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BARCELONA<\/strong> \u2013 And Rosal\u00eda said, \u201cLet there be Lux.\u201d<\/p>\n Rosal\u00eda, the global Spanish pop star loved by millions<\/a> for fusing flamenco with Latin hip-hop and reggaeton, has amazed her fans with a radical shift.<\/p>\n The singer and songwriter\u2019s new album, \u201cLux\u201d<\/a> (\u201cLight\u201d in Latin), is unabashedly spiritual. Fifteen songs, sung in 13 different languages, including fragments in Latin, Arabic and Hebrew, are laden with a yearning for the divine.<\/p>\n And it is receiving praise from on high.<\/p>\n Xabier G\u00f3mez Garc\u00eda, bishop of Sant Feliu de Llobregat which includes Rosal\u00eda\u2019s hometown of Sant Esteve Sesrovires near Barcelona, was one of the first church leaders to laud her work in an open letter to his flock. Rosal\u00eda\u2019s grandmother regularly attends mass in Sant Esteve Sesrovires, according to the diocese.<\/p>\n In an interview with The Associated Press, G\u00f3mez said that while some of her songs were \u201cprovocative,\u201d Rosal\u00eda \u201cspeaks with absolute freedom and without hang-ups about what she feels God to be, and the desire, the thirst (to know God).\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I listened to \u2018Lux\u2019 and Rosal\u00eda speaking about her the context of her album and the creative process, I found myself faced with a process and a work that transcended the musical. Here was a spiritual search through the testimonies of women of immense spiritual maturity,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n From her opening lyrics sung over piano and mournful cello, \u201cWho could live between the two\/ First love the world and later love God,\u201d Rosal\u00eda announces that this album is a rupture from its Grammy-winning predecessors<\/a>. \u201cEl mal querer (\u00a8The Bad Loving\u201d in Spanish) and \u201c Motomami<\/a> ” had established Rosal\u00eda as one of the leading artists in the Spanish music world with her experimental urban beats.<\/p>\n Despite \u2014 or thanks to \u2014 its diversity of styles and song forms, ranging from classical strings, snippets of electronica with a cameo by Bj\u00f6rk, a boys’ choir from a thousand-year-old monastery, an aria-like song in Italian, a Portuguese fado and, of course, modern flamenco and hip-hop beats, \u201cLux\u201d is off to a powerful start among listeners. It has four songs in Spotify\u2019s Top 50 global chart<\/a> for this week, more than any artist, including Taylor Swift. <\/p>\n Madonna has declared herself a fan of “Lux,” and composer Andrew Lloyd Webber has lavishly called it<\/a> the \u201calbum of the decade.\u201d<\/p>\n Turning inwards<\/p>\n Rosal\u00eda, 33, has said that after her success in more popular music forms, she let her long-held longing for the spiritual guide her in making \u201cLux.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIn the end, in an age that seems not to be the age of faith or certainty or truth, there is more need than ever for a faith, or a certainty, or a truth,” she told reporters in Mexico City last month.<\/p>\n She said that she was guided by the concept that \u201can artist doubts less of his vocation when he works in the service of God than when he works in the service of him or herself.\u201d<\/p>\n Rosal\u00eda apparently has not had a revelatory \u201ccome-to-Jesus\u201d moment common among evangelical believers in America. Like many Spaniards, she grew up in a once staunchly Catholic Spain that has quickly secularized in recent decades, especially among the younger generations, leaving churches mostly to elderly parishioners. <\/p>\n Even her early music flirted with medieval religious poetry, including one video clip from 2017 when she set a poem by 16th-century Spanish poet Saint John of the Cross to music.<\/p>\n While embracing Catholic symbols and expressing a fascination with female saints, Rosal\u00eda seems to eschew strictly organized practice and draws inspiration from other religions, as well. \u201cLux\u201d responds to that diversity of interest, at one point quoting a Sufi poetess.