María Natalia Lafourcade Silva (; born 26 February 1984) is a Mexican singer-songwriter. Her music combines elements of pop rock, jazz, and folk, characterized by poetic Spanish lyrics and a lyric soprano voice. She is regarded among the most influential female Latin music artists of all time.
At age 14, Lafourcade briefly joined Twist, a short-lived girl group that disbanded in 1999. She later pursued a solo career, recording several demos before releasing her self-titled debut album, Natalia Lafourcade (2002). The album and its breakthrough single, "En el 2000", brought her widespread recognition. Her follow-up record, Casa (2005), credited as Natalia y La Forquetina, reflected alternative rock influences. After a brief hiatus from performing, Lafourcade returned with the pop-oriented Hu Hu Hu (2009), which included the single "Ella es Bonita". She experimented toward traditional music with Mujer Divina – Homenaje a Agustín Lara (2012), a tribute album to the renowned Mexican composer. Her fifth studio album, Hasta la Raíz (2015), earned critical acclaim and commercial success, particularly for its title track and the single "Nunca Es Suficiente".
Lafourcade further explored folk and regional sounds in the Musas duology—Vol. 1 (2017) and Vol. 2 (2018)—and later celebrated bolero and son jarocho with Un Canto por México, Vol. 1 (2020) and Vol. 2 (2021). She incorporated elements of Latin jazz on De Todas las Flores (2022) and continued that exploration with Cancionera (2025). Her accolades include 20 Latin Grammy Awards, the most by any female artist, five Grammy Awards, and a Billboard Latin Music Award.
Early life María Natalia Lafourcade Silva was born on 26 February 1984 in Mexico City, but grew up in Coatepec, Veracruz. Her father is the Chilean musician , and her mother is the pianist María del Carmen Silva Contreras. Her uncle was Chilean writer Enrique Lafourcade, a representative of the so-called "Generation of the '50s".
During her childhood, Lafourcade studied music with her mother, imitating artists such as Gloria Trevi and Garibaldi. She would be influenced by Fiona Apple, Björk and Café Tacvba as well as Ely Guerra and Julieta Venegas. Her mother studied piano with a specialty in musical pedagogy and is the creator of the Macarsi Method for musical training and personal development for children and educators. She adapted and practiced the method with Lafourcade to help her rehabilitate through music, following a head injury from being kicked by a horse.
She attended Instituto Anglo Español, a Catholic middle school, and studied painting, flute, theater, music, acting, piano, guitar, saxophone, and singing. When she was 10, Lafourcade sang in a mariachi group.
Career
1998–2000: Early years and Twist In 1998, Lafourcade joined a pop music group called Twist. The members included Lafourcade, Tabatha Vizuet (former member of the group Jeans), and Ana Pamela Garcés (former host of a children's television program on TV Azteca). The group was unsuccessful and they split up the following year. Lafourcade has stated that one of the things she disliked about being in Twist, and a reason she began to look for alternatives, was having to lip sync (mime) when performing.
After finishing high school, Lafourcade enrolled at Academia de Música Fermatta, where she met Ximena Sariñana, Juan Manuel Torreblanca, and Alonso Cortés, who would eventually be the drummer for La Forquetina years later.
In 2000, producer Loris Ceroni listened to the demos he had received from Lafourcade and, when she was 17, he gave Lafourcade the opportunity to be in a pop/rock group under his guidance. Lafourcade was hesitant, and Ceroni instead encouraged her to become independent. Lafourcade produced her first LP under the Sony Music label. It was recorded in Italy and was cowritten with . She performed in the city of Dolores Hidalgo, in a concert at the Colegio Lic. Álvaro de Osio y Ocampo, granting her recognition across the country.
2002–2004: Natalia Lafourcade and first hits In June 2002, Lafourcade released her debut studio album, self-titled Natalia Lafourcade, a mix of pop, rock, bossa nova and Latin rhythms. The singles on the album were "Busca un Problema", her biggest hit "En el 2000", "Te Quiero Dar", and "Mírame, Mírate". During this time, she was also the principal contributor to the soundtrack for the Mexican movie Amar te duele, recording the main theme "Amarte Duele", the acoustic version of the song, as well as adding three songs from her first album to the soundtrack: "Busca un Problema", "En el 2000", and "El Destino". She also recorded a duet with León Larregui, "Llevarte a Marte", and contributed the song "Un Pato" for the movie Temporada de patos.
In 2004, she was nominated for a Latin Grammy in the Best New Artist category for her debut album, and was nominated for Rock New Artist at the 16th Lo Nuestro Awards, losing to fellow Mexican singer Alessandra Rosaldo.
At the end of the tour for her first album, Natalia Lafourcade stopped performing as a soloist and began to perform with her band—Alonso Cortés, , and Yunuén Viveros—as Natalia y la Forquetina.
2005–2007: La Forquetina and Casa In 2005, she released Casa, her second album, but this time as Natalia y La Forquetina, the name of her band. Produced mostly by Café Tacuba's Emmanuel del Real, Casa presents a more mature, rock-oriented sound while retaining pop and bossa-nova influences on a few tracks, such as lead single "Ser Humano" (pop-rock) and its follow-up "Casa" (pop-bossa-nova). Áureo Baqueiro returned to produce the few tracks not produced by del Real.
