Rosalía releases 18-track album sung in 13 languages

Rosalía Releases Ambitious New Album LUX Sung in 13 Languages

Spanish superstar Rosalía released her fourth studio album LUX on November 7 via Columbia Records, delivering an 18-track orchestral opus that marks her boldest artistic departure yet. The album, recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra and sung in 13 languages including Spanish, Latin, German, Arabic, and Hebrew, explores themes of spirituality, feminine mystique, and divine transformation.inmusicblog

The release arrives three years after her Grammy-winning 2022 album Motomami, which took home album of the year at the Latin Grammys and became 2022’s best-reviewed record on Metacritic. According to the BBC, critics are already asking if LUX might be “the year’s best album”. The project debuted with a perfect score of 100 on Metacritic based on early reviews.bbc

Orchestral Vision With Global Collaborations

LUX features contributions from Icelandic artist Björk, experimental musician Yves Tumor, and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw, who handled arrangements. The album’s lead single “Berghain,” featuring Björk and Yves Tumor, topped the Spanish Singles Chart upon release on October 27 and accumulated over 26 million streams on Spotify within its first week.elle

Additional collaborators include Portuguese fado singer Carminho, Spanish flamenco artist Estrella Morente, singer-songwriter Silvia Pérez Cruz, Mexican-American singer Yahritza, and the choirs of Escolania de Montserrat and the Palau de la Música Catalana. The album is divided into four movements—a classical music structure—with 15 tracks available digitally and three exclusive to physical editions.billboard

Rosalía told The New York Times that she spent over two years crafting the multilingual lyrics, working with translators and phonetics experts to authentically render songs in Catalan, English, Italian, Sicilian, Ukrainian, French, Mandarin, and other languages. “I love traveling, I love learning from other humans,” she explained to The New York Times’ Popcast. “Why would I not try to learn another language and try to sing in another language and expand the way I can be a singer or a musician or an artist?”nytimes

Madonna’s Praise and Critical Acclaim

Pop icon Madonna publicly praised the album ahead of its release, posting on Instagram, “I can’t stop listening! You are a true visionary!!!” Madonna previously revealed to Los 40 Principales that she attempted to book Rosalía for a birthday performance in Morocco before the Spanish artist achieved mainstream fame.queonnda

Variety’s review described LUX as “a spiritual journey” that is “as challenging to create as it is to experience,” praising Rosalía’s vocal prowess and the orchestral uplift. Rolling Stone Brazil awarded the album 5 out of 5 stars, calling it “one of the most audacious and remarkable albums produced by any pop artist in recent memory”. The BBC noted that despite its “grand orchestral sweep,” the album remains “a thoroughly modern album, with cutting edge production and hip-hop phrasing sneaking into Rosalía’s stunning, operatic vocals”.variety

The album’s deeply personal nature is evident in tracks like “La Perla” and “Focu ‘ranni,” which appear to reference her 2023 breakup with Puerto Rican reggaetón star Rauw Alejandro, whom she was engaged to before their split in July of that year. Rosalía emphasized that the project was created entirely without artificial intelligence, describing the songs as “like a puzzle, like a labyrinth”.hola

Ahead of the official release, Rosalía hosted exclusive listening parties in cities including New York, Paris, London, Barcelona, Mexico City, and Tokyo, where celebrities including Dua Lipa, Emily Ratajkowski, and members of Latin Mafia attended preview sessions.eventbrite