<\/p>\n \u201cI have read much more than I did years ago, reading many hagiographies of feminine saints from around the world,\u201d she said. \u201cThey accompanied me throughout this process.\u201d<\/p>\n Her style has also morphed. Gone are the hip-hop fashion and long fake nails Rosal\u00eda sported only a few years ago when she took the Latin Grammys by storm. Contrast that now with her look on the \u201cLux\u201d album cover, where she is dressed in a solid white nun’s veil with her arms apparently trapped inside a white top, her gaze averted.<\/p>\n Vatican’s culture cardinal joins the fan club<\/p>\n Despite the potentially controversial move of comparing God to an obsessed lover in the song \u201cDios es un stalker” (“God Is a Stalker” in Spanish), Rosal\u00eda has won over the equivalent of the Vatican’s culture minister.<\/p>\n Cardinal Jos\u00e9 Tolentino de Mendon\u00e7a, prefect of the Vatican Dicastery for Culture and Education, told Spanish news agency EFE this month that Rosal\u00eda has detected a wider dissatisfaction with the secular world.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen a creator like Rosal\u00eda speaks of spirituality,\u201d he said, \u201cit means that she captures a profound need in contemporary culture to approach spirituality, to cultivate an inner life.\u201d<\/p>\n Among the songs about faith, Rosal\u00eda found the time to deliver tunes like \u201cLa Perla” (“The Pearl” in Spanish) that dishes out scorn for a former lover.<\/p>\n That deft mix of both high and pop culture is part of the allure of \u201cLux,\u201d said Josep Oton, professor of religious history for the ISCREB theology school in Barcelona.<\/p>\n \u201cShe has succeeded in making popular music with very deep cultural roots,\u201d Oton told the AP. \u201cAnyone can listen to it, and people with different backgrounds can take away different things. It is pop music, but it is profound.\u201d<\/p>\n Interpreting ‘Lux’<\/p>\n \u201cLux\u201d can be intimidating for listeners, both due to its elaborate orchestration and smattering of esoteric lyrics that Rosal\u00eda was inspired to write after reading medieval mystical poets and their accounts of undergoing a transformative union with God through deep prayer and meditation.<\/p>\n In the exhilarating \u201cReliquia\u201d (\u201cRelic\u201d in Spanish), Rosal\u00eda compares herself to female saints, listing the parts of her body and life she has left in cities around the world as relics<\/a> for others\u2019 keeping. Her \u201cMio Cristo Piange Diamanti,\u201d (“My Christ Weeps Diamonds” in Italian), brims with the extravagant Baroque image of the jewels dripping from the eyes of the Messiah.<\/p>\n In \u201cDivinize,\u201d Rosal\u00eda sings of the \u201cdivina buidor\u201d (\u201cdivine emptiness\u201d in Catalan), a central concept of medieval mysticism which focused on how the soul must experience abandonment to open a space where God can enter.<\/p>\n Victoria Cirlot, professor of humanities at Barcelona\u2019s Pompeu Fabra University and expert in medieval feminine mystical tradition, liked \u201cLux\u201d for its ability to introduce complex religious concepts to the general public, while noting it is \u201ca minimalist\u201d sample of the mystical tradition.<\/p>\n Cirlot said the moving \u201cLa Yugular\u201d (\u201cThe Jugular\u201d in Spanish) is rich in mystical thought because the throat, the home of the voice and the breath, is associated in many religious traditions as the body\u2019s door to the divine.<\/p>\n But, for Cirlot, it\u2019s the entire package that makes \u201cLux\u201d so impactful.<\/p>\n \u201cRosal\u00eda is not just a great singer; she is a great actress, and her body language is full of these mystical gestures like contorting her face in an expression of ecstasy, of staring into nothing,\u201d Cirlot said. \u201cAnd then we have her amazing voice, which creates a sense of flight.\u201d<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n AP writer Berenice Bautista contributed from Mexico City.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n