Guayaquil, ECUADOR – Rosalia’s latest album, Lux, blends orchestral music with a meditation on femininity, religion, and devotion.
Listen to the author read this review:
“If I’m in this, it’s to break it up, and if I break down over this, then I’ll break down, so what?” That is what Rosalia was saying in “Sakura,” the last song of her 2022 album Motomami.
After three years, she returned to break the experimental mold she built for herself. Her newest album, released in 2025, is Lux, the Latin word for light.
The Spanish singer defies patriarchal religious institutions and builds a spiritual narrative through a feminine lens that redefines those belief systems.
To achieve that, she draws inspiration from female saints and prominent figures in Christianity, Catholicism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam and Taoism.
From the album cover, Rosalia makes clear her approach of using symbols of the collective imagination to communicate her vision.
Besides its title in Times New Roman font, Rosalia appears against a sky-blue background, wearing a white nun’s habit.
But her dress mimics a straitjacket, creating a visual metaphor of the aspects that define and limit identity.
Despite being trapped, her face looks calm. Her lips are painted golden, just as in sacred art, where gold symbolizes God’s presence, eternity, and illumination. Her golden lips represent her voice as a divine matter, her greatest gift.
Unlike the eclecticism in Motomami – where tracks had no fixed order – the 18 songs in Lux unfold a linear narrative that starts with the mundane and goes through a trajectory until reaching death and transcendence.
Featuring lyrics in 14 languages, the London Symphony Orchestra accompanies each of the four movements that compose the album.
The first movement is a portrayal of mundane desire and the singer’s commitment to give herself to a greater cause while dancing between pain and pleasure.
The second opens strongly with “Berghain,” an operatic track about a sacrificial relationship.
Tragic romance is the main theme in four songs, and then the third movement connects divinity with freedom and love.
The last movement concludes with redemption, forgiveness, memories, and death.
There are moments of humor that balance solemnity in a natural way. While the complexity of its content may appear overwhelming due to its references beyond the music, I find the album refreshing in an industry more focused on producing the next viral social media sound.
Lux succeeds in combining classical music, Latin rhythms, electronic, and flamenco seamlessly, while languages and religions become a bridge that affirm art as a universal connection.
Renato Santana is a Junior Reporter with Youth Journalism International.
