Lead
Rosalía released her fourth record, Lux, on Friday, arriving as a striking departure from her earlier pop and Latin-inflected work. The Barcelona-born singer recorded the album with the London Symphony Orchestra and drew on arrangements by Pulitzer Prize winner Caroline Shaw. Lux mixes operatic textures, electronic production and lyrics about faith, loss and self-reckoning, prompting strong reactions from critics and fellow artists. Early response frames it as both her most ambitious project and a potential landmark for mainstream-classical crossover.
Key takeaways
- Lux is Rosalía’s fourth studio album, recorded over roughly three years and released on Friday.
- The record was tracked with the London Symphony Orchestra and features arrangements by Caroline Shaw, a Pulitzer Prize–winning composer.
- Lead single “Berghain” references Verdi’s Dies Irae and includes a guest vocal appearance by Björk.
- Several tracks are multilingual; Rosalía reportedly studied 14 languages while making the album, including Hebrew, Ukrainian and French.
- Her 2018 breakthrough, El Mal Querer, began life as a graduate thesis; her 2022 album Motomami topped Spotify’s global albums chart and won Latin Grammy album of the year.
- Personal upheavals during the record’s creation included a public split from Rauw Alejandro, a management change to Jonathan Dickins, and Rosalía’s expanding acting work on Euphoria.
- Certain tracks are physically exclusive: “Focu ‘Ranni” appears only on CD and vinyl editions.
- Pop peers, including Madonna, have publicly praised Lux, calling it a visionary departure from Rosalía’s prior catalogue.
Background
Rosalía Vila, born in Barcelona, first drew international attention with El Mal Querer (2018), an album that reworked flamenco motifs into contemporary R&B and pop frameworks. That project began as her graduate thesis at the Catalonia College of Music and signalled her willingness to blend academic training with mainstream ambition. Her follow-up, Motomami (2022), stretched further: it reconfigured Latin American rhythms such as cumbia and reggaetón through glitchy, experimental pop production, earning critical and commercial accolades.
Motomami’s success—number one on Spotify’s global albums chart, Latin Grammy album of the year and the best-reviewed record on Metacritic for 2022—set high expectations for Rosalía’s next move. Instead of repeating a winning formula, she leaned into her classical training and theatrical instincts for Lux, choosing large-scale orchestral forces and an operatic framework. That shift places her at the intersection of pop stardom and concert-hall ambition, raising questions about audience reach and industry positioning.
Main event
Lux was assembled across roughly three years and foregrounds orchestral sonorities: the London Symphony Orchestra supplies much of the album’s backbone, while Caroline Shaw contributes several arrangements. The record is presented in four movements and embraces formal devices not typical of pop releases, from choral passages to chamber textures manipulated by modern production techniques. Rosalía has described Lux’s title as drawn from the Latin word for “light,” and the album explores spiritual yearning alongside personal rupture.
The lead single, “Berghain,” opens with a riff on Verdi’s Dies Irae and builds through sharply scored strings and a chanting chorus; Björk appears in the track to deliver a brief, apocalyptic line about salvation. Another early cut, “Reliquia,” transforms a chamber quartet into fragmented electronic motifs while Rosalía reflects on loving too intensely. Meanwhile, “La Perla” deploys a jaunty waltz to deliver some of the record’s sharpest barbs aimed at an ex-partner, using language that turns vulnerability into defiance.
More introspective moments anchor the back half of the album: “Sauvignon Blanc” is a hushed ballad about renunciation and self-listening, and “Magnolias” closes the record with a meditative acceptance of mortality. The physical editions include “Focu ‘Ranni,” a fractured piece that evokes a bride abandoning a wedding, inspired—Rosalía has said—by the story of Saint Rosalia of Palermo. The album also samples a 1976 inspiring exhortation from Patti Smith, reinforcing a motif of artistic boundary-breaking.
