"don't culturally appropriate reggaeton!!" has to be one of the funnier takes available
― rob, Wednesday, 7 December 2022 20:20 (one year ago) link
I found her interviews fascinating, as I find interviews with other really intelligent artists with a real grasp on what they're doing and why. I don't enjoy listening to the album, because the music just isn't for me (and I say the same about Kendrick Lamar and Beyoncé) but the work is undeniable.
― but also fuck you (unperson), Wednesday, 7 December 2022 20:40 (one year ago) link
I'm listening to the bonus tracks, nothing very remarkable but fun and shows the wider sonic palette she was using. One thing I like is how close many songs stay to a song hummed to oneself, and the real distance between her and the background (is there a name for this ?). I like the punched percussion on two songs that sounds like a typewriter. If you close your eyes and have some fantasy, Chiri sounds a little like a Spanish version of Björk's Medulla.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gONN93t5aPgRosalía - Chiri
― Nabozo, Thursday, 8 December 2022 13:04 (one year ago) link
Re:her artistic process. It's crazy how anytime I relisten to a song from this album, I like it more. And it's like she made the album that way.
― Nabozo, Thursday, 8 December 2022 13:22 (one year ago) link
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/rosalia-motomami-hentai-cultural-influences-1234642989/
Interesting interview with her. She explains how much research and thought goes into her work and gives credit to many others. The article’s author addresses the discussion of a white artist from Spain having success in the Black created genres of bachata and reggaeton ; and sees her performing in Puerto Rico
― curmudgeon, Wednesday, 14 December 2022 01:16 (one year ago) link
Re:her artistic process. It's crazy how anytime I relisten to a song from this album, I like it more. And it's like she made the album that way.― Nabozo, Thursday, 8 December 2022 13:22 (one month ago) link
― maf you one two (maffew12), Wednesday, 11 January 2023 04:57 (one year ago) link
“LLYLM” is really fucking good
― Murgatroid, Friday, 27 January 2023 05:21 (one year ago) link
it is. i like it a lot more than “despechá” personally
― J0rdan S., Friday, 27 January 2023 07:19 (one year ago) link
I hope that's not her new direction, those hooks sound too much like generic upbeat pop to me.
― Nabozo, Friday, 27 January 2023 10:17 (one year ago) link
Even if the hook is a bit more “generic” than usual from her, the verses are anything but imo
Either way, I know better than to worry about her direction after the post-El Mal Querer singles, some of which were not great, and Motomami, which I’m sure I wasn’t the one whose doubts were assuaged
― Murgatroid, Friday, 27 January 2023 12:13 (one year ago) link
Definitely, she's a chameleon and singles are absolutely for trying things out and I don't doubt her.Con Altura, Aute Cuture, Yo x Ti, A palé, and Juro que were fantastic and a favorite period of hers. Maybe what I'm missing here is the radical production choices.
― Nabozo, Friday, 27 January 2023 12:39 (one year ago) link
It sounds a little tame
Yeah chorus sounds a bit… amateur?
― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Friday, 27 January 2023 15:15 (one year ago) link
Not sure if it’s hearing her sing in english and how generic it sounds. Verses are good.
― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Friday, 27 January 2023 15:16 (one year ago) link
yes, for some reason I felt inclined to play Ellie Goulding’s “Love Me Like You Do” and Rita Ora’s “Let You Love Me” this morning. LYLM is a banger - LMLYD less so. as for LLYLM, it does feel like a conscious attempt at a (US) (radio) crossover hit.
― the shaker intro bit the shaker outro in the tail, hard (breastcrawl), Friday, 27 January 2023 15:29 (one year ago) link
...and it's far far inferior to, say, "Aute Cuture"
(but I guess I'm just not a Rosalía fan at this point)
― Vexatious litigant (morrisp), Friday, 27 January 2023 15:49 (one year ago) link
i only heard her first album. unimpressed by that "neo" flamenco sound
― CerebralCaustic, Friday, 27 January 2023 16:19 (one year ago) link
Motomami has many good ideas and it’s hardly neo-flamenco - it’s more like a melancholic, experimental mix of neoperreo, deconstructed club and art pop.
― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Friday, 27 January 2023 16:46 (one year ago) link
the new single probably has more ‘neo-flamenco’ than all of Motomami combined
― the shaker intro bit the shaker outro in the tail, hard (breastcrawl), Friday, 27 January 2023 16:59 (one year ago) link
i'm with the majority here, this is weak and not very good. gonna have to put up with these kinda songs as a fan tho, she's making occasional arena tracks to satisfy a bigger audience.
― POLIZISTEN VERSINKEN IM SCHLAMM (forksclovetofu), Friday, 27 January 2023 19:17 (one year ago) link
i think i disagree w/ just about every point made itt about this song. in particular i think the chorus is great pop lyricism, the way she plays around w/ the idea of reality & what kinda relationship one might want w/ another person -- "cover me in a dream / i'll be yours or fantasy". i mean, "who needs the honesty? / baby, lie like you love me, lie like you love me / maybe at the end it becomes real enough for me" packs the kind of direct emotional punch i look for in good pop writing. i think it's a novel way of expressing emotions typical to a pop song & to me that isn't "generic" ... unless you want to call pop music in general "generic," which is a POV one can have just not one that i share personally. i really don't find this song to be much different than i.e. "hentai" in terms of the lyrical approach... it's just wedded to the structure of a pop song instead of an experimental ballad. and even then i think you can very easily find the throughline in the song back to the music she has been making from the beginning. i feel like we're returning to the same convo we had about the "con altura" era... ppl seem quite eager to jump on her for not always being purely idiosyncratic w/o acknowledging that her more "mainstream" songs typically have a sonic POV that still feels like her own
also i'd push back on the notion that this song is some sort of cynical play for a "bigger audience" or that she thinks about "satisfying" american fans. she just had her biggest US chart hit w/ “despechá” which is also straightforward compared to motomami but is sung entirely in spanish. the idea that artists need to crossover now is basically completely antiquated. shakira has a top 10 hit on the hot 100 w/ an argentinan youtuber. rosaliá was accused of this same thing in the "con altura" era... that she was making a cynical ploy to expand her audience in latin america and her response was "me & my friends love reggaeton so i decided i wanted to make some reggaeton" which is a completely legitimate explanation & i'm sure would be similar to her justification for making a version of a westernized pop song. ppl seem to want her to stay in one place & she's proven remarkably good at not doing that
― J0rdan S., Monday, 30 January 2023 22:08 (one year ago) link
great post
― Indexed, Monday, 30 January 2023 22:10 (one year ago) link
i think it's a novel way of expressing emotions typical to a pop song & to me that isn't "generic" ... unless you want to call pop music in general "generic," which is a POV one can have just not one that i share personally.
It's possible find the chorus melody generic (as I do), and the chorus lyrics nothing special, without calling pop music in general generic...
― degenerative AI (morrisp), Monday, 30 January 2023 22:16 (one year ago) link
the idea of a “generic” melody is a slippery one to me but yeah i mean everything comes down to taste at the end of the day, which, you know, hey
― J0rdan S., Monday, 30 January 2023 22:22 (one year ago) link
Like if this were track 5 on, say, a random Selena Gomez CD, I'd skip it every time. It's an unremarkable song to me, guess I'm not hearing what I should.
