🔗 Share this article

On the surface, this work may look closer to a challenging academic challenge than the latest pop album by an artist whose last single featured a global pop icon. Broken into four separate parts and sung in 13 tongues, it is a head-spinning symphonic album exploring female mystique, spiritual transcendence, and physical transformation, often through the lens of different saintly figures. The end of a love affair—a topic treated with grounded openness on another major 2025 album—is launched upwards here, carried by the lush presence of a major symphony orchestra and contributions from an award-winning composer within a vast list of collaborators. The pure audacity by itself renders the efforts of other artists appear quite laughable.

Rising Above Academic Exercise

The fact that Lux succeeds in transcend overly intellectual chin-stroking is almost miraculous, with sole credit belonging to the artist. Although it's not her first album to alchemize historical sounds with modern styles, its ambitions feel much higher here, and the balancing act far more dramatic. What really elevates her fourth album, beyond its multilayered melodies, rich compositions, and inherent theatricality, is a core sense of playfulness. Much like the iconic artist at her height, you find a wondrous sense to Rosalía's singing that pulls the listener into its whirlwind. When she's breaking hearts apart, the listener nevertheless want to be right there through the journey.

A Signature Moment of Joy

This exuberant energy shines clearly on the stunning Italian song about a saint. It bathes in a string-drenched whirlpool for more than four minutes. Then, everything falls away, and there's a gleeful giggle followed by a comment before a comically exaggerated string surge crashes down with cartoonish force. The track then segues to the wild track driven by galloping orchestration, an imposing choral group, and a cameo appearance from the artist herself.

"The charm with this album lies in the listener rarely quite know—nor want to predict—where you will go next."

Almost every song concludes in a completely distinct place from how it started. One moment explores the fleeting trappings of celebrity over a featherlight symphony only to collapsing in electronic cacophony. Elsewhere, a cut echoing the artist's previous trap-infused style begins off moody and sinister, with prowling beats, until sudden flamenco rhythms and a heavenly choir enter to smooth its rough edges.

The Bridge Between Experiment and Accessibility

Another crucial achievement of Lux is navigating the gap between radical experimentation and mainstream appeal. This is little coincidence that the album has achieved the artist's highest-charting release to crack the upper reaches of major markets: at its core a collection of truly catchy hits. One track sung primarily in the English language builds on a chorus that seems to gather increasingly infectious hooks as it spirals skyward. This trick is echoed by a different expansive ballad that grows and contracts, weaving layered tunes like a complex weave.

• A dance-infused song charms with its jaunty, theatrical flair and an anthemic chorus.
• In its words, it shares the pop culture honesty of contemporary breakup songs, lambasting an ex- partner described as an "psychological terrorist".
• Throughout these tracks, the vocals carry a sharp smile, like a fairy-tale figure hiding a knife: "Top prize in acting like a scoundrel / You have the podium of letdown."

A Maximalist Feast for the Ears

Lux represents popular music on a grand level, a hungry reach for capital-A Art in an era of looming AI-generated blankness. It eschews solipsism in favor of glorious elevation, creating an over-the-top drama that masterfully controls its built-in excess. It is an abundant well of buried treasure that takes patience to completely mine but doesn't seem like hard work. Where other big pop albums of 2025 felt like a meager scraps, this record offers a lavish feast where the characters at the table, some intoxicated on holy drink, flit between discussions about ancient saints, the profound feeling of soul-shattering grief, and shared gossip about useless men. In essence, it's a modern-day musical from music's most restlessly inventive practitioner.