At first glance, this album may look more like a challenging academic quiz rather than the latest pop album by a musician whose last hit featured an international pop icon. Broken into four separate parts and sung in 13 tongues, this is a dizzying symphonic album exploring feminine mystique, spiritual transcendence, and corporal transformation, often by way of the lens of different women saints. The end of a relationship—a topic treated with grounded honesty on another major 2025 album—is launched upwards here, buoyed by the lush sound of a major orchestra and work from an award-winning composer among a long roll call of collaborators. Its sheer daring alone renders the efforts of other pop stars look rather modest.
Transcending Academic Exercise
The fact that this album manages to transcend overly intellectual posturing is almost a miracle, and sole credit going to Rosalía. Although this is not her first project to blend the past with modern styles, its ambitions are far greater on Lux, and the tightrope walk far more precarious. What truly elevates this fourth release, outside of its multilayered melodies, rich compositions, and inherent theatricality, proves to be an essential sense of joy. Similar to the legendary Björk at her height, you find a captivating quality to Rosalía's singing that pulls you up in its whirlwind. When she is tearing hearts apart, you nevertheless desire to stay right there through the ride.
A Prime Moment of Joy
This exuberant energy shines brightly on a stirring Italian ballad about a saint. It bathes in a sorrowful whirlpool over more than four moments. Then, everything falls away, and there's a gleeful giggle and a declaration prior to a hilariously exaggerated orchestral crescendo thuds down like comedic force. The track then shifts into the frenetic single driven by galloping orchestration, a powerful choir, and a surprise role from the artist herself.
"The charm of this album lies in the listener never quite know—or even wish to know—what you is going to next."
Almost each track ends in a totally different point than how it began. A track explores the fleeting trappings of fame over a featherlight orchestration before disintegrating into digital cacophony. Elsewhere, a song echoing the artist's earlier trap-infused style begins off dark and sinister, with prowling beats, before sudden traditional handclaps and an angelic chorus arrive to smooth the song's rough edges.
The Balance Between Art & Accessibility
Another crucial achievement on Lux is navigating the gap between radical experimentation and mainstream accessibility. It is little coincidence that it has achieved her highest-charting release to break into the upper reaches of major markets: at its core a suite of utterly catchy pop songs. A song sung primarily in English swells on a chorus that seems to collect increasingly nagging melodies as it spirals upward. That feat is echoed by another expansive track that expands and constricts, weaving layered tunes like an intricate weave.
- A dance-infused number seduces with its playful, Disney-adjacent flair and a chant-along chorus.
- Lyrically, it aligns with cultural honesty of contemporary heartbreak anthems, eviscerating a former lover described as an "emotional terrorist".
- Throughout these tracks, the vocals carry a sharp smile, like a fairy-tale character concealing a knife: "Top prize in acting like a scoundrel / You've the podium of disappointment."
A Maximalist Banquet for the Soul
This album is popular music on a grand level, an ambitious grasp for capital-A Art in an era of looming AI-generated blankness. It rejects self-absorption for sublime transcendence, creating a dramatic drama that masterfully controls its own built-in ridiculousness. This is an abundant source of hidden gems that takes time to fully explore but doesn't feels like hard work. While some major pop albums of 2025 seemed like a meager scraps, this record offers a lavish feast where the guests at the table, some intoxicated on sacred drink, flit from discussions about historical saints, the profound feeling of heartbreaking grief, and common gossip about useless men. In essence, it's a modern-day musical from music's most endlessly inventive practitioner.