On 2 June 2006, after a tour through Mexico and parts of the U.S., Lafourcade announced she would leave La Forquetina to once again work as a solo artist. Natalia y la Forquetina's final show was on 18 August 2006 in San Luis Potosí. Following the group's break-up, Casa won the Latin Grammy for Best Rock Album by a Duo or Group with Vocal in September.
Also in 2006, a documentary about the band, showing the group on the road and their travels, was aired on MTV Tr3s in the fall of 2007.
Natalia Lafourcade has also appeared on other songs with various other artists. These include "Jardin", Kalimba's "Dia de Suerte", Control Machete's "El Apostador", and Reik's rendition of Lafourcade's song "Amarte Duele". She also reappeared with her former band on various compilation disks with previously unreleased tracks such as "Y Todo Para Que" on Intocable's X, and on the Tin Tan tribute album, Viva Tin Tan, with the hit "Piel Canela". In 2011, she made "Quisiera Saber", a music video with Los Daniels.
2007: Las 4 Estaciones del Amor Natalia Lafourcade moved to Canada, where she met the band People Project, with whom she still frequently collaborates.
Lafourcade returned to Mexico and began to work on Las 4 Estaciones del Amor, her first instrumental album, in collaboration with the Orquesta Sinfónica Juvenil del Estado de Veracruz (OSJEV). The album, under the Sony BMG label, also included a DVD where she narrated the process of making an instrumental album. She also wrote the lyrics for "Tú y Yo" from Ximena Sariñana's self-titled album.
2008–2011: Hu Hu Hu and collaborations
In 2008, she performed on Julieta Venegas' MTV Unplugged album and DVD, where she played several instruments including the bass. She was also a participant in the Red Bull Music Academy in its 2008 edition, held in Barcelona, Spain. In the same year, she began to record her fourth album, and held a concert at the Teatro Metropólitan with Juan Son, Porter's ex-vocalist.
From 2008, Lafourcade had been planning her next album, which she started on at the beginning of 2009. In May 2009, she released the album HU HU HU, a top 10 album in Mexico. The album was produced by Emmanuel del Real (who produced Casa in 2005), Marco Moreno, and Ernesto García. It features internationally known rock and pop artists, such as Julieta Venegas and Juan Son. The first alternative single that she proposed was the song "Azul"; however, the label released the single "Ella es Bonita" simultaneously on the radio and in the press. The album was recommended during the summer of 2009. Lafourcade embarked on various projects. The influence of her stay in Canada and her previous album, Las 4 Estaciones del Amor, is noticeable in this album. In December 2009, HU HU HU had its official presentation at the Teatro Fru Fru, in Mexico City, where it had guests such as Denise Gutiérrez of Hello Seahorse!, Furland, and Carla Morrison. It was nominated for Best Female Pop Vocal Album at the 2009 Latin Grammy Awards (won by Laura Pausini) and Best Latin Pop album at the 2010 Grammy Awards (won by La Quinta Estación). Club Fonograma also named the album the second best of 2009, and the seventh best of the decade.
She joined the non-profit project Un Techo para mi País, which aims to promote community development through the construction of temporary housing for low-income people and other social empowerment projects. She voice-acted for the role of the princess in the Spanish version of the animated film The True History of Puss 'N Boots, a French production distributed by MK2 Diffusion. There she shared credits with Kalimba and Juan José Origel.
2010 was the year of collaborations for Natalia. She recorded the song "Contigo" with the Spanish band El Canto del Loco, and the song "Quisiera Saber" with the Mexican group Los Daniels. Together with Manolo García, she performed the duet "Pájaros de Barro" and "Cursis Melodías" for Lunas del Auditorio Nacional in Mexico City. In 2011, Lafourcade won the Best New Producer of the Year award in the Indie-O Music Awards, for her work with Carla Morrison's Mientras Tú Dormías... album, and a Telehit Award.
In the same year, she went on tour again, in Japan, and did so on a more instrumental plane, in which her musical and artistic growth was noted. This is how she made the documentary 14 Días en Japón, which was included in the HU HU HU reissue.
HU HU HUs tour spanned South America, Europe, the United States, Mexico, and Japan, and ended with a successful presentation at the Vive Latino 2011 Festival Iberoamericano de Cultura Musical, thus achieving a reconciliation with this audience after her unfortunate reception at the presentation in 2003. In 2012, she performed an ensemble with the , offering a concert in the Plaza de la Danza in Oaxaca City, where she performed traditional Oaxacan songs, boleros, as well as songs from her repertoire.
2012–2014: Mujer Divina
Her album Mujer Divina – Homenaje a Agustín Lara was released 18 September 2012. For this production, Natalia was accompanied by guest musicians, with whom she reinterprets the classic songs of Lara, to be compiled on a double disc containing a DVD, recorded in the forums of her record company.
Among the guests on this album are Miguel Bosé, Leonardo de Lozanne, Gilberto Gil, the Uruguayan singer-songwriter Jorge Drexler, Café Tacvba's Emmanuel del Real, Lila Downs, the Venezuelan-American musician Devendra Banhart, the group DLD, and Kevin Johansen, the latter who participates in the song "Fugitiva", the production's first single released in digital download. With the song "Azul", featuring Rodrigo Amarante, she contributed to the soundtrack of the Mexican film Güeros.
For this album, Lafourcade obtained, in December 2013, a platinum and gold record for having over 94,000 sales.
2015–2017: Hasta la Raíz