Initially, this album could seem more like a challenging university challenge than a new pop album from a musician whose last hit featured an international pop star. Split into four separate parts and voiced in thirteen tongues, it is a dizzying symphonic opus exploring female mystery, religious ascent, and corporal transformation, often via the lens of different female saints. The dissolution of a love affair—a topic handled with raw openness elsewhere—soars heavenward here, carried by the constant presence of a full orchestra and work from a Pulitzer-winning songwriter within an extensive roll call of contributors. The pure audacity alone makes the efforts of contemporary artists seem rather small.
Transcending Scholarly Pretense
The fact that this album manages to transcend overly academic chin-stroking is nearly miraculous, with full credit going to the artist. Although this is not her first album to fuse historical sounds with the present, the ambitions are much greater on Lux, with the tightrope walk far more precarious. What truly elevates her fourth album, outside of its complex tunes, dense compositions, and inherent drama, is a core spirit of playfulness. Much like the iconic artist at her peak, there is a wondrous quality to Rosalía's voice that pulls you up in its whirlwind. When she is tearing your heart apart, you nevertheless want to stay alongside her for the ride.
A Prime Moment of Joy
That playful energy comes forth clearly during a stirring piano-led ballad inspired by a saint. It luxuriates in a string-drenched whirlpool for more than four moments. Suddenly, everything drops away, to reveal there's a spontaneous giggle followed by a declaration prior to a comically over-the-top orchestral surge crashes in like cartoonish impact. The track then shifts into the frenetic single featuring galloping orchestration, a powerful choir, and a cameo appearance from the artist herself.
"The charm of Lux is that you never exactly know—nor wish to know—what it will go to next."
Nearly each song finishes in a totally different place than how it started. One moment examines the fleeting trappings of fame with a delicate symphony before collapsing in electronic chaos. Elsewhere, a cut echoing her earlier trap-infused style starts out dark and brooding, with menacing beats, until sudden traditional handclaps and an angelic choir enter to smooth its jagged corners.
The Bridge Between Experiment & Pop
Another crucial balancing act of Lux involves navigating the line of radical experimentation and broad accessibility. It is little surprise that it has achieved the artist's first release to break into the Top 5 of key charts: its heart contains a suite of utterly catchy hits. A song performed primarily in English builds on a refrain that seems to gather increasingly nagging melodies while it spins upward. That trick gets echoed by a different powerful track that grows and contracts, weaving layered melodies like an intricate weave.
- A dance-infused song charms via its playful, Disney-adjacent drama and an anthemic chorus.
- Lyrically, it shares with cultural honesty of other breakup songs, lambasting a former partner described as an "psychological terrorist".
- Across these tracks, the vocals have a painted-on edge, like a fairy-tale figure hiding a blade: "Top prize in being a motherfucker / You have the podium of letdown."
A Maximalist Feast for the Ears
Lux is popular music on a maximalist level, a hungry reach for high artistry in an era of impending AI-generated blankness. It eschews solipsism for sublime elevation, crafting a dramatic spectacle that masterfully manages its inherent excess. This is a deep source of buried treasure that requires patience to fully mine but doesn't feels like a chore. Where other major releases of the year felt like feasting on scraps, Lux is a lavish banquet at which the characters around the table, perhaps tipsy on holy drink, flutter from discussions about historical figures, the profound sensation of heartbreaking sadness, and common gossip about useless men. In essence, it's a modern-day musical from pop's most restlessly creative practitioner.
