Rosalía’s “LUX”; Pop Salvation & Modern Mass
Rosalía’s LUX, her 4th studio album, is an otherworldly experience. Across 18 tracks, she embodies the sacred and the profane, crafting an avant-garde pop opera that feels suspended between heaven and earth. It’s a bold, transcendent work: part prayer, part performance art, and wholly singular.
Inspired by the lives of female saints, LUX is sung in an astonishing 13 languages, from Latin to Arabic to Catalan. And backed by the London Symphony Orchestra, under the sleek experimental production of old-time collaborators Noah Goldstein and Dylan Wiggins. This is Rosalía in full form, transforming religious iconography into a cinematic exploration of feminine mysticism and divine imperfection.
Sexo, Violencia y Llantas opens the album with solemn piano and the weight of devotion. Rosalía croons, “How nice it’d be, to come from this Earth, go to Heaven, and come back to the Earth,” already blurring spiritual and carnal realms. It’s a thesis statement: love, pain, and transcendence intertwined. Reliquia follows as one of the album’s most elegant moments, a celestial explosion of strings and synths where Rosalía declares, “I’m a relic,” offering herself as both saint and sinner. The song morphs from angelic serenity to a chaotic electronic storm, echoing the sound of faith collapsing into ecstasy.
Divinizie strips everything bare. Over grungy guitars and fragile strings, she sounds painfully human, her voice trembling in a confessional whisper. Then Porcelana deepens the introspection with haunting piano and percussive swells. She wrestles with duality: “to be nothing and the light of the world at the same time.” A lyrical self-portrait of divine contradiction. The Italian aria Mio Cristo Liage Diamante feels plucked from a cathedral in another century. It’s operatic and lush, her voice soaring above an orchestra that seems to weep diamonds alongside her Christ.
Then, in one of LUX’s most arresting turns, Berghain (feat. Björk & Yves Tumor) reimagines Berlin’s most infamous nightclub as a cathedral of sin and salvation. The track’s pulsing rhythm and trembling strings blur pleasure and pain, as Rosalía chants: in German “His fear is my fear / His anger is my anger / His blood is my blood.” It’s sacred codependence, desperate and divine.
La Perla (feat. Yahritza y Su Esencia) is a rare moment of irony and levity. Rosalía roasts a deceitful lover (her ex Rauw Alejandro, perhaps?) as an “emotional terrorist,” calling him “the preal” while toasting his mediocrity with elegance and wit. Mundo Nuevo soars with heavenly belts and Arabic-Spanish harmonics; half prayer, half cinematic odyssey. It’s easily one of the album’s most breathtaking achievements, sounding like Dune scored by angels.
With De Madrugá, Rosalía nods to her flamenco roots, co-written with Pharrell. It’s fierce, vengeful, and sharp; her handclaps cutting through strings like knives. Dios Es un Stalker turns spiritual pursuit into obsession, comparing divine love to the discomfort of being watched by God. La Yugular, sung in Arabic, finds beauty in surrender. Love becomes seismic and elemental, her voice dissolving into orchestral waves. Sauvignon Blanc offers reprieve: a tender piano ballad about renouncing luxury for simplicity: “Your love will be my capital.” The Dream’s fingerprints are there in its sensual minimalism.
The final sequence feels like a requiem: La Rumba Del Perdón explores forgiveness over flamenco rhythms with Estrella Morente and Sílvia Pérez Cruz. Memória (with Carminho) mourns what’s lost, and Magnolias closes the record with Rosalía imagining her own death, watching her enemies and lovers fade among the flowers. It’s soft, devastating, and transcendent.
LUX is not quite about Rosalía, but through its divine feminine lens, she becomes every woman: saint, sinner, martyr, muse. Each track feels like a fresco painted in sound; lush, deliberate, and alive with texture. The arrangements are monumental, the ambition operatic, the execution flawless.
It’s pop as high art, religious iconography reframed for a postmodern era, where holiness and sensuality are indistinguishable, and Rosalía presides over both. LUX is a miracle of modern pop; devotional, delirious, and defiantly divine.
