Madelyn Victoria was in a particularly good mood Thursday evening.
On the phone from her home in San Antonio, she explained she had just returned from a visit to a nearby clinic.
“I tested negative,” Victoria exclaimed about the results of a recent COVID-19 test.
The 30-year-old singer-songwriter is habitually jubilant, and the news of her test results only added to the excitement surrounding the release of her first new song in nearly three years.
The song was originally written by the San Benito native eight years ago, but the pandemic further delayed its release. On Friday, Victoria’s new song, “Good At Goodbye,” will hit streaming services.
“I thought I was just going to release my new album last year, but then the pandemic happened and some new ideas started to come out of that,” Victoria said. “I had some time to think about it, and I kind of had this song in the vault.”
She originally recorded a rendition of her song at a studio in Austin. But after some new ideas, Victoria decided to revisit the song and rerecord it at a studio in San Antonio towards the latter part of 2020.
Victoria said her fans may be familiar with her new song, “Good At Goodbye.” It’s a theme of hope in the wake of heartbreak, presented with a beat that Victoria hopes listeners will find “very danceable.”
“I’ve been playing this song for a few years now at all the shows I had in the Valley,” Victoria said. “I know some people in San Benito really like the song. It’s basically a song about hope. I was going through heartbreak. It’s not necessarily about one person. It’s just everything— all the little heartbreaks put together.”
“It’s a cool little shuffle, honky tonk kind of song. I just really hope that people enjoy it.”
Victoria, who partnered with her younger brother, Albert Vallejo, on the guitar, said the recording experience was different for her and her bandmates due to the ongoing pandemic.
“Not that it was uncomfortable, it was just like a little uneasy for everyone because we all had to be in one place,” Victoria said. “Of course, we all had our masks. It was interesting. We had two days in the studio last year in the middle of the pandemic where we really needed to knock down a lot of the basics of the song — just to get the backbone of it all.”
Victoria anticipates releasing a new album, titled “Señorita,” by the end of this year. While “Good At Goodbye” will not be featured on “Señorita,” she said she hopes it will serve as a segway into her new album, which she said is dedicated to her late uncle Rey.
The trajectory of her new music is largely influenced by the culture of the Rio Grande Valley and the music that she listened to growing up in the Resaca City, such as Freddy Fender, George Strait, Los Palominos, Ramón Ayala and Alan Jackson, to name a few. She said she drew inspiration from her family and their cookouts, where she saw family members sharing food, drinks, and most importantly, music.
“I’ve got the cultural influences in this album, some rootsy sounds in there, we threw in some accordion, and I even cover an old 60s song called, ‘Una Lagrima por Tu Amor,’” Victoria said. “I’m super excited about that. My song, “Señorita,” has some Spanish in it too. It’s kind of that Tex-Mex, rootsy feel into the country — things we grew up on in the Valley and what I’ve been influenced on.”
She said her music is the culmination of her experiences growing up in the Valley, experiences that she hopes to share with listeners throughout the state and the rest of the world.
“It’s a cool combination of it all that I feel brought my sound to where it is today,” Victoria said. “It’s just really cool to bring that sound from the Valley and from my family. It all goes hand-in-hand — music, family and good times.”
