I heard Rosalía for the first time
on the 2026 Brit Award show where she
performed “Berghain” with a guest
appearance from Björk. Maybe the second
time on SNL in the same year; or maybe
those two experiences were reversed,
I don’t know. What I do know is this:
I was transported, transfixed, blown
away, taken aback, gobsmacked, and
in love. I knew the album, LUX, was
receiving all kinds of critical acclaim,
but it took these two live performances
to hook me, to convince me that this
was a thing I needed in the collection,
a type of music or a genre that,
in my record stacks, is pretty much non-
existent. I can think, off the top of
my head, of only a few records in my
entire vinyl collection where the singing
is not done in English: my Arooj Aftab
albums, and the variety of artists who sing
Spanish lead vocals in new performances
of all the songs on Elvis Costello’s
classic album, This Year’s Model.
Nataly Dawn from Pomplamoose
sings entirely in French on their new
album. If my memory serves, all the
singing on Chicano Batman’s albums are
in English. So this, getting lost in and
loving music for which I understand
not a single word is a new and kind of
rare experience. Rosalía is a vocal
powerhouse, and a linguistic powerhouse:
she sings in no fewer than 13 languages
on LUX. And this music defies description.
Is it classical? Is it opera? Is it
hip-hop? Is it choral? Is it dance?
Is it even a pop album? The answer to
all of these questions has to be yes.
Simply some of the most sophisticated
“pop” music I have ever heard in my life,
dense, challenging, surprising, beautiful,
and exquisitely performed. It’d be nice
to understand what she’s singing about.
I suppose I could likely look up translations
of these songs. I haven’t done and I probably
will never do that. There’s something
appropriate and good about simply surrendering
to one’s confusion. Let the music carry
the day–and that unearthly, beautiful,
incredibly versatile voice.
Notes on the vinyl edition: LUX, Columbia Records, 2026, double clear vinyl.
In case you don’t already know: I’m listening to almost everything in my vinyl collection, A to Z, and writing at least one, sometimes two or three long skinny poem-like-things in response for each artist, and on a few occasions, writing a long skinny poem-like-thing in response to more than one artist. As a poet and a student of poetry, I understand that these things look like poems, but they don’t really sound much like poetry, hence, I call them “poem-like-things.” I’ll admit that they’re just long, skinny essays that veer every now and then into the poetic or lyric.
