Rosalía Soars Between the Divine and Profane on ‘Lux,’ a Masterfully Operatic Record of Grand Scale

Alci Rengifo

International Rosalía’s latest body of work, “Lux,” is, at times, an exhilarating journey, at others, a meditative one. It has been described by the singer as Maximalist, in comparison to its predecessor, 2022’s “Motomami.” That record felt like a culmination of Rosalía’s eclectic spirit, which had firmly been established on her breakthrough sophomore album, 2018’s “El Mal Querer,” where the Catalan singer combined flamenco with styles like pop, urbano and R&B. “Motomami” was designed as a concept album, exploring themes of homesickness and bad romance in a feverish mixture of bachata, hip-hop, flamenco, art pop, chiptune, bolero, electropop and dembow, as well as mambo and funk carioca. The roster of collaborators included the Weeknd and producers Noah Goldstein, Michael Uzowuru, Dylan Wiggins and Pharrell Williams. Clearly, Rosalía’s time had truly come. Now, she leaps beyond “Motomami” with “Lux,” an album that bursts with breathtaking orchestral sweeps that compliment its intimate obsession with God and spirituality. Along with confronting bad lovers, Rosalía is asking the big questions, like a Catholic school girl processing guilt while contemplating her own divinity and mortality. On the cover, she appears arms bound in all white, donning a nun’s habit, as she poses like a character out of Ken Russell’s “The Devils,” but with the voice of an angel. 

This album’s enthralling lead single, “Berghain,” alone is worth much hype, with its swelling operatic scope, featuring Rosalía showing off her vocal range, in both Spanish and German. Björk guests on the track, along with Yves Tumor. The London Symphony Orchestra gives the song its grandiose orchestral backdrop. It was the perfect opening salvo for an album where Rosalía sings lyrics in 13 different languages, backed by the LSO and two Catalan choirs. Room is made for one of the singer’s heroes, Patti Smith, to make a cameo. Rosalía has cited that Saints, mystics, Brazilian author Clarice Lispector, and French philosopher Simone Weil were a few of her influences for “Lux,” with classical composers, such as Gustav Mahler and Vivaldi, also forming part of the well this album draws from. 

The deepest well that “Lux” drinks from is faith. Being born and raised in Spain as a devout Catholic, Rosalía, in riveting fashion, addresses her relationship to God and self, and even near religious aspects of fame. This helps fuel the inspiration behind the celestial themes and sonics of this record, with moments worthy of being performed in a cathedral. “Lux” is structured like a song cycle in four movements. Daníel Bjarnason conducts the London Symphony Orchestra while the arrangements are by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw and Angélica Negrón. Song titles range from refined to teasing. “Sexo, Violencia y Llantas” opens the album sounding like it promises something rough and sexual, but it’s actually a meditation on struggling between earthly desires and faith. “Who could live between the two? First love the world, and then love God,” sings Rosalía, initiating the album wholly in her native Spanish. Later in the song, she sings, “Gracе, the fruit, and the weight of thе scales.” This is an artist who has been harboring some heavy thoughts. On the angelic “Divinize,” Rosalía sings in English like someone preparing to enter heaven while contemplating the forbidden fruit and chasing after grace. “I’m always hungry for you / You’re the king who commands her / She feels more loved,” plays like the verses of a modern hymn.

“Lux” defies categorization, working as an intoxicating hybrid while never losing its cohesiveness. On “Porcelana,” Rosalía sings in Spanish and Japanese, backed by lush orchestral arrangements, all the while sounding like she’s seducing someone under neon lights, as she reflects on pain. “Pleasure numbs my pain / Pain numbs my pleasure / What I have, what I do, my worth / And pain always comes back again,” she sings. More intriguing is the music itself, with shades of Mozart’s piano concertos. She slyly nods at religious terminology when exclaiming in the chorus, “I am nothing, I am the light of the world.” “Reliquia” also plays with the idea of religious relics. It forms a narrative where Rosalía trots the globe, losing her speech in Paris, her time in L.A. and some heels in Milan. Her heart, she tells us, has never been hers alone. “I’m your relic,” she notes. Beyond personal experiences, such moments also serve as a reflection on Rosalía as an internationalist artist, one who openly wants to challenge borders and barriers, to prove great art transcends, and is for everyone. Her commitment is evident with the training she undertook to research, translate, and sing each 13 of this album’s featured languages flawlessly.