Analysis & implications
Lux represents a deliberate repositioning of Rosalía’s public persona: from boundary-pushing pop auteur to an artist staging a dialogue between high culture and mass market appeal. Recording with a major symphony and a Pulitzer-winning arranger signals an investment in longevity and critical legitimation that many pop stars pursue later in their careers. The move could expand her audience to listeners who prioritize compositional depth, but it risks alienating parts of her streaming-oriented fanbase accustomed to brisk, viral-friendly singles.
Commercially, Lux’s orchestral scale reduces the likelihood of a single track dominating short-form social platforms in the way Motomami did, but it opens other revenue and prestige channels: classical venues, festival headline slots, and awards categories that prize compositional ambition. The album’s multilingualism and references to mystic writers such as Simone Weil also position Rosalía as a transnational cultural figure rather than a genre-limited pop star.
Artistically, Lux may recalibrate pop’s relationship with classical music in the streaming era. It demonstrates how pop production aesthetics—beat-making, vocal processing, tight sequencing—can coexist with extended forms and acoustic ensembles. If Lux finds a strong audience, it could encourage more mainstream artists to commission contemporary classical arrangers and bring symphonic textures into popular songwriting.
Comparison & data
| Album | Year | Notable features / Accolades |
|---|---|---|
| El Mal Querer | 2018 | Flamenco-rooted concept; began as graduate thesis |
| Motomami | 2022 | Top of Spotify global chart; Latin Grammy album of the year; Metacritic’s best-reviewed record of 2022 |
| Lux | 2024 | Recorded with London Symphony Orchestra; Caroline Shaw arrangements; operatic, four-movement structure |
The table shows a trajectory from folkloric reinvention (2018) through experimental pop success (2022) to orchestral ambition (Lux). While Motomami’s metrics were driven by streaming dominance and critical aggregation, Lux’s early reception is measured more by critical response and peer endorsement than by immediate chart supremacy.
Reactions & quotes
Industry peers and critics have given Lux enthusiastic endorsements, framing it as a daring pivot. Madonna publicly expressed admiration on social media, describing the record as visionary in tone. That celebrity approval has amplified discussion about the album’s significance beyond standard music-press channels.
I can’t stop listening! You are a true visionary!!!
Madonna (social post)
Rosalía herself has asked listeners to engage with Lux in an intentional way, recommending headphone listening in a darkened room as a counterpoint to bite-sized viral content. That instruction underlines the artist’s desire for concentrated attention and positions the album as an antidote to dopamine-driven consumption patterns.
The more we are in the era of dopamine, the more I want the opposite.
Rosalía (interview with The New York Times)
Critics have noted the album’s theatrical scope and frequent language shifts as evidence of Rosalía’s widening ambitions. Public reactions on social platforms mix admiration, bemusement and debate over whether the record will find large-scale commercial traction.
Break on through to the other side.
Patti Smith (sample, 1976)
Unconfirmed
- Long-term commercial performance of Lux (sales and streaming figures beyond initial days) remains to be seen and unverified.
- Specific motivations behind personal events cited during the album’s making (such as the split from Rauw Alejandro) have not been publicly detailed by Rosalía beyond general comments.
- How extensively Lux will translate into new touring formats or classical-concert bookings is still uncertain.
Bottom line
Lux is a conscious and sizable gamble: Rosalía swaps some of the immediate hooks that fuel streaming virality for orchestral depth and conceptual heft. That choice makes the record feel riskier but also more durable in critical terms; it trades short-term playlist traction for potential long-term cultural impact. For listeners ready to engage on the album’s terms—quiet, focused, and patient—Lux delivers a distinct and emotionally rigorous experience.
Whether Lux will be widely regarded as the year’s best album depends on how audiences balance novelty against accessibility. Critics and peers have already hailed it as a major artistic statement; the coming months will show if that admiration converts into broader commercial recognition, new performance opportunities, and durable influence on how pop and classical worlds intersect.