at other times closed doors for me,

”.

“There are many things that I still have to learn, many that I still do not control.

But I am the leader of my team.

I am not a puppet,” says the singer, born in Havana, who wears a lace top by Arturo Obegero. Txema Yeste

All the members of the team are united by an adventurous and international spirit that is also perfectly represented by Leroy Sánchez, who moved to the United States in search of his dream: to compose for the stars.

Later, in the city of stars, he managed to enter the circuit of composers who meet in musical

groups to create songs that go into the catalog of publishers and that aspire to become

.

The songs of Beyoncé, for example, or those of Anitta, in which Sánchez has participated, come out of this type of session.

All composers want to be part of that Olympus, but only a few achieve it: “Legend has it that one of the composers of

, the great

by Katy Perry, she charges five million a year for copyrights”, she comments when the journalist insists on knowing how much money

has given or is going to give , a song she co-composed with four other creators: “Who knows how many times the they may be showing on German television!”

Yes, it is clear that his relationship with Chanel does not end after this success.

She calls him “my angel”, and the feeling is reciprocal, despite the fact that when she presented

I didn't know BMG, current owner of the song.

Sánchez remembers that in the previous edition of Eurovision he had had a bitter experience with another composition of his that he gave to Blas Cantó, but that it was not treated as he wanted, so this time he was blunt: “I have a lot of faith in this song and I am saving with all my being, but, if you end up liking it, I want you to know that it will only compete if it is done as I say”.

So it was he who chose Chanel.

“When I heard her, her voice stood out from the rest of the candidates, it had a very different tone, very warm, but at the same time very sexy.

So I was like, 'Okay, she can sing, cool, but I want to see the body language.'

And that's where Kyle Hanagami came into the equation,

the choreographer who abandoned his promising career as an economist at Berkley to dance and whom Sánchez met at a birthday party in Los Angeles.

Since then, both self-taught, they are inseparable.

“When Chanel first did the choreography, I told her that it was going to be very difficult, because of the movements on the floor, and I asked her if she wanted to change it.

She said no, and she showed me that she wasn't afraid to look like an idiot in order to end up looking cool.

There are many artists who are not willing to do that and who want to seem great from the beginning, ”says Kyle from the Canary Islands, where he has flown from the United States to polish the choreography again before the singer's performance at the Tenerife Carnival.

“We took risks with Chanel, it's true, but suddenly everything fitted perfectly.

And she is a love…”, Sánchez points out.

The singer will soon participate in the musical 'La Malinche', by Nacho Cano.

She wears a silk shirt by Dolce & Gabbana, a skirt by Palomo Spain and shoes by Alberta Ferreti.Txema Yeste

Chanel is, in fact, a person whom many of her former colleagues define as affectionate, kind and caring.

She herself admits that her main flaw is wanting to please others and not knowing how to say no.

“My mother has told me many times that 'you are too good'.

The singer says that perhaps this need to please comes from the years in which she went from rhythmic gymnastics to ballet: "There they treated me very well and I was very happy, but I always felt that it was not enough, that I had to give more".

Now she admits that she also tries to overcome those limits and, as the divas she admires have done, totally control her own career: “When I was younger I watched many Beyoncé documentaries and I always admired her way of working, because, of course, I I am very smiling

Now that it no longer maintains a contractual relationship with Televisión Española or with BMG, at least for now, beyond

has begun to make unilateral decisions.

The first is to go to Los Angeles to record songs for a future album with his friend Leroy: “I can't say yet how it will be, but obviously, due to my legacy and my tastes, the Latin imprint will be very strong”.

And this time she will appear as the author: “I have learned, and not in a bad way.

This is like a couple relationship.

When it is over and time passes, you realize the things that you are going to allow and the ones that are no longer worth it, ”she explains.

Among the things she has learned, she also mentions over and over again that she does not want to reveal details of her personal life (who is her boyfriend, for example) or talk about her family.

When she was still willing to do so, she transcended the thousand times told story of her mother, who came from Cuba to Spain for love in 1994 —and who called her Chanel because her favorite perfume was No. 5-,

and that her grandmother is one of the most important people in her life.

“But when the journalists showed up at her house, I realized that this had to be stopped,” she says with a pout that borders on anger.

The singer, with a Philosophy dress, by Lorenzo Serafini. Txema Yeste

The day she returned from Turin, despite her daze and exhaustion, Chanel was already clear that nothing that had happened to her was going to change her plans to premiere Nacho Cano's musical

And so she told this newspaper in the dressing rooms of Televisión Española, before the performance in the Plaza Mayor.

She keeps it.

She lived the lowest hours of that project, which was involved in a great controversy due to the plot line of the show —the love story between

an American Indian, and Hernán Cortés—and for the controversial plan, later aborted, to build an Aztec-inspired pyramid 29 meters high in the neighborhood of Hortaleza (Madrid) to house the work (it is finally scheduled to premiere at Ifema in September).

“Of course it affected us because they were things that seemed unfair to us.

We saw from the inside the purity, the desire and the illusion, the years that Nacho had spent on that project, and it was very frustrating to live all that”.

When asked if she has thought that, ironically, she, whom Nacho Cano was giving an opportunity to, is the one who is going to give the musical the opportunity to resurface with more force than ever, she answers modestly: "I don't see it that way" .

The only family he wants to talk about now is the members of his team, whom he will not do without as long as possible, although the previous contracts have expired and the new ones - of which they do not want to give details - have not yet been announced. have signed.

The dancers corroborate that they trust that pact of loyalty.

“In this profession you are guided a lot by the energies and between us everything flows very well.

What has been seen on stage is the best proof of how well we get along.

And it is very difficult to find these dynamics in this profession, in which there are many egos”, explains Josh Huerta the same day that everyone has met again after the post-Eurovision break.

Kyle Hanagami does not get off the train either because he insists that Chanel's future is to become a global star: "It's not a small dream,

Chanel, with a pink gold ring by Cartier. Txema Yeste

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