We talked to actor and musician Jorge Blanco last month. Here is the English version of our interview with him.
bleistiftrocker.de: We are in Berlin right now. Have you been to Germany before?
Jorge Blanco: Yes, a couple of times. I really like it.
Are you interested in football?
Yes, I am.
Because you are from Mexico and you guys will have to play Germany in your world-cup-group…
… Yeah, why not? We’ve been pretty strong lately and we did really good last year. I think it is a good thing to have two strong teams to start. I’m happy we are having a challenge at the start. And you guys won the last world cup. So I am excited for that.
Now let’s get to music: You are going on a club tour in Germany in 2018. What do you expect?
I am really excited. It is going to be my first tour ever as a solo artist. I can’t wait for that. I get a lot of great response from my fans in Germany. It is one of the top following that we have. That’s why it makes sense for us to do many shows here. I can’t wait. Last time I was here I opened for R5 in their tour. And there were a lot of my fans coming to the shows as well. So I am looking forward to that, it’s gonna be good.
Many people might only know you as an actor. What can we expect from your music?
It is different, definately. That’s the cool thing about being an artist. You try always to experiment and see what happens. We’ve been writing for two years, trying to find the sound – how is Jorge gonna sound like? And we finally got to that sound that is kind of like a mix of soul, pop and a little bit of funky in it. We have four songs out so far, three in englisch, one in spanish. And we got a lot more. On the tour, people will be able to listen to a lot more songs. It’s gonna be a lot of fun, a lot of energy. I’m gonna come with a live band. It’s gonna be cool.
Do you have your debut album ready?
The full album? Not yet. We are going single by single, we got four songs now. We are still trying to figure out what comes next, another single or an ep. We don’t know exactly when the album is going to come out. I can’t wait. If it was for me, I would release everything now.
How do you write your songs?
Lately I’ve been just sitting around with different writers and co-write and see what happens. That’s a cool thing to do. You get together with people and see what kind of crazy mix you get to. I’ve been learning a lot from them, amazing artist and writers. That’s how we’ve been doing it so far.
You have many followers on social media. What do you do to keep them updated?
I try to be really active in social media – crazy how important it is now. It is so, so big and it’s important and a big part of this business. I try to keep them update of what’s coming up with music or what shows we are having, what we are doing. And some stuff of my personal life as well because people like to see that. At the end of the day I’m just a guy who has a job but I have my life as well so I like to show that part as well for people.
Does it come naturally to you to share so much from your personal life?
At the beginning it was really weird to get used to it. Like „Why should I post this?“ But even myself, sometimes I’m looking around on Instagram what other artists are doing and you are curious. So it makes sense because people are curious all the time. Like: What do you do? Well, all the things that everybody does. So it’s cool to share that.
Do you have a favourite social network?
I think my favourite social media would be instagram. There’s a lot of things to do with it. First of all, it is pretty visiual, a lot of videos and pictures and I like the visual thing. And they are pretty good updating stuff. They came right away with the instagram stories. There’s a lot of things you can do with it.
What is it like for you to be a teen idol?
I don’t know. The name is weird.
You don’t choose that label yourself.
Exactly. You got a lot of people looking at you and especially teenagers. They are growing up and trying to find out what they want to do with their lives. It’s cool to have the opportunity to be able to have a voice for them and let them know that everything is okay and just have fun and to pursuit their dreams as well. It’s important. I’ve talked to a lot of fans and young kids and they are always like „I don’t know what I wanna do with my life“. And I like to give them the message that it’s all good. It’s good to experiment, to try, to take risks. It’s all about learning, especially in such a young age.
Who was your favourite artist when you were a teenager?
I’m not sure I was a specific fan of anyone in particular. But I think if I talk about a role model for my career I would probably like to mention Justin Timberlake. He does everything that I want to do: He is an amazing singer, amazing dancer, writer, producer and he is an actor as well. And he is well respected in the business. He has always been a good role model to follow.
And who is your favourite artist right now?
Well, he is one of them. I really like Bruno Mars, I like Pharrell Williams as an artist and producer.
Do you prefer to be an actor or a musician in the future?
Both. I’ve been working all these ten years mainly more as an actor, that’s why I’m way more focussed on music now. But I definately want to do both always. I’ve been doing auditions and if anything comes out and I can do both, I’d love to do it.