BEYOND THE NOTES
November 11, 2025 | Brianna Gonzalez Ulloa
Rosalía’s fourth studio album, LUX, is an album so meticulously constructed, so spiritually daring, that it challenges the very definition of what pop music can be. From her flamenco-rooted debut Los Ángeles to the reggaetón-drenched Motomami, Rosalía has spent the past seven years tearing through convention with relentless curiosity and ambition. However, LUX is something else entirely: a celestial oratorio disguised as an avant-garde pop album, written in fifteen languages, built around the lives of female saints, and arranged like a classical symphony. It is, without exaggeration, one of the most radical and emotionally resonant albums of the decade.
Divided into four movements and featuring 18 tracks (only 15 in its digital edition), the Spanish artist sings in an array of tongues: Catalan, Spanish, Arabic, Japanese, Ukrainian, Mandarin, Sicilian, and more. Rosalía spent years working with translators, phoneticians, and linguistic coaches to make each vocal not only accurate but alive. Singing in unfamiliar languages allows her to explore universal emotions—grief, desire, transcendence—in ways that feel intimate.
Sonically, LUX is a staggering leap from the glitchy, hypermodern swagger of Motomami. Instead of 808s and trap beats, here we have sweeping strings, choral arrangements, and the thunder of the London Symphony Orchestra under Daníel Bjarnason’s direction. The production, led by Rosalía alongside trusted collaborators like Noah Goldstein and Dylan Wiggins, is inventive, alive, and often unsettling.
Themes of transformation and spiritual questioning course through every track. The opening song, “Sexo, Violencia y Llantas,” lays out the album’s thesis: a desire to ascend, descend, and return to Earth changed. In that song alone, Rosalía sings: “Quién pudiera vivir entre los dos / Primero amar el mundo y luego amar a Dios” (“Who could live between the two—first loving the world, then loving God”). It defines the tension between the sacred and the profane, the self and the divine.
This isn’t religious music in any traditional sense. Though Rosalía isn’t bound to any faith, LUX is steeped in spirituality from Catholic imagery to Islamic mysticism and Taoist poetry. The album draws inspiration from the lives of women who, historically, have used religion as a tool for self-expression in patriarchal structures. Songs like “Sauvignon Blanc” contain vows of renunciation—“My God I’ll obey / I’ll burn the Rolls-Royce”—while “Reliquia” sees fame and femininity sacrificed on the altar of devotion. And yet, there is still wit and bite throughout the record, as in the mocking “Novia Robot,” where Rosalía parodies the idea of a perfect, compliant woman with a robotic jingle that critiques the commodification of femininity.
Of course, no record this personal could ignore the recent heartbreak that’s shadowed her public life. The end of her engagement to Rauw Alejandro looms like a ghost throughout LUX. Still, it’s never treated with tabloid melodrama. Instead, pain is transfigured into metaphor. On “La Perla,” one of the album’s most devastating (and beautiful) tracks, she refers to a former lover as an “emotional terrorist” and a “red flag andante.” The song’s waltzing rhythm feels ironically elegant, masking the controlled fury of its lyrics. And “Focu’Ranni,” which plays like a haunted prayer, hints at a bride who flees her own wedding. This track, exclusive to the physical release, is inspired by Saint Rosalía of Palermo, the very woman the artist was named after—a mystic who left everything behind to seek solitude and God. The connection between artist and saint, personal and spiritual, is no accident.
Amid the Latin arias, orchestral swells, and philosophical reflections, there is always Rosalía’s voice. She presents questions to listeners: What does it mean to forgive? What do we owe God? What do we owe ourselves? And how do we find light in a time that often feels like total darkness? Though Rosalía does not have these answers herself, LUX urges us to listen more closely and seek them in our search for faith, language, and love.
Critical responses have been unusually unified in their response to LUX since the album’s release. With a staggering Metacritic score of 98 and universal praise from outlets as varied as Rolling Stone, The Guardian, and Pitchfork, LUX has established Rosalía as one of the defining artists of her generation.
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