Pablo Alborán Isn’t Rushing—He’s Queering the Journey

There are pop stars, and then there’s Pablo Alborán—a Spanish singer-songwriter whose honeyed voice and vulnerable lyrics have made him a household name across the Spanish-speaking world, and an emerging queer icon for fans everywhere. But if you ask Alborán about his career right now, he doesn’t sound like a chart-chaser or a man in a hurry. “I’m in an era in my career where I’m really enjoying the journey,” he told Queerty in a recent interview, his words landing with a calm confidence that feels distinctly unbothered by the relentless pace of modern celebrity .

That’s not to say Alborán isn’t busy. He’s dropping his seventh studio album, “Km 0,” leaning into new creative directions, and even prepping for his acting debut in the Netflix series “Respira.” But, as he tells it, the pressure to constantly reinvent, outperform, or over-explain himself—especially as an out gay man in the global music machine—is no longer his guiding force. Instead, he’s letting life unfold, and inviting us to do the same.

Alborán’s path to stardom has never followed a straight line, literally or figuratively. His debut more than a decade ago was marked by a gentle sincerity—stripped-back performances, acoustic guitars, and a refusal to play by the rules of pop masculinity. In 2020, he made headlines when he publicly came out as gay, a moment hailed as historic for LGBTQ+ visibility in Spanish music. Yet, as Alborán has often said, his queerness is only one part of his story, and not a branding exercise .

“I don’t want to be reduced to just one thing,” he recently told GQ Hype. “I want to have fun and try new things… I understand there will be people who don’t like it, but I want people to see that I’m not just one thing” .

That spirit of unapologetic multiplicity pulses through every corner of “Km 0,” a record that, by Alborán’s own admission, is his “most honest” and “most intimate” to date . “If you really listen to my albums, you know me—I’m much more of an open book in my music than in interviews, or even over coffee. Honesty has always been important to me, and it just flows. I don’t even think about it. It’s where I feel the most vulnerable, the most naked, the most myself,” he shared in a recent conversation with Los40 .

In a cultural moment that often spotlights LGBTQ+ pain and struggle, Alborán’s vibe is refreshingly different: he’s here for the joy. His songs have always shimmered with a kind of emotional transparency, but this new era is less about heartbreak and more about embracing every messy, beautiful stage of the queer experience. “Why should we only cry when love ends?” he mused in a Spanish TV interview, “There’s time for drama, absolutely, but we should also celebrate that we tried. We shouldn’t stop loving just because something didn’t work out” .

It’s a message that resonates deeply with LGBTQ+ fans, especially those weary of narratives that frame coming out or queer love as tragedy. Alborán’s approach—gentle, celebratory, and unafraid to poke fun at his own missteps—feels like a love letter to the community’s resilience and capacity for renewal.

And make no mistake: his candor is quietly revolutionary in a Spanish music industry where machismo still lingers and LGBTQ+ artists often face an unspoken pressure to “stick to script.” By refusing to be boxed in, Alborán is carving out space for a new kind of queer masculinity—one that’s tender, playful, and gloriously complex.

If there’s a throughline to Alborán’s new chapter, it’s the radical act of slowing down. In an industry—and a queer culture—where urgency often reigns, his willingness to linger in the process is a balm. “I was able to make this album without rushing, you know? Without the pressure of having to deliver a single, just letting myself flow,” he told Los40. “That gave me a lot of peace and security, to finally say, ‘Now the album is really ready’” .

It’s a message that lands with special resonance for LGBTQ+ people, who are so often told to hurry up and define themselves, to explain, to justify, to arrive. Alborán reminds us: there’s power in not having all the answers, in being “a little animal looking for new stimuli,” as he put it, in letting life—and identity—unfold at its own pace .

And he practices what he preaches. Despite his fame, Alborán insists he hasn’t changed his daily habits: “I do everything. I haven’t deprived myself of anything. With my personal life, I’ve done whatever I wanted. I go out, I go to the movies, I go to the supermarket, I go to my neighborhood market in Málaga and Madrid,” he said with a laugh . In a time when queer celebrities are often hyper-visible and hyper-scrutinized, his insistence on living life on his own terms—both ordinary and extraordinary—is a quiet act of queer defiance.

With “Km 0” out now and his Netflix series “Respira” just launched, Alborán could easily be swept up in the whirlwind of promo cycles and red carpets . But he’s more interested in savoring each step, in sharing his story—not as a blueprint for how to be queer in the spotlight, but as an invitation to be more fully, joyfully yourself.

In a world that often asks LGBTQ+ people to speed up, shrink down, or compartmentalize, Pablo Alborán is proof that there’s magic in taking your time, in loving out loud, in being “really here for the ride.” And for a queer community always in motion, sometimes the best thing we can do is just… exhale, and enjoy the journey together.