I f you’re Julieta Venegas — the beloved, accordion-playing folk-pop dreamer who blazed a distinct musical trail in Latin indie-rock with open-hearted elegies that have sold millions and millions of records since the early 2000s — laying out your complex life story might seem like a daunting task. Yet for a long time now, the Mexican singer-songwriter had been kicking around ideas for a project that would let her reflect on her decades-long career and upbringing, linking together chapters like her childhood on the border and her early days playing in bands like the ska outfit Tijuana No! Maybe a memoir? Maybe an album? 

Or maybe both. This month, Venegas is unveiling two massive endeavors she’s poured everything into over the last few years: One is the newly released book Norteña: Memorias del Comienzo, a personal history that looks at what led to her career in music. Then there’s the companion album Norteña, out on May 14, which plays like an audio version of her exercise in reflection and nostalgia. The album, recorded during a transitional period that included a cross-continental move from Buenos Aires to Mexico, incorporates traditional norteño sounds from her home, while delivering them in a uniquely Julieta Venegas way.

“As we were about to finish it, I was like, ‘This is not a traditional norteño music album.’ This is my own version, and I’m always clarifying that norteño is me: I’m a norteña. I love being from the north and I am very proud of where I’m from,” she tells Rolling Stone on a recent afternoon in May while sitting in Flux Studios, just before a performance at the Brooklyn venue National Sawdust.

Some of the fascination with tradition, she says frankly, came from missing Mexico. She lived in Argentina for eight years, and the distance led to a lot of contemplation about her home. “Living outside of your country, I think, is very good for the image that you have. You can see it from afar. You have a different perspective,” she explains. She began to think about the particular experience of growing up on the border. “It’s like being raised in two contradictory places,” she says. “Tijuana is disorganized. It’s like all people, noises, chaos, fun, great food. And then when you go to the other side, you have to take a freeway to get anywhere.”Though she’d been in a reflective mood for years, she didn’t get started on music until she happened to be in the studio with El David Aguilar, the famed singer-songwriter known for collaborations with Mon Laferte and Natalia Lafourcade. The two of them came up with “Tiempos Dorados,” a folky track that unlocked the entire concept she’d been thinking about. “As soon as we wrote it, I felt like, ‘This is the beginning of this album that I’ve been thinking about for so long, but I hadn’t sat down to write.’ I was like, ‘This is it.’” The process for Norteña had started.

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All the while, Venegas was also revisiting old memories and drafting bits and pieces of the memoir. For her, that’s a lot of history to retrace: When she first came onto the scene, there wasn’t anyone quite like her. She was one of very few women in a male-dominated Latin pop landscape, plus a multi-instrumentalist (she identifies as a pianist, though she plays 17 total instruments, including the accordion) with a more roots-driven sound. “It was funny because I feel like the accordion opened a door at least,” she says, laughing. “People were curious when I would go out onstage. They were disconcerted, like, ‘What is she gonna do?’… But I think following my intuition was always important for me. I didn’t even know what I was doing, but it was really clear that I was just gonna do my thing.”

As she catapulted into the spotlight with heartfelt songs like “Me Voy” and “Limon Y Sal,” she showed that Latin artists could find huge success through honest, less commercial songs. One person who has cited her as a massive influence is Lafourcade, who appears on Norteña on the song “Tengo Que Contarte.” “I think she sounds super wise in the song,” Venegas says, noting that Lafourcade was just weeks away from giving birth to her first child when they joined forces in the studio. “She’s from Veracruz and she does music from the south, so I loved having her come into my territory.”

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The album also includes Yahritza, from the Washington state band Yahritza y Su Esencia, singing on the poignant single “La Linea.” Venegas knew she wanted to touch on themes of migration on the record since it’s such a significant part of border culture in Tijuana, but she wanted to do it in a more evocative way. “What I wanted to express in the song was not a solution,” she says. “The song itself is more emotionally inclined. The emotion of being separated from your loved ones must be so painful; you’re separated from your child or your father or your brothers and sisters. Families being separated like that, I feel it’s just a new level of cruelty. And it’s so unnecessary.”

Yahritza y Su Esencia have been public about going through struggles as a mixed-status family band. They had to pause touring in 2023 so that guitarist and older brother Mando, who came to the U.S. at age three, could return to Mexico by himself for months to try and obtain a visa. The siblings were separated and fearful about their future in music, something Venegas didn’t know before inviting Yahritza to sing on the track. “I had no idea until Yahritza told me [after recording] and I was like, ‘This is really painful, and I’m really sorry,’” Venegas remembers. “And she’s like, ‘No, it was actually good to sing it, but we did live through it.’”

Venegas adds that she had been a longtime fan of the purity in Yahritza’s voice since the band’s first EP in 2022. She’s also quick to defend the band against the harsh backlash they received a few years back for comments they made about the noise and food in Mexico. “I’m gonna call it not silly, but very painful and dumb… She was 14, and a really passing comment in a silly interview that nobody remembers, but they remember what was said. Anyone can make that mistake.”

Venegas doesn’t just keep up with newcomers like Yahritza; in our interview, she also name-drops Argentina’s rising wunderkind Milo J and Chile’s shapeshifter Akriila. It adds to a coolness factor that might explain why Tainy and Bad Bunny tapped her for the 2023 hit “Lo Siento BB:/.” That collaboration even took Venegas by surprise. “Remember, we were still in the pandemic. I was in my house, stuck at home on a Sunday afternoon, and the guy from the publisher calls me and tells me about Tainy and I’m like, ‘What? What is this?’ It was really great because I felt his invitation was so absolutely genuine.”

More recently, Bad Bunny invited her to play during one of his shows in Mexico for the DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS tour. “I had never met Benito, I’ve never sang with him obviously, and he was doing this super long run in Mexico, like 10 shows, and I just found him to be super generous with me. I’m not used to playing in those big places, and he said, ‘If you’re going to be sitting at the piano, you should play one of your songs,’” Venegas recalls. “He’s just become such a cultural force. I think he’s really opening up great doors for musicians and for Latino artists.”

Any fan can see that Venegas did the same thing for so many acts. But even though she thinks a lot about what led her to music, Venegas doesn’t dwell too much on the space she occupies today as an indie pioneer.  Right now, she’s focused on the album and sharing these memories with others. At the end of the day, she just sees herself as norteña. “I can say that I just took a leap and just did whatever came out,” she says. “If that inspired other people to do it, then that’s wonderful.”

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