Global pop star Rosalía is back with a new album Friday. Featuring songs in 13 languages, it’s the Spanish star’s most impressive project yet.
JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Global star Rosalia is back this week with a new album. It’s called “Lux.”
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “PORCELANA”)
ROSALIA: (Singing in non-English language).
SUMMERS: The Spanish artist is a two-time Grammy and 11-time Latin Grammy Award winner known for her ability to fuse musical styles. Here to break down “Lux” with me for our New Music Friday segment is NPR Music’s Stephen Thompson. Hi.
STEPHEN THOMPSON, BYLINE: Hey, Juana.
SUMMERS: All right, Stephen, I’m excited about this one. And I understand that this is Rosalia’s most ambitious album yet, which says quite a bit…
THOMPSON: (Laughter).
SUMMERS: …Given everything that she’s done. Can you just start by helping us contextualize this album for people who may not know her music?
THOMPSON: Well, this is Rosalia’s fourth album. Her roots are kind of in flamenco music, but with each record she’s put out, she keeps upping the ante on her sound. She’s mixing in more and more genres, more languages, more ambitions. She’s shown a remarkable knack for mixing, you know, pop, hip-hop, Latin music in ways that just keep getting grander and more and more ambitious.
But with “Lux,” even for Rosalia, this is an absolutely gigantic swing. It’s catchy and genre-bending, but on a massive level. She’s working with the London Symphony Orchestra. It’s classical music. It’s opera. It’s pop. It’s so many things at once. And at times, it is almost breathtakingly beautiful. And I haven’t even mentioned, she sings in 13 languages on this record. I can barely muster one.
SUMMERS: Right. Same.
THOMPSON: (Laughter).
SUMMERS: That sounds really, really hard. Does she make it work?
THOMPSON: She really, really, really does. And part of what jumps out about the languages and the deployment of all these languages is how seamless it sounds and how appropriate it feels to any given moment. This is not a record that you are – that you’re just going to want to listen to once. It just keeps revealing more and more as it goes along.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “BERGHAIN”)
ROSALIA: (Singing in Spanish).
THOMPSON: At the same time, all this art we’re talking about here – this record never feels like a museum piece. It’s vibrant and current. And at the same time, you know, it’s not just her classical record, either. It’s got songs like “Divinize,” which is this big, catchy earworm. It’s swimming across genres fluently, but it’s still a pop record in many, many ways.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “DIVINIZE”)
ROSALIA: (Singing) Through my body, you can see the light. Bruise me up, I’ll eat all of my pride.
SUMMERS: Stephen, earlier you mentioned the orchestra, and the other thing that caught my ear was her opera singing. Tell me about her classical background.
THOMPSON: Yeah, she is the real deal. She has studied this music. You know, you take a song on this record like “Mio Cristo.”
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “MIO CRISTO”)
ROSALIA: (Singing in Italian).
THOMPSON: She has said she had to train for a year to make that song. She has consulted and is collaborating with so many brilliant musicians and composers here. The technical chops on display throughout this record and the way that a lot of these classical arrangements are deployed and intermixed with other genres, the technical chops are incredible.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “MIO CRISTO”)
ROSALIA: (Singing in Italian).
SUMMERS: I mean, Stephen, this album already sounds amazing, but I do have to say, I think you might have one of the coolest jobs at NPR…
THOMPSON: (Laughter).
SUMMERS: …Because you get to listen to so much music all year round because you host New Music Friday. And we’re almost at the end of the year. Where do you think that this album, “Lux,” will fall into your ranking?
THOMPSON: Well, first of all, Juana, I always say about my job, it beats working in the mines…
(LAUGHTER)
THOMPSON: …You know? I mean, Juana, I have loved a ton of records this year. It’s going to be a huge challenge to put together a top 10 list, just ’cause I get to listen to so much music. But right now, at this precise moment, as I’m talking to you, this is my album of the year.
SUMMERS: OK.
THOMPSON: And I suspect I’m not going to be alone in that assessment if my colleagues at NPR Music are any indication.
SUMMERS: That is NPR Music’s Stephen Thompson. Thank you.
THOMPSON: Thank you, Juana.
SUMMERS: And you can hear more of Stephen’s thoughts on the new Rosalia album on the New Music Friday podcast from NPR Music.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “LA RUMBA DEL PERDON”)
ROSALIA: (Singing in Spanish).
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