I
n 2022, right After signing to Interscope, Mexican American singer Xavi felt on top of the world. He was 17 years old and his songs were starting to pop, so to celebrate, he bought a Dodge SRT with his record label advance. He was speeding down a small road in California when he suddenly lost control of the wheel and crashed, fracturing his skull and putting him in a coma for days.
Xavi spent months in hospital. “It's a miracle you're here, man,” he says now, looking down at his hands. in addition to facial reconstruction surgery, had to heal from extensive injuries. A TikTok video he shared from that time shows him lying in a hospital bed, beaten and struggling to sing with bandages all over his face and hand.
Now, at 19, Xavi feels like he's had a second chance — and he's putting everything into his music. “Sometimes I think about it and I'm like, 'Damn, if I hadn't woken up that day, none of this would have happened.' Now I'm fully committed and I can't fail.”
With his rocking vocals and light voice, he has become one of the most promising artists in Música Mexicana in the past year. Xavi, whose real name is Joshua Xavier Gutiérrez, started 2024 with a bang: his viral hit “La Diabla” climbed to No. 1 on Billboard's Hot Latin Songs chart and Spotify's Global chart, beating Bad Bunny and Taylor Swift. In March, he embarked on a 26-date tour, his first, that took him across the United States. “I wasn't used to that shit,” he says. “Imagine waking up and going straight to soundcheck every day. You say “Buenos días!” ”
And all the while, he's been putting the finishing touches on his debut album, due out later this year. On his phone, he has more than 3,900 Voice Memo recordings, all the early demos and ideas he was working on. He plans to include some of them on the LP, which he says is almost finished. There is “Filsofia,” where she sings to a lover who has decided to leave: “I don't know if it was me who caused it to die. But it wasn't my intention,” he sings on the corrido-balad. Another track, the ambitious “Un Toque en Particular,” features Xavi bragging about how he's “building his empire” and “making stupid money” to the sound of tubas and trombones.
After playing me a few songs, he says, “I'm not capping it, man: This is gonna be the best, the best,” he says. “They will be straight corridos, respecting our style. I left my fucking life just to focus on this, to make the best genre album and not betray my culture.”
The music also reflects Xavi's roots. Xavi was born in Phoenix, but spent much of his childhood with his grandparents in the Mexican city of Nogales in Sonora. His grandfather, a trained saxophonist and church choir leader, would take Xavi and his older brother Fabio on long road trips and encourage them to sing church hymns while pretending they were traveling somewhere else. Xavi always imagined going to Disneyland. “We started singing and I felt like I was there.”
Outside of music, Xavi was a “niño de la calle” who always worked hard. As a 12-year-old, he got his first job, making cement, and remembers being paid 200 pesos (or $12) for a day's work. Then, at 15, he moved to Phoenix with his dad, an electrician whom Xavi would accompany on his errands. Xavi started playing the guitar and he played it with him. During breaks, he would ask his father to tape videos of the performance. “I even wore my clothes from work [while singing] covers,” he says. “When I was wondering what the hell I was going to do with my life, I would play guitar.”
Xavi's covers began to gain attention online and caught the ear of Interscope. Eventually, the label snapped him up, impressed with his talent. After Xavi recovered from the car accident, he began releasing more songs, such as “Zero Sentiments” and “Kilometers.”
It all really took off in 2023 when “La Víctima” and “La Diabla” took TikTok by storm. Xavi even earned the respect of Mexican superstar Peso Pluma, who even visited him in the studio. “I made bricks,” Xavi says with a laugh. After someone in the studio leaked a video with them, fans assumed they were making music together, but Xavi shares that they were just hanging out. “He's a very genuine and very cool person,” she says.
The meeting with the peso is just one example of how Xavi's young fans constantly watch and weigh in on everything the singer does. Xavi, who prefers to stay off social media completely, is still navigating fame and how people are constantly making up stories about his love life, with rumors even circulating that he has a secret son. He's too focused to care. “I feel like some people post their lives and try to fake that happiness. I don't want to post, like, “Oh, guys, I'm living my best life.” I'm not. I'm making sacrifices and trying to work on a better version of myself.”
In fact, he avoids using his phone as much as possible. “This shit is a distraction,” he says, pointing at his phone as it buzzes. “Someone just texted me right now, 'How have you been?' I'm not going to open it because I don't know who it is. She looks like a girl. I haven't seen her in 10 years? Why the hell would I reply?”
There are too many others he wants to do. First, he wants to drop the album. He hopes to introduce his brother, Fabio, who is built a devoted following on TikTok and is also signed to Interscope. And there's another collaboration he's also dreaming of: He wants to work with Natanael Cano, the pioneer of corridos tumbados. “It's the reason I make corridos tumbados today,” says Xavi. “I owe the guy a lot. It 's crazy. I have songs about him. I don't think she knows it, but she's literally my fucking inspiration.”
But more importantly, Xavi does not take a single moment for granted. He just moved into a new house, which is adorned only with a futbolito table in the kitchen and a carne asada grill in the backyard. He'll try to enjoy it all, because he knows what it's like to feel like you could lose it all: “A near-death experience is all it takes to say, 'I'm going to appreciate life more.' “
Production Credits
Photo courtesy of Yasara Gunawardena
from our partners at https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-latin/xavi-debut-album-musica-mexicana-interview-1235042133/