1940 Carmen

Following the release of "Algo es Mejor" in October 2021, the first single of the album, Laferte announced 1940 Carmen as her next project set to be released later in the year. The album was released on 29 October 2021, being her second project released on 2021 after SEIS, released on April. From March 2021 to July of the same year, Laferte lived at an Airbnb in Los Angeles, United States, where she learnt she was pregnant and recorded the album. Laferte said that "it was a daily shot of hormones and I was very sensitive. Everything I've written or done doesn't really have much of a plan, it was explosive of me to want to make a record". ==Music and lyrics==

1940 Carmen was composed and produced by Laferte herself during the four months she lived in Los Angeles and was influenced by the treatment she was going through in order to get pregnant. It features a more minimalistic sound compared to her previous album, the Mexican music-inspired Seis, and has more introspective and intimate lyrics. The instrumentation is also more acoustic that her previous projects with the guitar as the main instrument for many of the songs. The album draws influences from American music like 1960s pop music in "Placer Hollywood", folk rock in "Good Boy" and country-blues in "A Crying Diamond". The song "A Crying Diamond" deals with the experience of abuse Laferte suffered when she was a teenager which, according to her, the hormones she was taking allowed her to write about more intimate topics. She additionally said that "it's something that I think I would never have dared to make a song or tell about, but I was so hypersensitive that I wrote that song". ==Promotion==

The song "Algo es Mejor" was released as a single on 1 October 2021, alongside a music video. On 9 June 2022, a music video for "Supermercado", directed by Camila Grandi, was also released to promote the album. Additionally, several live performance videos were released for different songs from the album like "A Crying Diamond", which featured backing vocals and instrumentation from musicians Renee, arroba nat, Bratty and Cancamusa. ==Critical reception==

Thom Jurek from AllMusic gave the album four out of five stars, writing that "it reflects Laferte's particular gifts as a songwriter capable of juxtaposing conflicting, even contradictory emotions and psychological states as well as imbuing physical landscapes and personal interactions, no matter how brief and/or casual, with profound implications", he also commented that "though a 180-degree turn from the Mexican regional music employed on Seis, 1940 Carmen is every bit its equal in creativity, emotional depth, and execution". Rodrigo Derbez from Indie Rocks! gave the album a seven out of ten, writing that while it has high points like "Supermercado" and "A Crying Diamond", the album was not as innovative or fresh as Seis, he finished the review with "1940 Carmen is an experience that feels well prepared, much more with a commercial intention than an artistic one, although it doesn't mean that there isn't any heart in this album either, it just feels so clean it's sterile". ==Track listing==

All tracks are written and produced by Mon Laferte ==References==