Sofia Reyes

Monterrey, summer of 2009. A fourteen-year-old girl rehearses lines in front of the mirror before stepping onto the set of a local television station to film a children's drama. Úrsula Sofía Reyes Piñeyro had no contacts in the major offices of Mexico City, but she had been playing piano since childhood and had logged countless hours rehearsing in front of a home camera.

That first experience in front of the camera was Mi linda Anabella, a modest youth series in which Reyes played Camila and performed several songs from the soundtrack. The shoots were chaotic and the pay was token. The show lasted only a few months on air before quietly disappearing from the schedule.

That didn't last long.

From Manufactured Groups to Conquering Los Angeles

In 2011, she tried her luck with the all-female quintet TAO. The record label aimed to copy the commercial formulas of Anglo-American pop in the Mexican market, with marathon rehearsals and precise choreography. But internal tensions and contract disputes broke up the group after barely twelve months.

Reyes didn't want to wait for another casting call. She started recording acoustic versions with her piano and uploading them to her YouTube channel from her bedroom in Monterrey. In 2013, those homemade recordings caught the attention of singer Prince Royce, who offered her a contract with D’León Records, affiliated with Warner Music Latina. She packed her bags and moved to Los Angeles, just turned seventeen.

And the gamble paid off.

In 2014, she released the single Muévelo with reggaeton artist Wisin. The track climbed the U.S. sales charts and racked up more than one hundred million views on video platforms. As a result, record labels opened their big budgets to her.

In 2017, she released her first studio album, Louder!, which earned her a nomination for Best New Artist at the Latin Grammy Awards. Reyes wrote songs in two languages and handled the dynamics of international pop without relying on hired songwriters.

The Buenos Aires detour and the fiction spotlight

Despite her musical success, she never fully gave up acting. In 2015, the Argentine production company Pol-ka signed her to join the cast of Esperanza mía, the telenovela that filled screens across Buenos Aires. Reyes shared scenes with Lali Espósito and played her character in the stage performances of Esperanza mía, the Musical at the Teatro Ópera, in front of more than fifty thousand spectators in a single season.

Argentine television offered her long-term contracts to lead youth series. It was the safe path for any young public figure just starting out. But Reyes turned down the offers to stay on. She preferred to control her own publishing rights and tour schedule without being tied to a TV set.

In 2018, she released 1, 2, 3 with Jason Derulo and De La Ghetto. The song surpassed seven hundred million views and opened the doors to the European market with live performances in Bilbao during the MTV Europe Music Awards.

International TV Gigs and Editorial Control

In 2019, animation studio Laika tapped her voice to perform the song Do-Dilly-Do (A friend like you) for the feature film Missing Link, directed by Chris Butler. Reyes recorded her vocal tracks at Abbey Road Studios in London under the direct supervision of the film's music directors.

In 2020, she returned to the set for the American series The Bold Type, produced by Universal Television. In the second episode of season four, she played a fictionalized version of herself in a dramatic scene filmed in Montreal.

It was a brief, calculated appearance.

In 2022, she released the album Mal de amores, and in 2023 she completed the trilogy with Milamores, both produced with acoustic arrangements far removed from radio-friendly synths. In November 2023, Reyes ended her secondary distribution agreements with outside intermediaries and based her production company's operations in Burbank, where analog mastering costs reached fourteen thousand dollars per reel.