Rosalía (Post-Flamenco Art-Pop From Spain)

I just stumbled across this woman's work this week, and am blown away. Her first album, Los Ángeles, was kind of avant-flamenco, but very stripped-down and raw, with lots of songs about death; it was almost Chelsea Wolfe-ish at times. Her upcoming album, El Mal Querer, is a little more poppy/conventional, but it still uses the handclapping flamenco rhythm rather than standard beats, and the visuals (which are also all hers) are fantastic.

First video - "Malamente":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rht7rBHuXW8

Second video - "Pienso en Tu Mirá":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_4coiRG_BI

it's been a while since i was this amazed by every aspect of an artist's work on first impression like this, both those songs and videos are so good and the flamenco rhythms rule so much

visuals good but the first thing sounds *exactly* like what i'd imagine if someone said 'minimal flamenco pop' to me, it's a snooze

second song has more going on, especially rhythmically, but it still sounds like all the breathy moody pop ever

You might like her first album better:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfDEEyg3AdA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6s-MQzPZ6IE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OMwDZUWl5g

I like both.

"Pienso en Tu Mirá" is astounding – a bit more info here:

- https://www.eamonn.com/2018/07/28/rosalia-pienso-en-tu-mira/

- https://www.npr.org/sections/altlatino/2018/07/25/631879546/rosal-as-lethal-mir-and-anitta-s-medicina-our-favorite-latin-songs-this-week

Mentioned here, Rosalía will be acting in Pedro Almodóvar's new film. She's also appeared on this track by J Balvin, "Brillo" - https://youtu.be/tkfM5Aq_NDU

album is out November 2nd

“El Mal Querer” sale el 2 de noviembre 😱😱😱😱
Droppin my new album on nov 2nd ♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️ pic.twitter.com/cUkMSw8V44

— R O S A L Í A (@rosaliavt) September 13, 2018

Capitulo 1 AUGURIO - Malamente
Capitulo 2 BODA - Que no salga la luna
Capitulo 3 CELOS - Pienso en tu mirá
Capitulo 4 DISPUTA - De aquí no sales
Capitulo 5 LAMENTO - Reniego
Capitulo 6 CLAUSURA - Preso
Capitulo 7 LITURGIA - Bagdad
Capitulo 8 EXTASIS - Di mi nombre
Capitulo 9 CONCEPCIÓN - Nana
Capitulo 10 CORDURA - Maldición
Capitulo 11 PODER - A ningún hombre

Philip Sherburne has a nice profile & interview w/her today: https://pitchfork.com/features/rising/get-to-know-rosalia-the-spanish-singer-giving-flamencos-age-old-sound-a-bracingly-modern-twist/

I'm definitely curious about the album--the newer tracks are so different from the prev album. Like unperson I'm into both approaches but not 100% sure I want to hear handclaps on every track.

new video out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUBMPaj0L3o

lovely bass on that one

I don't love the new video as much as the two before it, but I'm still really excited for the album. And the video is kinda Halloween-worthy, in a way - those creepy backup dancers appear out of nowhere.

yeah I just watched Malamente again and this video is nowhere near that level. I like the autotune on the chorus (?), feels like a quick leap over the Mediterranean

I love all the songs and videos and am really excited for the album to come out tomorrow.

I know she's the subject of significant controversy in Spain given her use of flamenco and Andalusian tropes generally as a woman from Catalonia. Are there any Spanish ILXors that can shed any further light on this? I've seen stuff on social media and other forums about it but there's not any English-language writing about it yet as far as I'm aware.

Listening to the new album now. It's pretty amazing.

US Spotify link

really great on first listen. less poppy than I was expecting in some ways. every time I wasn't sure about a track it would swerve in some other, unexpected direction.

I feel like people into stuff like Kelela or FKA Twigs would be into this, though to my taste the amount of space given to the vocals on this is more appealing

Interesting work of fusion. I like it as it is, Bagdad for example. Agree that Pienso en tu mirá is astounding.
I'm sure to check her next.

album is a bit underwhelming, not as poppy as the singles yeah so what I loved about those doesn't come through as strongly on the rest of the album. the Cry Me A River interpolation on Bagdad is kinda jarring too

Pienso en tu Mira is so gorgeous.

