Rosalía Finds Divinity on “LUX”
Design by Sophie Parrish
By Bennett Himmel
Note: Rosalía’s LUX is in 13 languages, for clarity, all lyrics have been translated to English.
Rosalía contains multitudes. Over her nearly ten-year career, she’s skipped along the zeitgeist like a perfectly shaped stone, effortlessly traversing radio-ready reggaeton, avant-garde folk, and flamenco-infused R&B. Her last album, 2022’s MOTOMAMI was expressly about these multitudes; the refrain to the lead single was “Yo me transformo.” MOTOMAMI encompassed many genres but was mostly rooted in electronics. The reggaeton beats were computerized, the synths were blown out and fuzzy, the drums were perfectly quantized. Many of the songs had dramatic switch-ups, from the free-jazz breakdown in “SAOKO” to the James Blake cameo in “DIABLO.” The result was brilliant, but those who had fallen in love with Rosalía through her cleverly worded meditations on love over freaked-out flamenco felt somewhat let down, that Rosalía had flown too close to the pop star sun. On her newest album, LUX, Rosalía ditches electronics and lets her songs splay out, creating her most cohesive body of work yet.
The opener, “Sexo, Violencia, y Llantas,” sets the scene perfectly. Over carefully played piano, Rosalía’s stunning voice beams down like a voice from the heavens. “Who could live between the two? / First love the world, and then love God,” she swoons, but when blaring horns come in, the sense of peace is disrupted as she sings of bloodshed and coins in throats. It provides the main theme of the record: How does one serve God while surrounded by sin?
If you’re of the Reddit atheist crowd, don’t worry. This is not, as many predicted, Rosalía’s “religious psychosis album.” The concept of God is not forced upon the listener, and when it is, it’s not corny. Even an agnostic like myself was nearly brought to tears by the coda to the centerpiece “La Yugular,” when she sings “The Titanic fits in a lipstick / A lipstick occupies the sky / The sky is the thorn /A thorn occupies a continent / And a continent does not fit in Him/ But He fits in my chest,” you believe it to your core.
The other thing that happens on “La Yugular” is Rosalía singing in Arabic. I don’t speak Arabic, so I can’t comment on her pronunciation, but the general narrative being pushed in promotional material for LUX is that Rosalía learned 13 languages for this album, and that’s simply not the case. Rosalía butchers pronunciation on many languages here, from the Italian on “Mio Cristo Piange Diamanti” to the Mandarin on physical-exclusive bonus track “Novia Robot.” Don’t get me wrong, she sounds beautiful, but the language aspect of this album did not need to be pushed so much; She somehow makes 75% of these other languages sound like Spanish.
If you get past that, though, LUX reveals itself as a brilliant record, one filled with heart, wit, and jaw-slackening beauty. Early highlight “Reliquia” is a wistful travelogue, wherein Rosalía describes the many things she’s lost and where she lost them over Disney-esque strings. The drum and bass breakdown at the end seals the deal. Closer “Magnolias” is gutting. Over tape-warped strings and soothing choral vocals, Rosalía describes her own funeral, intoning that her lover “throw magnolias.” It also has one of her best vocal performances ever. It’s triumphant.
For all its beauty, LUX is not short on bangers. “Porcelana” is possibly one of the most abrasive, hard, nasty tracks Rosalía has ever made, with a surprise guest feature from someone who sounds like their name might rhyme with Gravis Thot. But what makes the track fascinating is Rosalía’s commitment to using an orchestra on every track here; the punishing bass you hear is an actual upright bass. Bonus track “Novia Robot” needs to be put on streaming solely for the fact that I need to be drunkenly screaming “GUAPAAAA PARA DIOS ME PONGO GUAPAAA PARA DIOS” at every pregame I attend for the next nine months. “De Madruga,” a scrap from the El Mal Querer sessions, is also brilliant. Its percussion is mostly just clapping and breathing, giving the track a breezy intensity that isn’t found anywhere else on the record.
LUX is a demanding album, much shorter on the dopamine than MOTOMAMI or even El Mal Querer. But it’s incredibly rewarding. Every time you listen, you pick up a new turn of phrase, a new beat switch, or just realize how stunning Rosalía’s voice is. The appeal of Rosalía’s earlier music was the fact that it was always in flux, constantly shifting. With LUX, the beauty comes with stability.