What really gets me about Rosalía is that she has an amazing voice (as I recently reconfirmed by revisiting El Mal Querer), but she chooses not to "use it" now... she sings in this pinched tone... idk
― degenerative AI (morrisp), Monday, 30 January 2023 22:37 (one year ago) link
it's funny the song "LLYLM" made me think of in terms of production was selena "bad liar" at least in terms of the bulk structure under the verses. but rosalia is an infinitely better artist than her in every facet and my feelings about those two songs are reflected in that
― J0rdan S., Monday, 30 January 2023 23:27 (one year ago) link
― degenerative AI (morrisp), Monday, January 30, 2023 5:37 PM (forty-nine minutes ago)
i feel this... i have a huge gripe w/ "la fama" bcuz she sings it w/ this really flat affect on record & then when you see her do it live there's so much more emotion in her vocals & it changes everything about the song for me. the official version of her performance on "SNL" has been taken off youtube for some reason but there's still bootlegs on there that spell this out. otoh i think the parts on motomami where she really lets her voice go really standout for reasons of scarcity but i get where you're coming from
― J0rdan S., Monday, 30 January 2023 23:31 (one year ago) link
i hope she goes more in this direction, i would personally very much welcome a rosalia club anthem.
― ꙮ (map), Tuesday, 31 January 2023 02:24 (one year ago) link
At least I don’t hate it like I hate Chicken Teriyaki. This is alright… not a winner for me but certainly not bad. She can do way better.
― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Tuesday, 31 January 2023 06:02 (one year ago) link
It’s growing on me though… wouldn’t be surprised if I end up with regret for underrating it on first listens. Already happened to me with Motomami.
― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Tuesday, 31 January 2023 06:05 (one year ago) link
aiming for a bigger audience is hardly cynical; it's just good business. you want to play arenas and reach a worldwide crowd, people gotta sing along to your choruses.
― POLIZISTEN VERSINKEN IM SCHLAMM (forksclovetofu), Tuesday, 31 January 2023 07:06 (one year ago) link
A week more of listening sees me coming around on this song as a casually enjoyable pop track, if not anywhere near the many heights of motomami
― POLIZISTEN VERSINKEN IM SCHLAMM (forksclovetofu), Tuesday, 7 February 2023 22:36 (one year ago) link
Aka moka was right
drinking her "transformation"-flavoured Coke and I do not taste transformation of any sort
― Murgatroid, Monday, 6 March 2023 19:27 (one year ago) link
her EP with Rauw Alejandro is out today
― Murgatroid, Friday, 24 March 2023 18:52 (one year ago) link
like it a lot, tho she completely overpowers him vocally
― deadmauZedong (voodoo chili), Friday, 24 March 2023 20:24 (one year ago) link
also, they are apparently engaged!
the Beso video makes that pretty clear!
― rob, Friday, 24 March 2023 23:11 (one year ago) link
they have been an item for some time now and have shown admirable restraint by keeping away from each other’s recent albums
― at bottom, wrapping my arms around some tripe called "Quest" (breastcrawl), Friday, 24 March 2023 23:14 (one year ago) link
I have the impression Rosalía's has used her higher soprano range more and more in the last years and it's now one of my favorite aspects of her performance, the way she lets her voice thin to flute-like sounds, and the contrasts she finds with piano etc. For example the first 40 seconds of Beso = wow.
Song is good enough to post I think
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXQQAsIhHMwRosalia - Beso
― Nabozo, Sunday, 26 March 2023 11:20 (one year ago) link
It's a very good chorus
― Nabozo, Sunday, 26 March 2023 11:23 (one year ago) link
Ok I've listened to this all day. This song radiates happiness.
― Nabozo, Sunday, 26 March 2023 14:30 (one year ago) link
New single/video. It's pretty good. I need to listen to it again without the video to see if it holds up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F84pjEryeC0
― but also fuck you (unperson), Thursday, 8 June 2023 23:11 (eleven months ago) link
I listened to it without the video, can confirm. Good lil tune.
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Friday, 9 June 2023 00:32 (eleven months ago) link
Hard to watch that video favorably, in light of how cool & creative her videos was were.
