Rosalía: LUX
I nearly chose Rosalia’s Motomami as album of the month back in 2022. I think I correctly determined that the rest of the pod would hate it. It was chaotic, digital, and brilliantly abrasive. But it also leant very heavily into Reggaeton that I knew would wind at least 2 of the brothers up. That album won 4 Latin Grammy awards as well as the Grammy for best Latin Alternative album. Where do you go after that?
Apparently, you go towards the light (‘Lux’ is latin for light and clearly references luxury too).
This month’s choice is LUX, the fourth studio album from Rosalia, and it’s a lot. If MOTOMAMI was an album following an adrenaline-fueled night out in a neon-drenched city, LUX is the spiritual, orchestral comedown at dawn. It’s a MASSIVE, operatic, orchestral, experimental, entrancing, exciting, overwhelming experience, presented in 4 movements like a classical symphony.
Concepts and Themes.
At its core, LUX is a deep dive into the history of female mysticism. Rosalía has traded the streetwear imagery of Motomami for the iconography of female saints and spiritual pioneers. The album explores the idea of transformation she uses the stories of medieval mystics and uses these historical figures as mirrors for her own experience with fame and womanhood. This record is obsessed with transcendence, reaching for a state of peace or grace beyond the noise of the modern world.
Architecture of Lux’s Sound.
Rosalía is firmly in the driver’s seat as executive producer (handling ‘97%’ of the production herself … not sure how you determine a single % of production input but I’m here all day for random stats). However, the sonic world of LUX was built alongside a carefully selected team of collaborators.
- Noah Goldstein: Rosalía’s long-term collaborator and the man who helped engineer the maximalist textures of Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and the sparse brilliance of Frank Ocean’s Blonde. He knows exactly how to handle her more experimental impulses, having been a key architect on MOTOMAMI and Travis Scott’s Utopia.
- Dylan Wiggins: Bringing the rich, multi-instrumental depth that anchors the album’s four movements. You’ve heard his touch on SZA’s SOS, The Weeknd’s Starboy, and Daniel Caesar’s Never Enough. He provides the soulful, organic counterpoint to the album’s grander symphonic moments.
- David Rodríguez: Her right-hand man for vocal production. He’s the reason every one of those 13 languages she sings in hits with total precision. Beyond his work on the MOTOMAMI era, David (often known as Godriguez) has a deep history in global sounds, famously producing Sampa the Great’s breakthrough The Great Mixtape.
It’s also worth noting the absence of El Guincho, Rosalia’s long time creative partner, which reminds me of Little Simz’ recent creative journey? Notable is the inclusion of Caroline Shaw (the Pulitzer-winning composer who has worked with everyone from Kanye to the Attacca Quartet) and conductor Daníel Bjarnason. These are two heavyweight collaborators that represent and add to the scale of this work.
First Impressions.
I’ve only been living with this for a few weeks and my notes are a bit of a mess. I am finsding that I don’t often have the words to describe what I am hearing or feeling.
- “Porcelana”: Inspired by the Japanese monk Ryōnen Gensō, who famously scarred her own face to pursue her spiritual path. It’s a haunting track where Rosalía sings partly in Japanese over a backdrop of Bernard Herrmann-esque string stabs and heavy flamenco claps.
- “La Perla”: This one is going to spark a lot of debate on the pod. Musically, it’s a light, airy waltz with a dramatic swell of brass—but the lyrics are an absolute evisceration of a “world-class fuck up” ex-lover. It’s “the anti-ballad,” hiding venom inside a gorgeous, shimmering shell.
- “La Yugular”: Drawing on the Sufi mysticism of Rabia Al-Adawiyya, this track explores the proximity of the divine. It features a surreal nesting-doll lyric about an army fitting in a golf ball, ending with a spoken-word fragment from Patti Smith.
- “Berghain”: (Featuring Björk and Yves Tumor) is a total head-fuck in the best way possible—a club track that feels like it’s being performed in a cathedral.
The Anti-Dopamine Manifesto.
Crucially, Rosalía has been very vocal about how she wants us to consume this record. In a direct response to the “commoditisation of the hook”—where 15-second snippets are engineered specifically for social media virality — she has described LUX as an anti-dopamine hit.
To help … this is the best place I’ve found to read the lyrics in original and translated form;
https://strommeninc.com/rosalia-lux-full-lyrics-with-translations/
She isn’t interested in making background music for your morning commute or soundtracking a scroll through your feed. Her advice? Sit in a darkened room with the lyrics and their translations in front of you. This is not “easy listening,” and it wasn’t intended to be. It’s an album that demands total, undistracted attention. It’s a challenge to the modern listener to slow down and sit with the discomfort of silence and the weight of an orchestra.
Whether she’s successfully fought back against the TikTok-ification of music or simply created something beautifully inaccessible is exactly what we’re going to get into in the podcast.
thisisnothappening.net 
This is a great choice for our ‘January album’, at the time when new releases are a bit thin on the ground.
And, boy oh boy, is this a hell of an album to confront. I’d confess I’d not thought I’d come across Rosalia until I’d looked at her artist page and realised about Motomami. I recall your attempts to bring this as an AOTM Joey, and how much that album felt like a nail being driven through my temples. This is quite the pivot.
Full disclosure: despite being very much up for taking on Lux, and giving it a couple of listens in December, given my 15 days in Melbourne, I have really struggled to get time to listen to any music that is not radio stuff given the proximity to my family at all times. So this wasn’t easy to find time for.
However, I agree with a lot of your points, and of the great Switched On Pop episode late last year on the album. It is a truly original composition. And composition feels the right term, given so much of it is a classical take on (obliquely) pop music, taking on religion, desire, and aspects of modern life, all wrapped up in tracks from semi-pop standard ballads or flamenco/spanish pop to much more avant-garde and operatic, symphonic music.
The sheer scale of it is breathtaking at times, and all of it underpinned by Rosalia’s incredible vocal power and dexterity. Even without the translated lyrics, it’s really listenable, but of course there are more layers as you get to grips with that. I am not sure I’ve ever heard anything like it.
I am still very much trying to wrap my head around it all, but it is already fascinating me.
I don’t have to write a long post at the mo, apols, but I did want to get a few words down while I have the chance.
So. I first listened to this in November when it first getting a lot of attention. And I quickly decided at the time that it was groundbreaking and impressive, but that it wasn’t quite for me. Having said that, whenever I heard a song on the radio, I started finding myself connecting with them more and more.
Fast forward to now and Joey’s picked it for our AOTM, and I start listening again…and something has happened. It’s almost like it’s a different record. I LOVE that about music, how it can shapeshift into a totally alternative experience just because of how you feel, or where your mind is that.
So what initially felt quite impenetrable and orchestral is suddenly opening up and becoming full of melody and heart. And then Joey posts the lyrics – and now I’m really motoring, as I start to make sense of what the songs are about. And boy, are they about everything!
A few things I want to pick up on:
It’s a fucking great choice and I can’t wait to talk about it!