Initially, this album might appear closer to an arduous academic quiz rather than a new popular music project by a musician who just had a previous single featured an international K-pop star. Split into 4 separate sections and performed in 13 tongues, it is a dizzying orchestral-influenced album exploring female mystique, spiritual transcendence, and physical transformation, often through the prism of various women saints. The end of a relationship—a theme treated with raw honesty elsewhere—is shot upwards here, supported by the lush presence of a full symphony orchestra and input from a Pulitzer-winning composer within a vast list of contributors. The pure audacity alone renders the efforts of other artists appear quite laughable.
Rising Above Academic Pretense
That this album manages to avoid overly academic chin-stroking is nothing short of miraculous, and sole credit belonging to Rosalía. While it's not her first project to alchemize historical sounds and the present, the ambitions feel far higher here, with the balancing act more precarious. What truly raises this fourth release, beyond its complex melodies, dense arrangements, and engrained theatricality, proves to be a core spirit of fun. Similar to the legendary Björk at her peak, you find a captivating quality to the vocalist's voice that pulls you up in its whirlwind. Even when she's breaking hearts in two, the listener nevertheless want to be alongside her for the journey.
A Signature Example of Joy
This playful energy shines clearly on the stunning piano-led song about a saint. It luxuriates in a sorrowful melancholy over several moments. Suddenly, everything drops silent, and we hear a spontaneous laugh and a declaration prior to a comically exaggerated string surge crashes down like comedic impact. The song then shifts into the frenetic track driven by racing orchestration, a powerful choir, and a cameo appearance from the artist herself.
"The charm of this album is that you rarely quite understand—or even want to know—what you is going next."
Nearly every track ends at a completely different point than where it began. A track explores the fleeting nature of fame with a featherlight symphony only to collapsing into electronic cacophony. Elsewhere, a cut that recalls the artist's previous trap-infused style starts off dark and brooding, featuring menacing beats, before fluttering traditional handclaps and an angelic chorus enter to soften the song's jagged edges.
The Balance Of Experiment and Accessibility
A key achievement on Lux is navigating the gap between bold innovation and broad accessibility. This is little surprise that the album has become her first release to crack the Top 5 of key markets: its heart contains a suite of utterly catchy hits. One track performed primarily in the English language builds around a chorus that seems to collect more and more infectious hooks while it spins upward. This trick is echoed on a different expansive ballad that grows and constricts, weaving multiple tunes like a complex weave.
- A waltz-like number seduces via its jaunty, Disney-adjacent drama and a chant-along chorus.
- In its words, it shares with cultural impact of other breakup songs, eviscerating an ex- lover labeled an "emotional terrorist".
- Throughout the album, the vocals have a painted-on smile, akin to a fairy-tale character hiding a knife: "Top prize in acting like a motherfucker / You have the podium of disappointment."
A Maximalist Feast for the Ears
This album represents popular music on a maximalist scale, a hungry reach for capital-A Art amid of looming AI-generated blankness. It rejects solipsism for sublime elevation, crafting a dramatic drama that skillfully controls its inherent ridiculousness. This is an abundant well of hidden treasure that requires time to fully mine but never seem like hard work. Where some major pop albums of the year felt like feasting on meal, Lux is a lavish feast where the characters around it, some intoxicated on holy wine, flit between conversations about ancient saints, the profound feeling of soul-shattering grief, and shared stories about useless men. In essence, it's a modern-day musical from pop's truly endlessly creative visionary.