― Day 1 fan (morrisp), Friday, 16 June 2023 03:32 (eleven months ago) link
The new song (a collaboration with Björk as a legal benefit for some Icelandic villagers who are suing fisheries for environmental damage) is pretty good:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jsi2Tgvx6A
Backstory:
Björk and Rosalía have joined forces to release a powerful new single “Oral.” Produced by the artists alongside Sega Bodega, “Oral” marks the first collaboration between Björk and Rosalía. It aims to shed light on the alarming cruelty, and severe environmental and ecological consequences of open-pen ocean salmon farming in Björk’s native country, Iceland.“Oral” dates back two decades - first written by Björk between 1997’s Homogenic and 2001’s Vespertine, the track was lost to her archives after feeling like it wasn’t the right fit for an album. Björk rediscovered the song after being reminded of its name while on tour in Australia in March 2023, the same month a report was released about the devastating impact of poorly regulated, Norwegian-owned commercial salmon farming operations on Iceland’s native ecosystems.After deeply resonating with the cause, and as a passionate campaigner and protester for much of her life, Björk enlisted Rosalía to help bring the song to life and in turn raise awareness of the issue. The cruel practice of open-pen farming, introduced to Iceland after Norwegian businessmen began purchasing fish farms in the country’s fjords, involves intensively farming fish by penning them into open water nets that are anchored in natural waterways, where the fish are kept enclosed until they reach marketable size. This accelerates the fish’s development and, in many cases creates genetic mutations in the salmon’s DNA, as well as being a breeding ground for a number of parasites and diseases. The industry in Iceland has grown tenfold since 2014, producing under 4,000 tones to 45,000 in 2021, with it now estimated that the annual production could be up to 106,500 tonnes. Iceland has the largest untouched natural area in Europe, and the waste and pollution associated with open-pen farming threatens to permanently damage its entire ocean ecology. Lack of regulation and the industry being largely unsupervised has also meant that thousands of these genetically altered, diseased salmon regularly escape the pens and swim upriver to Iceland’s highlands, where devastating genetic mixing occurs and endangers the future of Iceland’s wild salmon population.Proceeds from “Oral” will be used to support a legal case against the fisheries, brought forth by residents of the town of Seyðisfjörður on the eastern side of Iceland.
“Oral” dates back two decades - first written by Björk between 1997’s Homogenic and 2001’s Vespertine, the track was lost to her archives after feeling like it wasn’t the right fit for an album. Björk rediscovered the song after being reminded of its name while on tour in Australia in March 2023, the same month a report was released about the devastating impact of poorly regulated, Norwegian-owned commercial salmon farming operations on Iceland’s native ecosystems.
After deeply resonating with the cause, and as a passionate campaigner and protester for much of her life, Björk enlisted Rosalía to help bring the song to life and in turn raise awareness of the issue. The cruel practice of open-pen farming, introduced to Iceland after Norwegian businessmen began purchasing fish farms in the country’s fjords, involves intensively farming fish by penning them into open water nets that are anchored in natural waterways, where the fish are kept enclosed until they reach marketable size. This accelerates the fish’s development and, in many cases creates genetic mutations in the salmon’s DNA, as well as being a breeding ground for a number of parasites and diseases. The industry in Iceland has grown tenfold since 2014, producing under 4,000 tones to 45,000 in 2021, with it now estimated that the annual production could be up to 106,500 tonnes. Iceland has the largest untouched natural area in Europe, and the waste and pollution associated with open-pen farming threatens to permanently damage its entire ocean ecology. Lack of regulation and the industry being largely unsupervised has also meant that thousands of these genetically altered, diseased salmon regularly escape the pens and swim upriver to Iceland’s highlands, where devastating genetic mixing occurs and endangers the future of Iceland’s wild salmon population.
Proceeds from “Oral” will be used to support a legal case against the fisheries, brought forth by residents of the town of Seyðisfjörður on the eastern side of Iceland.
― Tahuti Watches L&O:SVU Reruns Without His Ape (unperson), Tuesday, 21 November 2023 16:56 (six months ago) link
More comments about the song on the Bjork 2017 album thread
― curmudgeon, Tuesday, 21 November 2023 20:19 (six months ago) link