The album is a lot more meditative than the singles suggested - I still find it very beautiful though, and I'm not too concerned about its failure to, outside the singles, lean into pop tropes, as she's apparently made a bunch of songs (some of which she's already playing live) with producers like Pharrell and a guy that did some stuff on the Cardi B album. I suspect her label will want to capitalise quickly on all this - the streaming numbers are enormous in Spain - and release a second album or EP sometime next year.

She also went all-out Rhythm Nation on this EMA performance which to me seems like more evidence that she's a burgeoning superstar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZTaZRLv3GE

Pitchfork gave a glowing review of the album today as well.

Just shows how flexible these songs are. Compare to this performance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_fWWs8xqb0

The Guardian also gave the album 5 stars last week. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/nov/01/rosalia-el-mal-querer-review-flamenco-pop-star-is-a-formidable-new-talent

Hearing the crowd sing along at that MTV performance was really something.

The Cry Me A River sample I think works in that it's so incongruous especially in a song that develops into faux-liturgical counterpoint. I wish I understood the words so I had more of a sense of what she was getting at there.

I know nothing about flamenco but this record is great. If she becomes huge I'm more interested in what mainstream pop can co-opt from her rather than the other way round. The way those handclaps just pop amid all the digital production is consistently fantastic.

I don't truly speak Spanish but I can give it a go.

Y se va a quemar, si sigue ahí / And it will burn, if it continues like this
Las llamas van al cielo a morir / The flames rise to die in the sky
Ya no hay nadie más por ahí / There is nobody left around here
No hay nadie más, senta'íta dando palmas / There is nobody anymore, sit (?) and clap your hands

Por la noche, la sali'a del Bagdad / In the night, the exit (?) of Bagdad
Pelo negro, ojos oscuros / Black hair, dark eyes
Bonita pero apena' / Beautiful but only...
Senta'ita, cabizbaja dando palmas / Sit (?), head bent clapping hands
Mientras a su alrededor / While around her
Pasaban, la miraban / They pass, look at her
La miraban sin ver na' / They look at her without seeing anything
Solita en el infierno / She's alone in hell
En el infierno está atrapa' / In hell she's stuck
Senta'íta, las manos las juntaba / Sitting (?), she put her hands together
Que al compás por bulerías / To the rhythm of Bulerías
Parecía que rezaba / She seemed to pray

Junta las palmas y las separa / She joins her hands and separates them

De las luces / From the lights
Sale un ángel que cayó / Comes out an angel who fell
Tiene una marca en el alma / He's got a mark in his soul
Pero ella no se la vio / But she hasn't seen it
Senta'ita, al cielo quie' rezarle / Sit (?), in the sky who prays to him/her (?)
Prenda'ita de sus males / Ignited by her vices
Que Dios tendrá que cobrarle / So that God will have to cover her

not sure about all of it obviously

woes, rather than vices

Actually, she's probably the one burning (first line). Maybe it's an execution.

There's a hefty interpolation of Jolene in one song as well.

It took a couple listens to fix my malamente expectations, but this album is astonishingly good! I can't even isolate favored songs at this point. I can see why monotony called it "meditative" (as opposed to "banging" I think?), but it can also be quite dramatic in what I assume is a traditional flamenco vein, as on Reniego.

To Matt's point, I would love to see the consistently striking way the production handles acoustic space and vocal/sound arrangement catch on elsewhere. I thought JES's pitchfork review was v good--the "global bass" framing struck me as odd at first but thinking of this as a rooted-in-the-local antidote to generic pan-global trop-house is interesting.

A lot of pan-global trop-house/Spotify pop has a tendency to fill up every single available bit of space, this uses a not dissimilar sound palette in a much more imaginative way.

❤️”Di Mi Nombre”❤️

I know she's the subject of significant controversy in Spain given her use of flamenco and Andalusian tropes generally as a woman from Catalonia.

