Rosalía and the classical avant-garde
Most album drops don’t cause a political scandal. When Rosalía went live on TikTok two weeks ago, she announced that she was headed to Madrid’s busy Plaza del Callao for a surprise event. Thousands of fans showed up to witness billboards light up with the cover of her new album ‘Lux’, released today. But not everyone was delighted with the singer’s album announcement. Madrid mayor José Luis Martinez-Almeida accused her of “endangering the physical integrity of the people”, and called upon Madrid’s City Council to investigate whether the singer should be fined for failing to obtain the necessary permissions. Public transport in the area had to be re-routed, and police rapidly deployed to redirect traffic; indeed, the singer herself was trapped in the ensuing traffic jam, leaving her car in the middle of the street to run to the crowd awaiting her.
Rosalía is no stranger to a swerve. Her first two albums, ‘Los Ángeles’ in 2017 and ‘El Mal Querer’ in 2018 propelled her into stardom with her unique mix of pop, hip-hop, and flamenco. Her 2022 ‘Motomami’ switched directions completely to explore the world of reggaeton; since then she has released collaborations with artists as diverse as Björk, Blackpink’s Lisa, and Ralphie Choo. But ‘Lux’ takes her into a new, more experimental direction. According to the album’s press release, it explores themes of “feminine mystique, transformation, and transcendence”. Speaking to The New York Times earlier this week, she listed a range of influences ranging from Hildegard von Bingen to Simone Weil; American listeners seem flummoxed by the fact that the lyrics encompass 13 different languages, as if provoking audiences to actually pay attention is too much to ask in an era where an album’s success is determined purely by how accessible, and therefore financially viable, it is.
Listeners were intrigued by the list of collaborators on the album: avant-garde artists Björk and Yves Tumor, flamenco legends Estrella Morente and Sílvia Pérez Cruz, fado singer Carminho among others. But it was another set of collaborators that drew most of the attention: the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Daníel Bjarnsson, with arrangements by Caroline Shaw. Shaw is, of course, one of the most prominent contemporary classical composers, winning the Pulitzer for Partita for 8 voices; Bjarnsson’s compositions have been championed by conductors such as Esa-Pekka Salonen. It’s a serious list of classical collaborators.
The album’s first single Berghain went viral for its sheer audaciousness: there’s a full-on assault of D minor string arpeggios, Björk cooing about divine intervention, and Yves Tumor repeating Mike Tyson’s “I’ll fuck you till you love me” rant. There’s nothing quite like it in the pop canon, and perhaps that’s enough to qualify it as an avant-garde hit. There’s also the aesthetic juxtaposition of baroque music with Berghain, the temple of industrial techno, though baroque singers like Anna Prohaska and Marina Viotti have long made the connection between Vivaldi and metal.
But while ‘Lux’ positions itself firmly within the world of the avant-garde, its classical references remain entirely traditional. Reliquia’s lightly atonal string quartet sounds like the background music to a luxury lifestyle podcast; it’s only when it gets a glitchy, electronic remix that it becomes interesting. The waltz rhythms of La Perla bring a poor imitation of Johann Strauss Jr., complete with swooning strings, as she calls her ex-partner an “emotional terrorist”. There’s a healthy dose of kitsch, from the harp arpeggios of Memória to the orchestral bombast of Mio Cristo Piange Diamante, a piano ballad that aims for Suor Angelica and instead lands in the realm of Jim Steinman.
There are moments where the tension between classical and pop are genuinely interesting: the pungent bassoon textures of Magnolias, the timpani-forward beat of Porcelana, the gentle ground bass of Dios Es Un Stalker. The best, and most interesting tracks are ones where classical references are used with restraint. There’s a Björk-like spareness to Mundo Nuevo, with sustained chords underneath dramatic melismas. Is it flamenco, or is it a baroque cadenza? Does it matter? There’s also fascinating juxtaposition in La Rumba Del Perdón, where cello and timpani interplay with flamenco handclaps. Rosalía gives her strongest vocal performance here, far more colourful and expressive in her middle range than in the high operatic lines of Berghain and Divinize. The clarity of her lyrics also comes through far better in her middle range compared to her operatic voice — an issue that plagues most opera singers.
‘Lux’ has sparked plenty of debate over whether it’s a pop album or a classical album. Two of my favourite writers on music have weighed in on this: Michael Brodeur for the Washington Post hopes that ‘Lux’ will spark newfound interest in classical music, whereas Hugh Morris for the Guardian accuses it of being musical kitsch. I land somewhere in between the two: I admire Rosalía for her artistic boldness, and think that she holds some awareness of the kitsch factor — the heavenly choir and bombastic strings at the end of Magnolias as she sings about death are surely beyond anybody’s idea of good taste. But she could take a lesson from Björk when it comes to exploring classical music: the Icelandic singer famously performed Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire. Asking Caroline Shaw to orchestrate cheesy film scores feels a bit like asking Björk to sing Taylor Swift.
As Rosalía herself has said, whether it’s a classical or pop album doesn’t actually matter. But it’s the tension between the pop avant-garde and classical traditionalism that matters: ‘Lux’ is avant-garde because it’s a pop album that incorporates classical elements, and not the other way around. Classical music becomes musical shorthand for the themes Rosalía wishes to evoke: a heavenly choir for spirituality, a high soprano for visceral drama, an orchestral swell for emotional grandeur. It speaks as well to Rosalía’s cultural background, where Spaniards will understand the aesthetic references she draws upon. But classical music, and opera in particular, is its own cultural code — when Kim Kardashian wants to give off the aura of taste she hires Andrea Bocelli; when Lady Gaga sets her Mayhem Ball in a reproduction of the Palais Garnier it’s meant to evoke the Gothic decadence of French Grand Opera.
The intersection between pop and classical is not a new one, from Kraftwerk to Freddie Mercury. But where ‘Lux’ succeeds in incorporating the sounds and textures of classical music, its parallel attempt to evoke and subvert the societal connotations of classical music seems underdeveloped. Compare it to her 2022 ‘Motomami’, where she fully immerses herself within the world of contemporary reggaeton. There, she celebrates and challenges the musical language while subverting expectations of genre and identity, all the while sounding like she’s having the time of her life. In comparison, the classical references in ‘Lux’ feel shallow. Don’t get me wrong — I enjoyed the album a lot. It’s smart, bold, and sounds like nothing she or anyone else has done before. But with the level of talent involved, it could have been so, so much more. Rosalía describes ‘Lux’ as a song cycle and perhaps that, rather than adding some string flourishes to banger like De Madrugá, is the true innovation of the album: it’s an hour of music that refuses to be excerpted and demands your complete attention. Perhaps that’s enough.
