At 13, Rosalía was struck by the sound of flamenco music from a car outside her school. She said it was the “purest thing” she had ever heard. At 16, she had to have vocal cord surgery to fix damage from her relentless, enthusiastic singing. It left her unable to speak for a month and forced her to undergo a year of vocal rehabilitation. At 19, she spent 32 days alone, walking the 500-mile Camino de Santiago across northern Spain. On that pilgrimage, she prayed each and every day that she’d find success as a musician.
Such an anecdote about her determination seems a bit fantastical now that Rosalía has become something beyond her wildest dreams. It’s almost demeaning to rattle off the list of commercial successes and awards. Rosalía isn’t just big, she’s important. This is someone who was the only person accepted into her degree program at the most prestigious music school in Spain.
Her debut, Los Angéles, has become one of the defining flamenco records of this century. Her grammy-winning master’s thesis, El Mal Querer launched her into the spotlight and brought flamenco into the world of 21st century R&B and trap. Motomami took reggaeton beyond this world, into some burning, surreal landscape. She outpaces the demands of an increasingly algorithm-driven industry to challenge her audience with music that, at times, people aren’t ready for. It’s easy to forget that Motomami faced ridicule at first.
So, like with those albums, Lux demands the listener abandon preconceptions and submit themselves to its author’s way of doing things.
‘Reliquia’ is the first standout, with soaring violins that set this album’s scene somewhere above this world. Through the hurricane of strings, all the orchestral arrangements, electronic patterns, and crushed up samples, there’s an emotional rawness here that negates the obvious charge of pretentiousness one might level against Lux. There’s also an earthliness in the journey of heartbreak underneath these songs, most likely surrounding the engagement she broke off with Puerto Rican star Rauw Alejandro. On the waltz-like ‘La Perla’ she cuts into him with glee, by the narcocorrido “La Rumba del Perdon” she’s learned to find control in forgiving him. Lux is about Rosalía searching for herself in our world and in the stories of the divine. Love, men, God, femininity, death surrender. There are arias, copla, rumba, lyrical singing, contemporary sacred music, and references to Kanye West’s Yeezus.
She’s painted this space with what she’s learned from religious readings about key female figures and saints from across various faiths of the world. You don’t need to know what’s going on to find Lux a truly compelling, involving experience; but any effort put in to appreciate this album is repaid in full and beyond.
“Rosalia 2019-portrait” by Pedro J Pacheco is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.