These seem to cover it pretty well, re: Gypsy culture and Andalusian culture:

- https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=es&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.elespanol.com%2Fcultura%2Fmusica%2F20180531%2Fgitanos-atacan-rosalia-usa-simbolos-pestanas-postizas%2F311468865_0.html&edit-text=&act=url

- https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=es&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fmagnet.xataka.com%2Fpreguntas-no-tan-frecuentes%2Frosali-apropiacion-que-se-acusa-malamente-robar-cultura-gitana-andaluza&edit-text=&act=url

The original articles were on El Español and Magnet.com. I can't speak much Spanish, but the translation reads OK, apart from google often printing 'she' as 'he'.

A couple of quotes:

"The Gypsy activist Noelia Cortés believes that Rosalia 'uses the Gypsies as something cool to incorporate into her disguise, but she does not care socially' [no le importamos socialmente hablando]." – (El Español)

"Rosalía's own roots offer another complex variable to analyze appropriation: the Castilian-speaking culture of the Baix Llobregat [in the province of Barcelona], composed mostly of second and third generations of immigrants from Andalusia, Murcia or Extremadura, has certain affinities with that of their ancestors, whether on a musical level or in some dialectal aspects. The same happens with tracksuits or car tuning: they are characteristic elements of the poligonera culture, so associated with the Barcelona red belt.

"What the controversy reveals, in any case, is the penetration of the identity debate and theories about racial identities and historical discriminations in Spain. And also the complexity and subtlety of many readings about the cultural products that will come in the future." – (Magnet.com)

During the controversy earlier this year, she posted a playlist of flamenco songs that comprise the lyrics and melodies on the Los Ángeles album.

Aqui va esta playlist como regalo de reyes, donde podréis encontrar de donde aprendí los cantes que aparecen en Los Ángeles, con las letras y melodías que componen el disco. Que la disfrutéis!!🎁✨☺https://t.co/OPAVqBTewG

— R O S A L Í A (@rosaliavt) January 4, 2018

"Malamente" won a UK Video Music Award for best pop video.

this is not my fav album of a payo ex/appropriating flamenco this year. the relationship between gitano culture and spanish culture is more interesting to me than this music, which leans hard on these signifiers. the magnet article has the sort of weaselly equivocation I've seen before on this topic

also:

The theoretical appropriation of Rosalia works and works well at the narrative level when the intent is directed towards the gypsy culture: the ethnic group has been socially and legally persecuted for five centuries, and although today there is no formal discrimination, the gypsies still live apart in many ways. cities and in permanent social exclusion. It is probably the only Spanish historical case to which the American racial narrative fits.

hmmm

the relationship between gitano culture and spanish culture is more interesting to me than this music, which leans hard on these signifiers

What did you think of Mala Rodriguez's last single/video? (She actually is gitana.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKJE4-9qRIk

this is a good album

I like her singing and prefer the intensity & energy of that track to the cooler detachment of rosalia. as per matt dc, the way the claps work with the glossier sound are what's most striking to me about rosalia, & I wld imagine other ppl will lift that trick

i love this album but man i'm so excited for her to drop her new shit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAVZ5tXL6lU

as if to further illustrate this ^ - new video for "bagdad" features a bit of "lo presiento" at the beginning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2WOIGyGzUQ

This review (from The Nation, of all places) was very interesting to me because I usually don't pay attention to lyrics, but the author makes it clear how crucial they are to this album:

https://www.thenation.com/article/rosalia-flamencos-new-album-el-mal-querer-review/

Missed this thread; discovered her (2) albums via end-of-year lists. Absolutely love them... her voice!

Way into both of these albums as well.

https://www.stereogum.com/2027027/rosalia-oneohtrix-point-never/news/

Entertaining and slightly nerdy analysis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgHXFTgaVT0

I'm updating the thread for no other reason than I still enjoy checking her different performances so much. Maybe I'm crazy but I still feel like she has this spectrum of moods that each of her songs works with and that make me scream art.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLWfMPPh1F8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRph0jV4mO4
Someone tell how I left out this song from my top25, oh yes, it's partly because of the others.

