On Rosalía’s third album, the Catalan star has delivered a spectacular 16 track explosion of wit, innovation and rugged beauty that uses collaborations from several grandees sparingly and wisely.
The sound is awesome and diverse, landing halfway between the bleeding-edge pop of Billie Eilish, sassy art-electro of Arca and traditional Latin tropes, and one of its most compelling elements is the joy and ease with which she moves through such hugely diverse genres.
Tracks resonate and splutter with digital and organic sounds fairly seamlessly, and while some of the songwriting language can feel unfamiliar, the cumbia-esque futurism of the album means it’s mostly quite danceable, even when James Blake murmurs his way onto the stage on Diablo.
A highly memorable cut is the short, sexy Chicken Teriyaki, a simple reggaetón thumper full of non-musical elements, naughty motifs and music biz name drops. It’s one of the less intellectual tracks but no worse for it.
A more complicated listen is La Fama, ostensibly a treatise on the vagaries and pitfalls of fame, featuring Canadian superstar The Weeknd. The track is arranged as bachata—a vernacular style originating in the 1960s Dominican Republic that is bitter and sorrowful, and the lyrics are terrific. Rosalía satirises and anthropomorphises fame; she’s “a lousy lover and won’t ever love you for real / Too much of a backstabber who comes as easy as she goes.”
Also on the traditional kick, Bulerías matches a raw flamenco rhythm with vocal fireworks and little else—resonating, spinning, defying. On an album of complicated zigs, the simplicity of this track knits things together, reminding you of the central artistic training of its creator.
Rosalía is a conservatory-trained artiste who is excelling in the often superficial world of the music industry. It’s hard to understate how much this comes through in the music—there is a formalised expertise here despite all the hypermodern pop tropes, and it puts the principle artwork head and shoulders above many contemporaries.
‘Motomami’ is a fantastic, possibly game-changing work for Rosalía—a splurging musical bomb full of energy, sass, and variety—and it confirms the 29-year-old’s ascent to the top table of European pop artistry.
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