Yet, the first half of this album is where Rosalía seems to truly reach for operatic heights. There is the gorgeous “Mio Cristo Piange Diamanti,” which closes the first movement in a full Italian delivery. In the lyrics, Rosalía drops a compliment good enough to steal. “You are the most beautiful hurricane / That I have ever seen.” The album’s greatest moment is “Berghain,” a thunderous number inspired by the 12th-century German abbess Hildegard of Bingen. Overpowering in its sense of drama and craft, one dares say it is a moment the rest of “Lux” moves around, even as the entirety this album offers many more riches. What Rosalía achieves here is grandly cinematic, fully capturing the promise of this entire project. The lyrics are a romantic lament that could also double for taking communion. “His fear is my fear / His rage is my rage / His love is my love / His blood is my blood,” she sings in soaring fashion. Björk enhances the tracks’s religious fervor with lines about needing divine intervention to save us, before Yves Tumor enters to unveil a hard-edged proclamation of, “I’ll fuck you ’til you love me.” Sex and religion have always mixed well together. When “Berghain” climaxes, the orchestral section sounds like it’s emulating Mahler’s fifth symphony. In a possible brief moment of political commentary, the title might also refer to a Berlin nightclub accused of cancelling one of the singer’s performances due to her pro-Palestine views. 

Briefly, faith in the divine does make room for reflecting on loss of faith in worldly romance. In other words, Rosalía does take the time to address past lovers. The playful “La Perla” is seemingly about her romance with actor Jeremy Allen White or Puerto Rican singer Rauw Alejandro. It’s a takedown enjoyable in its wordplay, calling the conjured ex a “minefield for my sensitivity” and “emotional terrorist.” This is quite the checklist that includes “Playboy, a champion/Spends the money he has and also the one he doesn’t/He’s so charming, a star of senselessness.” Quite damning is the accusation that some of these guys are virtual freeloaders, “The king of 13-14, doesn’t know what it means to pay taxes.” Considering the cosmic themes of “Lux,” maybe the subtext here is that faith in finding the one is as fragile as having trust in the almighty. 

Rosalía’s inclusion and, you could even say, mastery of the bilingual moments is quite impressive. Understandably, her native Spanish remains dominant in the pageantry of tracks like “La Perla” and “Mundo Nuevo.” The Iberian culture that defines her provides the numbers you can certainly dance to like “De Madrugá,” where flamenco flourishes combine with lyrics in Ukrainian. “La Yugular” has a particular importance in its use of Arabic with Spanish, considering Spain was a Muslim country for nearly 800 years. The track then closes with a 1976 recording of punk icon Patti Smith saying, “Break on through to the other side. Going through one door isn’t enough, a million doors aren’t enough.” Keen observers will note the added layer of music history there, since Smith is herself clearly referencing a song from the Doors. “Memoria” has even greater cultural significance. Featuring Carminho, one of the great modern voices of Portugal’s Fado, Rosalía is giving space to a deeply rooted cultural style of storytelling that has yet to become as internationally embraced as, for example, the Bolero. 

Epic, delicate and heavenly, “Lux” is undeniably one of the year’s most notable releases. You can let it envelop you as an immersive listening experience or write a whole dissertation on its theological content. There have been intriguing collaborations before between the classical and popular music world. More obscure, curious moments would find someone like the Killing Joke’s Jaz Coleman doing arrangements for a diva such as Sarah Brightman. Rosalía’s latest stands on its own, including in its way of almost defiantly insisting on spiritual themes that resist easy, cheap pop categorization. Modern qualms about attraction collide with medieval mysticism or questions of existence. Because faith is so transcendental and something that endures across the ages, it is a perfect theme for Rosalía’s fearless embrace of music from everywhere, while speaking in tongues. In this digital frontier, where you could argue we live in the age of all styles, “Lux” is an exciting siren call to drop all inhibitions, come together and let the music do all the talking, or praying. 

“Lux” releases Nov. 7 on Apple Music.