Also she said she'd love to collab with Dua Lipa and that'd be ultimate sexiness, so fingers crossed.

“Di Mi Nombre” is still my favorite of hers.

This is cool, first time I've seen a vid of her performing. I'm so into El Mal Querer

she's going to be on the james blake album out tomorrow

And since you mentioned it. We hear her first, as we should. I'm not familiar with James Blake, but he makes me think of Anthony. Nice duo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LkoaO8-z6I

Delicious actually. And incredible delicate performance. Her parts (my amateur translation):

Agujerito del cielo - Little hole in the sky
Cuelando el brillo de Dios - letting in the brilliance of God
Un rayo cayó en tus ojo' - a beam struck your eye
Y me partió el corazón - and split my heart
Agujerito del cielo - Little hole in the sky
Díctame por dónde ir - instruct me where to go
Para yo no equivocarme - so that I do not get it wrong
Y así ver mi porvenir - and thus see my future

Ya tengo to' lo que quiero - I already have al' that I desire
Ya no puedo pedir má' - I cannot ask for mo'
Cuando te tengo a mi la'o - When I have you by my sid'
Lo pasa'o se queda atrá' - The pas' is left behin'
Si te apartan de mi vera - If they separate me from your side
Y te tuviera que encontrar - And if I had to find you
Hasta allá te encontraría - I would find you up there
Como el río va a la mar - As the river goes to the sea

Oh god this is gonna be Ys part two where I’m the lone dissenter, isn’t it?

― mixed martial farts (flamboyant goon tie included)

Lol ok I just listened to it in full and I’m afraid I’ll join you. I also felt like the one of the few who felt Y’s was a cheesy overwritten mess albeit with some remarkable moments.

There’s some things I liked so I need to give it another chance but it didn’t make a great impression to me on first listen. It sounds expensive, but I am not into luxury shopping.

Reliquia, Dios es un stalker y La Rumba del Perdon were the highlights for me.

“Dios es un stalker” in particular is the closest bridge between this and Motomami.

i listened to the first movement and one of the problems seems to be that this is her extremely self-consciously big ambitious artistic statement album and she's still working with like, ryan tedder

Just saw the credits and Guy Manuel Homem is credited on Reliquia.

this is a lot but I like it on first listen, so far not a Volta situation as feared

Yeah I should check credits before typing. *checks credits* it’s incredible to see like Tom Elmhirst and Nigel Godrich’s names just tucked in here, the list of arrangers is lengthy too— I love Angelica Negron and Aaron Paris and I’m glad for them

Lol ok I just listened to it in full and I’m afraid I’ll join you. I also felt like the one of the few who felt Y’s was a cheesy overwritten mess albeit with some remarkable moments

I listened to it for the first time in years a few months ago and it’s still “rich lady with a thesaurus” music to me, but I did appreciate how quickly it flew by, it’s definitely not uninteresting music and I appreciate that about it.

My adoration of “Divers” is way more interesting than my nonplussed feelings towards “Ys” tho— “Divers” has the same ecumenical approach to its creation as “Lux” and is approx ten times more interesting and rewarding

I’m cowed by my fandom of “Motomami” even as I’m entirely aware that it is basically “Swiss dembow”, I can’t help myself, Noah Goldstein is too addictive as a producer.

But yeah I want to give all participants in “Lux” a hug and an apology

it does feel perhaps too ecumenical, lacking a central thesis

i agree, it doesn't feel like there's much overall musical vision beyond 'orchestra' here and so the results are all over the place and it doesn't really cohere

some of it is alright but a fair amount ends up in this somewhat bland dead zone where it isn't really compelling either as pop or bold experimentation

it just makes me want to listen to like, vespertine or kalk samen chestnut flower, which manage to work as both

Kinda odd that Lido Pimienta and Rosalía (who are the kinda artists one might have compared in a slightly handwavey manner) have both gone in the same direction this year, for reasons that aren’t entirely obvious to me.

