“Everybody deserves love, even a pop star,” Liniker sings in “POPSTAR,” a track off her 2024 album CAJU (cashew). If the Brazilian artist’s new phase leaves any room for doubts that she’s indeed embodying the pop star persona, the lyric is explicit about it. Ten years after her debut in the music industry as the lead singer of the R&B band Liniker e os Caramelows, the singer, songwriter, actress, and producer is embracing all the creative liberties the label allows. “It makes me happy that an album like this — a concept album, with long-minute tracks and a well-tied story — can be a pop album,” she tells Remezcla during an interview in Belém, Brazil, minutes before her awaited headlining performance at Festival Psica.
The performance begins with Liniker’s voice intoning the opening lines of the song “CAJU” from a hidden place behind the stage before the lights come up. Even before she emerges, the audience sings along with her. When the lights come up, and Liniker enters, wearing a pleated skirt and sunglasses, she walks across the stage singing, “Have you ever noticed how many tattoos I have?” with the confidence of someone who wants and knows how to attract attention. It’s a true pop star entrance, aligned with CAJU, which is undeniably her most pop album thus far, and also one of her most ambitious and elaborated in terms of songwriting.
Contrary to the fast-paced songs with direct messages that have dominated the Brazilian charts, CAJU captivated Brazilians with its vulnerable lyrics through storytelling-driven compositions. “I wanted to try to create a sequence-oriented album. All the tracks, their lengths — which go against what is conventionally done in the market today — all of them have a beginning, middle, and end. They feature prologues, with moments [that are supposed to feel like] scenes, as if I were presenting a scene and I stop in the middle of it to present a song. Not that it’s meant to feel like a musical, but instead, it’s like a movie stitched together by music,” Liniker explains.
CAJU is based on the concept of a one-day trip from Japan to Brazil. It opens with the title track, “CAJU,” saying: “I want to know if you’re going to chase after me at an airport / Asking me to stay, not to fly.” The second track, “VELUDO MARROM,” has a theatrical construction, starting slowly on the piano and closing with loud strings and a choir intoning “Oh oh ohs” in gospel style. The rest of the album is just as dramatic in both rhythm and message. Liniker is by no means ashamed to sing about wishing to live a cinematic love story, nor about the difficulty of dealing with lovers who can’t handle the intensity of her dreams. “Everything I put in this album is things I really want to live,” she notes.
The intimacy found in CAJU’s lyrics makes it perfect for a solitary listen, but the album’s scenic layers are most evident when it is experienced live, as Liniker’s show at Festival Psica proved. While the previous legs of the tour encompassed smaller, closed-doors spaces, the festival took place at Estádio Mangueirão, a 50,000-capacity soccer stadium. But Liniker is not in a hurry to play big arenas or stadiums yet. “I know I am prepared for moments like these, but I don’t want to get tangled up. When [bigger] things are meant to happen, they will,” she says, “I feel that in my life, the space for surprise has been secondary. Everything always needs to be so organized that I lose the opportunity to be surprised, such as being stunned by the size of this stadium.”
Festival Psica was also a platform for Liniker to share an emotional discourse about the challenges of owning the desire to be loved. One line brought the audience to tears and later went viral on Instagram: “To be loved and respected cannot be impossible for us.” It’s hard to say whether her words are an extension of CAJU‘s message or if she said this from the perspective of someone reflecting on how far she has come in her career. The discourse also didn’t specify what or who she meant by “us,” but as a Black trans woman, it’s clear that she was speaking from a place of being seen as unlovable in society. She exorcizes these fears in CAJU, in lyrics like “TUDO” (“If I’m immense for you, then I’m sorry”), “POPSTAR” (“Eventually I’d realize that it’s wrong to treat as if I were a shallow note of such a vulgar melody”), and “POTE DE OURO” (“Now learn to value me,” “I’m going to live my life singing for the people who love me much more than you do”).
I know I am prepared for [stadium performances], but I don’t want to get tangled up. When [bigger] things are meant to happen, they will.
In a place as culturally diverse as Brazil, the label “pop” says more about aesthetics and performance than one specific sound, and Liniker is embracing many sounds at once. When it comes to genres and instrumentals, her repertoire includes pagode carioca and pagodão baiano, disco music, brega — all without deviating much from her consolidated sonic identity as an MPB, soul, and R&B singer-songwriter. “I think this is all pop because it’s all Brazil,” she says.
With her career reaching new peaks and her Brazilian fanbase expanding both in size and demographics, it’s hard not to think of what Liniker can also accomplish overseas. Not that this is a new perspective — the singer has been in the foreign spotlight ever since she was in Liniker e os Caramelows. The band was featured on NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Concert series in 2018. She also toured Europe with her debut solo album, Indigo Borboleta Anil (2021), which won the Latin Grammy for Best Popular Brazilian Music Album in 2022, making Liniker the first trans artist ever to win a Latine gramophone.
But there’s more to achieve, and continuing to travel the world is on Liniker’s plans in 2025. Starting in May, she will play in Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, France, and the U.K. “Obviously, Brazil is my home. It’s where I want to come back to every time I travel. It’s where my culture and references are. But I like the idea of not only flirting [with an international career], but also building and expanding [musical] languages. Brazil is already a world of its own, and there are so many possibilities of exchange with artists from here that it makes me feel like it’s not impossible to have the same possibility with people from outside – artists that inspire me or that feel inspired by my work,” Liniker says, as she shares that traveling, getting closer to people, and listening to new things make her feel alive.
“It’s important to keep this connection. I don’t want to become cold. I want my career to be fluid.”
