On the surface, this album might appear closer to a difficult university quiz than the latest popular music project from an artist whose last single was a collaboration with a global pop star. Broken across 4 distinct parts and performed in thirteen tongues, this is a dizzying symphonic album exploring female mystique, religious ascent, and corporal transformation, frequently through the prism of various saintly figures. The dissolution of a romance—a topic handled with raw openness elsewhere—is launched upwards here, supported by the lush presence of a major orchestra and input from an award-winning songwriter among an extensive roll call of collaborators. The pure daring alone renders the efforts of contemporary artists seem quite modest.
Rising Above Scholarly Pretense
The fact that this album succeeds in escape dry academic posturing is almost miraculous, with full credit belonging to the artist. Although it's not her first project to alchemize historical sounds with the present, its stakes are far higher here, with the tightrope walk far more precarious. What really elevates her fourth album, beyond its multilayered tunes, rich arrangements, and engrained drama, proves to be an essential sense of fun. Similar to the iconic artist during her height, you find a wondrous quality to Rosalía's singing that pulls the listener into its whirlwind. Even when she is breaking your heart in two, the listener still desire to stay alongside her through the journey.
A Prime Moment of Joy
That playful spirit comes forth clearly during the stunning piano-led ballad about a saint. It luxuriates in a string-drenched melancholy over several minutes. Suddenly, all the music drops away, and there's a spontaneous giggle and a comment before a hilariously exaggerated orchestral surge thuds down with cartoonish force. The song then segues into the wild single featuring racing orchestration, a powerful choral group, and a cameo role from the artist herself.
"The charm with this album lies in the listener rarely exactly know—nor wish to predict—what it is going to next."
Nearly every song concludes in a completely different point from where it started. A track examines the fleeting nature of fame over a delicate symphony only to collapsing into electronic cacophony. Elsewhere, a song echoing the artist's previous trap-infused work begins out dark and brooding, featuring prowling vocals, until fluttering flamenco rhythms and a heavenly choir enter to smooth the song's jagged corners.
The Balance Of Art and Accessibility
Another crucial achievement of the album is straddling the gap between radical innovation and mainstream accessibility. It is little surprise that it has become the artist's highest-charting release to crack the upper reaches of key charts: its heart contains a suite of truly undeniable pop songs. A song sung entirely in English swells on a refrain that feels to collect increasingly nagging melodies while it spirals upward. That feat is repeated by another powerful ballad that expands and contracts, intertwining multiple melodies as an intricate tapestry.
- A waltz-like song seduces via its playful, Disney-adjacent drama and a chant-along chorus.
- In its words, it shares with pop culture honesty of contemporary breakup songs, lambasting an ex- lover labeled an "emotional terrorist".
- Throughout these tracks, the vocals carry a painted-on smile, like a storybook figure concealing a knife: "Top prize in acting like a scoundrel / You've the podium of letdown."
An Opulent Feast for the Ears
Lux is pop on a maximalist level, an ambitious reach for capital-A artistry in an era of impending AI-generated sameness. It eschews self-absorption for sublime elevation, crafting an over-the-top spectacle that skillfully controls its inherent ridiculousness. This is an abundant source of buried gems that requires patience to fully explore but never feels like hard work. While other big releases of the year seemed like a meager scraps, Lux offers a lavish feast at which the guests around it, some tipsy on holy drink, flutter between conversations about historical saints, the profound sensation of soul-shattering sadness, and common gossip about hopeless men. In essence, it's a contemporary musical from pop's most endlessly inventive visionary.
