Thalia Is Billboard’s 2026 Women in Music Icon, but She’d Like to Start a Farm Next
The Mexican singer and actress answers Bazaar’s “First, Now, Next” Questionnaire
Reported by Harper's Bazaar.
There's a particular strain of nostalgia attached to Thalia that transcends typical celebrity reverence. For anyone who grew up Latinx or in Latin America, she wasn't just a performer—she was everywhere: the face of telenovelas like Maria Mercedes and Marimar, a chart presence stretching back to her days in Timbiriche, a cultural constant across four decades. That staying power alone is remarkable. But what makes Billboard's decision to name her this year's Women in Music Icon even more fitting is that Thalia has spent her career actively refusing to calcify into any single role.
In a recent conversation, she mapped the evolution of her own ambition with disarming honesty. At sixteen, success looked like mansions and private jets, MTV countdowns and millionaire status—the fantasy package. Today, she defines it as spiritual grounding, emotional intelligence, and the ability to move through life without toxicity. That shift isn't subtle; it's a total recalibration of what matters. She's learned to say no to people who drain her and yes to projects that make her feel whole, a boundary-setting clarity that sounds deceptively simple but requires real work to maintain at her level.
Circling Back to Cumbia
Her latest album, Todo Suena Mejor en Cumbia, her seventeenth studio record, represents that philosophy in action. Rather than chasing trends, Thalia returned to the cumbia rhythms that have always underscored her sound—a homecoming that taught her something crucial: she loves being in the studio, methodically mixing and refining, taking time to get things right. It's a reversal from the early-career hunger to conquer globally. That first solo record, initially rejected for being too sexy and risky for radio, forced her to develop conviction. She had to believe in herself when the industry rejected her. She did.
When asked what comes next if she stepped away entirely, Thalia didn't hesitate: a farm. Not a consulting gig or a memoir deal or a wellness brand. A farm—tending animals, working the land, reconnecting with something tactile and real. It's the kind of answer that reveals someone genuinely finished performing the role of ambition, someone who's already won and knows it.
The Icon award represents four decades of refusing to disappear, but Thalia seems most excited about the permission to keep evolving—whether that's toward Steven Tyler collaborations or, eventually, dirt under her fingernails.
Read the original at Harper's Bazaar.
