MEXICO CITY (AP) — The best new artist nomination came to Pol Granch at a reflective moment in which he has refocused his life. The Spanish musician and actor received the nomination after a turbulent period in which he faced cancellation culture and now considers it a rebirth and an impulse to continue working.
“Receiving this and receiving this award, because for me the nomination is already an award, that they have made me feel like this makes me feel like I am being born again, realizing that all the work leads to results and that if you keep working and dreaming, well keep going.” Things are happening,” Granch said in an interview by video call from Madrid, where he lives.
Granch earned the nomination with his 2022 album “Amor espupido”, his third release after his EP “Pol Granch” from 2019 and “Tengo que calmarme” from 2020. He rose to fame when he performed in the Factor X Spain contest, when I was 20 years old, in 2018.
“I followed this entire series a lot, this ‘The X Factor’ program in all its countries, I even memorized it… I was very amused that they came to my country and so I tried, did castings and was lucky,” he said. “I will always be very grateful for that program because thanks to them I have made myself known a little.”
Granch, whose real name is Pablo Grandjean, did not formally study music, but was always surrounded by it.
“What I sing is what I have learned by myself and well, the little that I play on the guitar I have also learned from YouTube”, he pointed out. “One day my father gave me a guitar and (I) started doing ‘covers’ for Instagram. One day I made a song and I liked it, I really liked the fact of writing and starting to create my little things”.
His father, who is French, is a music lover and, according to Granch, he sings better than him. His grandmother, who recently passed away, also sang very well and was a choir member. Granch’s mother is Spanish. The musician is the youngest of three brothers.
“My brothers and I and my father have always spoken in Spanish,” said Granch, who can be seen singing in French in some YouTube videos. “He speaks to us in French and we respond in Spanish and nowadays we are ashamed to speak French to my father, but when we go to France and such we speak a lot in French.”
“I had never realized this bilaterality… but time passes and I realize that, for example, in my work I have been able to discover more music and I have been able to investigate more sounds and rhythms than today I notice that when creating music I use them”.
Granch studied acting at the school of actress Cristina Rota in Madrid. “That’s where my dream of acting and wanting to interpret began. Yes, it is true that due to economic issues and other things I could only stay for one year, the second cost a little more and at that time I couldn’t afford it”.
This did not prevent him from entering the world of acting through the front door playing Phillipe von Triesenberg in the Netflix series “Elite”.
But this career that seemed only to be on the rise was disrupted in 2020 when tweets with homophobic, sexist and pro-Franco content resurfaced that Granch had written as a teenager, in a now deactivated account, which sparked the rejection of a good part of the population.
Granch posted an apology arguing that he had matured and that those messages did not represent him. However, there were those who went from criticism and accusations to harassment against the musician, who ended up changing his residence for fear of being attacked. “Artists are people who face all this, opinions and things happen, we are people like everyone else and in many things we also stumble.”
“Do not write nonsense that does not make sense and does not concern you on social networks,” he recommended.
Granch said that more acting projects are coming after “Elite” and for now he crosses his fingers to win the Latin Grammy.