Thalia

Thalia circa 2006

Ariadna Thalía Sodi Miranda, better known mononymously as Thalía, is a Mexican singer and sometime actress. A former child star in The Eighties singing groups Din Din and Timbiriche, she really rose to fame in The Nineties through her roles in Telenovelas. Her solo music career began in 1990 and has led her to be dubbed "the Latin Madonna". An attempt to launch her into the English-speaking market in the early 2000s met with limited success and led to something of a Broken Base, though she's still a big star in Latin America.

Discography:

• Thalia (1990)
• Mundo de Cristal (1991)
• Love (1992)
• En éxtasis (1995)
• Amor a la Mexicana (1997)
• Arrasando (2000)
• Thalía (2002)
• Thalía ("The English Album") (2003)
• El Sexto Sentido / The Sixth Sense (2005)
• Lunada (2008)
• Primera Fila (live album mostly of new material) (2009)
• Habítame Siempre (2012)
• Amore Mio (2014)
• Latina (2016)
• Valiente (2018)

Compilations, remix and remake albums:

• Bailiando en Extasis (1996) - Dance remixes from En extasis
• Nandito Ako (1997) - Philippines-only collection of hits remade in English and Tagalog
• Con Banda: Grandes Exitos (2001) - Banda-style remakes of her hits.
• Thalia's Hits Remixed (2003) - Selection of mixes from her various singles, mostly but not exclusively dance-oriented.
• Greatest Hits (2004) - The obligatory retrospective.
• El comienzo de la Historia (2009) - a compilation of tracks from her two first, now out of print albums,

Famous Roles

• Beatriz Villanueva Contreras in Quinceañera (1988)
• María Mercedes Muñoz del Olmo "Meche" in María Mercedes (1992)
• María del Mar Aldama Pérez "Marimar" / Bella Aldama in Marimar (1994)
• María Hernández de De la Vega in María la del Barrio (1995)
• Rosalinda Del Castillo de Altamirano / Paloma Dorantes in Rosalinda 1999
• Scarlett Overkill in the Latin Spanish Dubbing for The Minions (2015)

Thalia provides examples of the following tropes:

• Black Sheep Hit: "I Want You" was created specially to break her into the English-speaking market and succeeded up to a point, but left her as a One-Hit Wonder with an unrepresentative song. In her earlier career, "Maria la del Barrio" was a bit of a black sheep hit, given its uncharacteristic cheesiness and the fact that half of it was sung by a chorus of male backing singers (both due to it being a TV theme song).
• New Sound Album: Thalia ("The English Album") was a deliberate attempt to reposition her as a crossover artist by having her sing in English and teaming her up with hip hop producers rather than anyone who actually understood where she was coming from. It was met with indifference from the target market and hostility from her existing fans; the next album "El Sexto Sentido" took on a more guitar-based sound before she returned to her familiar latin pop style for Lunada. And the Fandom Rejoiced.
• Rearrange the Song: Con Banda: Grandes Éxitos is as the title suggests, a selection of her greatest hits re-recorded in banda style.
• Screwed by the Network: When Thalia fell ill around the time of the Lunada album, EMI seemed to take this as a signal to kill the album by giving it next to no promotion. Unsurprisingly, Thalia and EMI parted company soon after.
• Self-Titled Album: Three: her 1990 debut, a 2002 effort largely in Spanish, and the 2003 English album.
• Theme Naming: Her three biggest telenovela roles were all characters called Maria; after the success of the first one, the other two were created specially for her.
• What Song Was This Again?: "It's My Party" shares little except an attitude with its Spanish original, "Arrasando"