When Mexican pop group RBD wrapped its historic reunion tour last year, Dulce María had two priorities: recovering her “mental stability” after 54 back-to-back stadium shows and writing and recording solo music again. On Thursday, the pop star announced that she’s finally back, releasing “Ojalá,” a collaboration with Spanish singer Beret, next week.
“It has been such a light to return to my solo career,” she tells Rolling Stone. “So many of my fans thought I wasn’t going to come back, but sharing this music news makes me so excited.”
“Ojalá” hears the star sing with Beret on a reimagined version of his 2019 hit. The pair recorded the track in 2022 after she joined him onstage for a surprise performance during his show in Mexico City. “It was a very beautiful moment for me because it was my first time on stage since becoming a mom,” Dulce says. “After all this time, the song has finally arrived.”
On “Ojalá,” Dulce and Beret grapple with recognizing their fears and learning to be strong in the face of adversity. Dulce sees it as a poignant message about fighting through depression and anxiety, as she has for years. “I think that talking about it allows you to work through it,” she says.
Plus, she’s been thinking a lot about Liam Payne recently. Like Dulce, Payne was placed in a musical group as a teen, reached massive stardom in it, and later had to build a solo career on his own.
“I must confess that Liam’s death hit me and it hurts my heart. I identified with him. He had something special,” she says. “[When you’re a celebrity,] there are a lot of comparisons and people make things up about you. I never knew him personally, but I’ve felt very impacted by it all. It’s sad how it isn’t until you’re gone that people start looking at you and your music. He’s always going to be an icon.”
Dulce gets introspective when thinking about the solitude of stardom. She says much of her time in RBD involved her going from performing in front of massive crowds to being completely alone in a hotel room in a matter of minutes. That’s actually how her panic attacks began, when she was on the 2008 Adiós Tour with RBD.
“People think that because you have money or fame, you have everything. But this industry is really hard,” she says. “We all have different tools to cope, even if we experience similar things.”
When Dulce decided to return to RBD last year, she says she was “terrified” of going through that solitude again. Last year, the Mexican pop band, which formed in the early 2000s on telenovela Rebelde, saw Dulce get back together with Anahí, Maite Perroni, Christopher von Uckermann, and Christian Chávez for their first tour in 15 years.
“Part of what terrified me about the reunion was the emotional part,” she says. “Touring is a very difficult thing because my panic attacks came from there. But having my husband and baby support me through it this time was great.”
Dulce has now “closed this cycle” of RBD, and she says she’s satisfied with what she and her members delivered onstage last year, since she “gave the tour my all.”
“We were so lucky to have this reunion. Thank God we are all alive and we could do it for the people who love us,” she says. “I wanted to reconnect with that part of my life that passed, but it’s a legacy that will continue forever.”
The RBD reunion was not without a hint of controversy — and Dulce says she’s still learning from it all. Just last month, the band settled with its former manager after the band sued him for “significant irregularities” in its finances, including $1 million they claim were unaccounted for. (He maintains there was no wrongdoing, and both Dulce and Anahi did not sign a statement from the band about the lawsuit’s conclusion.)
“Sometimes it is better to take distance to understand, to process, and to heal because when you are in the hurricane, you often don’t see the reality,” Dulce says about the end of RBD’s reunion. She adds: “I learned so many things, and sometimes my perspectives change as time goes by… But I’m grateful because [a tour like this] doesn’t happen more than once in your life.”
“The thing I’m prioritizing now is recovering my mental stability and peace,” she explains. “No one has any idea about what happens behind the scenes and it can be really difficult. That’s what makes me want to sing about empathy.”
With her solo music in mind, Dulce teases that she’s already recorded several songs she wrote over the past few years, but says she wants to record more. Many of the new tracks speak to her personal experiences, but she’s excited for her fans to build their own connections with them. Although she isn’t sure if she’ll drop an EP or an album, it’ll mark her first project since the folkier Origen in 2022, and it taps into the electro-pop and pop-rock sounds she introduced with her 2011 solo project, Extranjera.
“It’s more mature, and I want to say a lot of things. I want the songs to align with my age since I’m turning 39 in December,” she says. “I want people to feel, connect with, and dance to these songs. This has been such a therapy and catharsis for me.”
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