I'm not sure what I think of this after one listen, but I found it very compelling and a lot the hot takes here strike me as bizarre, with "kinda Disneyfied soundtrack to Elon Musk becoming a trillionaire/Rosalia retrospectively being celebrated as a pioneer in flamenco/dembow" being especially head-scratching.

One mild annoyance: I was reading the pitchfork review and lamenting their eroding editorial standards as Santiago kept naming tracks that aren't on the album. However, there are apparently 3 tracks only on the physical version (the review does err in naming “Dios es un stalker" as one of them), which kind of sucks because per the review, they look intersting.

No thoughts about the review qua review, but combining it with some of the posts here I think genre is not an analytical lens I find productive at this point. Given her track record I get going there, but Santiago settles on "avant-garde classical pop" which is so deadening.

rob otm

but also apparently the streaming and physical versions of “Stalker” are different, I don’t know in which ways though

Oh yes, I thought I was going slightly crazy this morning giving it one more listen after listening to it like 15 times yesterday from the leaked physical version. The physical version is 2:55 against 2:10 digital, her initial vocal line is more dynamic while remaining subtle (the way she drags those syllables), and then it grows into a mini-epic by adding a choir and repeating the chorus once more, the production sounds different too. Easily 1.5x more awesome according to scientific parameters, I can't understand that she chose different versions.

Politely said, the three bonus tracks don't show her leaving good ideas off the table. Jeanne is fine, but she's done this before, and who needs the French.

I might have been too tired yesterday. Hearing it this morning while driving to work I thought it sounded amazing.

Sonically, yes definitely.

That BBC6 interview gives me ASMR tingles.

I think I like this a lot, immediately repeated it for a second listen. I guess I have some appetite for that many pieces of flair — I also like the Last Dinner Party lol — but the album it reminds me of vibeswise if not musically exactly is fka twigs' Magdalene. Bjork too, for sure. But all in a musical vocabulary that feels very Rosalia. Like, this might be the album of hers that most exactly matches this thread title. I don't know if I'll listen to it as much as Motomami, but I don't know that I won't. Also I don't know if anyone's mentioned "Divinize," but that's the first track I hit repeat on.

Listened to it for the first time and it's absolutely lovely, but a lot to digest. Can't wait to listen to it again. It does have something many other albums of nearly all modern genres lack: dynamic range.

This thing pops, and I really need to blast it on some proper speakers instead of my headphones soon.

Hearing it on speakers instead of headphones improved heavily my not so favorable first impression.

Yes! Play it loud on speakers. It’s designed to fill up a room.

Sauvignon Blanc: what a song

lmao wow Venetian Snares did the drum programming on "Reliquia"

A bit restrained... not too many drums on that one, but nice credit for Mr. Funk

First play was yesterday and haven't been able to listen to anything else since. On my fifth playthrough now, and while the first half is stronger than the second (Relinquia, Divinize, Mio Criso Piange Diamanti, and La Perla are the ones that really wow me), I love the experience of listening to it. The whole thing is incredibly ambitious, a perfect marriage of contemporary and traditional, a remarkable achievement of production and engineering, without sacrificing any attention to the songs themselves. I can't say I've ever heard anything quite like it before.

Sauvignon Blanc, too. Saw that The-Dream is listed as a co-writer on it.

looove "divinize." have listened in full a few times but i feel like i still haven't been able to truly absorb it all. i will say that "berghain" is definitely better in context. the intro on its own feels a bit like a lexus commercial, but its bolt of energy is def welcome in its spot on the tracklist

I'm amazed at how -- for all the press about this being avant-garde -- unchallenging it is (a compliment). Despite the operatic flourishes and layers of orchestral arrangements, these are melodies that jump out and slap you across the face.

