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

Alci Rengifo

Internationally revered artist Rosalía’s latest body of work, “Lux,” is, at times, an exhilarating journey, at others, a meditative one. It has been described by the Catalan 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 she combined flamenco with 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. 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. Rosalía is asking the big questions, along with confronting bad lovers, like a Catholic school girl processing guilt while contemplating her own divinity and mortality. On the cover, she appears reverent in all white, donning a nun’s habit with arms bound, locked within a pose much like a character out of Ken Russell’s “The Devils,” but with the voice of an angel. 

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. But 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. The lyrics, “I’m always hungry for you / You’re the king who commands her / She feels more loved,” play 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 laments. 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.

The first half of “Lux” is where Rosalía truly reaches for operatic heights. There is the gorgeous “Mio Cristo Piange Diamanti,” which closes the first movement in 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.” But this album’s most enthralling moment lives in “Berghain,” with its swelling operatic scope, featuring Rosalía’s immense vocal range fully on display, and sung in both Spanish and German, this thunderous number is inspired by 12th-century German abbess Hildegard of Bingen. Overpowering in its sense of drama and craft, with the London Symphony Orchestra giving the song its grandiose orchestral backdrop, it is the perfect salvo for an album where Rosalía linguistically traverses the globe, backed by the LSO and two Catalan choirs.

What Rosalía achieves on “Berghain” 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 brief wink of potentially political commentary, the title might also refer to a Berlin nightclub accused of cancelling one of Rosalía’s performances due to her pro-Palestine views. 

Musings on the divine briefly make room for reflections on the loss of faith in romance, when Rosalía addresses her disappointments in a past affair. The playful “La Perla,” seemingly about her romance with Puerto Rican singer Rauw Alejandro, is a takedown, enjoyable in its wordplay. Calling the conjured ex-lover a minefield for her sensitivity, and an “emotional terrorist,” Rosalía references a biblical verse about King Jeroboam, comparing the king’s wicked actions and need to be idolized to her targeted subject. It is quite the checklist, one that includes dragging the former paramour with lyrics that paint him as a deceptively charming playboy, who spends money he doesn’t have and lives in other people’s houses. Quite damning is the accusation that some of these guys are virtual freeloaders. 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 this album’s multilingual 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 Ukrainian lyrics. “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 in its scale, scope, and soaring sopranos, while equally delicate and heavenly in much of its delivery, “Lux” is undeniably one of this year’s best albums. 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 classical and contemporary musical worlds. 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 “Lux” stands on its own, including in its way of almost defiantly insisting on spiritual themes that resist easy 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 can 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.