Rosalía’s LUX Is Orchestral Pop Worthy of an Orchestra

Before Beatlemania there was Lisztomania; before young people were grinding in clubs, they waltzed in beer halls and sang horny operas. The emotions may feel universal, but tastes evolve. Nothing’s sexier than a 3/4 waltz one day, and then everyone decides to get down in 4/4 for a few hundred years.

Like music, religion has a habit of changing with the times. Rosalía‘s LUX expresses a personal spirituality, inspired by her Catholic upbringing as well as classical philosophy, new age, Islam, and her unique relationship with God. Made in collaboration with the London Symphony Orchestra under the conduction of Daníel Bjarnason, LUX is in constant conversation with the popular music — and ideas — of the past.

Philosophically and structurally, LUX shares some beats with Mozart’s Don Giovanni, that rascally, randy nobleman we’ve come to call Don Juan. In Don Giovanni, the titular villain gets out of danger time and again, until finally, he meets a force he cannot defeat. After he is dragged to Hell, the chorus sings, “Questo è il fin di chi fa mal, e de’ perfidi la morte alla vita è sempre ugual,” (“This is the end of one who does evil, and for the wicked, death is like life”). LUX puts Rosalía and her characters in moral danger, and her story [spoiler alert for what it means to be human] terminates in death. The album asks, what is the end for one who tries to do good but sometimes fails? What about a few temptations not resisted, the occasional enthusiastic sin?

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The stakes are high; Rosalía’s God can be a terrifying God, and He doesn’t seem the type to “Kumbaya.” At the beginning of Movement II, she feels Him breathing down her neck in “Berghain.” Movement III opens with “Dios Es un Stalker” (“God Is a Stalker”), with lyrics both funny and frightening. God has seen Rosalía fall, followed her into dark corners, and watched her sin. While she can joke about it, she has God say, “No me gusta hacer intervención divina” (“I don’t like to do divine intervention”), and her deity will watch her stumble into Hell without troubling Himself to stop her.

Like Don Giovanni, Movement I of LUX opens with sex, violence, and the chance for a quick escape — or as she puts it, “Sexo, Violencia y Llantas [Tires].” “Quién pudiera/ vivir entre los dos/ Primero amaré el mundo/ y luego amaré a Dios,” she sings: “How nice it’d be/ to live between them both/ First I’ll love the world/ then I’ll love God.” Eternal paradise or fun right now? LUX is never far from that tension.

Movement I also introduces one of the central metaphors of LUX: Divine light, trying (and perhaps sometimes failing) to shine through her skin. “Through my body you can see the light” she coos in English in “Divinize.” The idea gets twisted in the seductive, irresistible “Porcelana.” Translated from Spanish, she sings, “My skin is thin/ fine porcelain/ and it emits/ radiant light/ or divine ruin.”

Ruin, because “Porcelana” introduces a darkness that LUX‘s protagonist will struggle to overcome. The London Symphony Orchestra conjures some incredible sounds on this one, including banging percussion and fat triads of brass and strings that will leave every rapper jealous. Forget small sounds and chamber pop, she’s got the LSO ready to blast the Symphony’s donors right out of the front row.

Movement I ends with “Mio Cristo,” a classical Italian aria about a Christ that weeps diamonds, more Verdi than Usher. But this old-fashioned track gives way to bonkers post-modern pop in “Berghain,” the album’s most daring song, and where Rosalía’s soul is most at hazard.

“Berghain” is named for a Berlin nightclub with a debauched reputation, and the song has classical references to Vivaldi’s “Winter” and Wagner’s Ring Cycle trading bars with pop melodies and Yoko Ono-style word loops. Before Rosalía’s protagonist gives in to temptation, her different impulses are expressed across different performers and languages.

A German choir thunders, (translated),

His fear is my fear
His rage is my rage
His love is my love
His blood is my blood

At first Rosalía joins them in German, expressing proper awe in the local language. But her first words in Spanish are a confession: “Yo sé muy bien lo que soy,” she sings (“I know full well what I am”). Translated to English, she goes on to say what purpose she can serve: “Sweetness for your coffee/ I’m just a sugar cube/ I know heat melts me/ I know how to disappear.”