"berghain" is reminiscent of "break my soul" to me in that as lead singles you were kinda like "...this?" but they serve a function w/in the structure of the album that places the songs in a much more flattering context

i'm still unsure where i fall w/ this album on the spectrum between "this is impressive/interesting/further cements rosalia as a singular voice in the mainstream" and "i actually want to put this album on and listen to it in full." she is such a good vocalist that i'm not sure i really love when it feels like she's competing with the orchestra for air space, when all that gets pulled back i think i like the album more, tho i understand the tonal/emotional contrast between loud/quiet and maybe that clicks w/ me the more i listen to it

the one where the strings really bother me is "la perla" because rosalia sounds so good over acoustic production and that's obviously yahritza y su esencia's whole thing, so for that song to come out sounding like something from a 1940s disney movie is one instance where i feel like the tail was wagging the dog in terms of production direction

i think my main takeaway is that given the nature of this album + how good the motomami show was i will be paying whatever it costs to see her on this next tour

I had a similar feeling with "La Perla," but, hey, I had that with "It's Oh So Quiet," too.

Yeah I'm also in the "pay what it takes" to see her live again at this stage too. Her show at the SF Regency Ballroom in 2019 in support for El Mal Querer was all time and left my whole group in tears of joy and awe. She's pretty singular on stage. Her shows are special

I know it will read as hyperbolic but I honestly believe this -- the first five tracks especially -- is some of the most exciting, original music I have heard in the last 20+ years. It is the way I felt listening to Homogenic for the first time. Like the pieces were all there to be put together, someone just hadn't figured out what the puzzle was supposed to look like before.

"Reliquia" alone is simply stunning. The strings are straight out of an Owen Pallett song but then there's this weird slightly pitchy electronic (or is it a trumpet?) sound that enters at 0:38 and makes me tune in more closely--"What's she doing here?" A meshing of the traditional and contemporary, as she does repeatedly, effortlessly on this album. The first time she sings "Pero mi corazon," it's just a melody, with no hint of the dramatics to come. Then she shifts to a more electronic section, anchored by that pitchy sound, which sets up a more soaring "Pero mi corazon!" Amazing! Then: a piano/choral break, before the page literally turns and the drum programming goes mad. Three or four completely distinctive movements in an undeniable pop song less than 4 minutes long.

Between the Armand Hammer, Danny Brown, and this, it's been quite the week for dense albums.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DRA3IksiMbJ/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

Rosalia's grandmother was into opera and now likes new album

this album is fantastic, don't get all the stress

All the stress? Pretty much 90% of the comments here and out there are positive

Anyone sitting on the fence, Sir Andrew Lloyd-Webber has called it ‘the album of the year, if not the decade.’

The fandom of the opera

Haven't listened yet but the take from a younger musician friend was that "there's three good songs."

well, that's three more good songs than what your younger musician friend has

Idk, he's quite good actually

Not sure if this is common knowledge but I've discovered Spotify has a helpful lyrics translation function that works on this album (apparently the feature is still in testing with select users/select markets/select albums?).

i don't use spotify so i wouldn't know but that sounds like some sorta AI generated google translate thing that would have a bunch of wrong info and missed cultural context etc but maybe they had real humans in there translating the lyrics academia style, i would highly highly doubt that but maybe we'll be surprised

Yeah I'm sure it's imperfect and AI-generated. Is there a good resource beyond Genius that people have found for unpacking and understanding the complexity (lyrical, compositional) of this album? I love how Divinize's 5/4 time signature gives it a racing feeling and wouldn't be surprised if these types of musical decisions are intentional/relate to the story she's telling.

Come over for drinks and I can translate them lyrics for you.

Translations are on Genius.

it looks like they put english subtitles on the screen for her fallon performance of "la perla" so i guess you can trust those

spanish online translation generally pretty reliable ime

Just checked three different songs on spotify and the translation is accurate imho.

Surprised she doesn't translate her own lyrics (maybe she does in the CD booklet) - her English is excellent.

the translated lyrics on Fallon were...not great, though I'm sure plenty is lost in translation. maybe I'm better off just not knowing what she's saying most of the time. then again, I finally broke down and read the translations for the newest Bad Bunny and they were pretty powerful.