Rosalía (Post-Flamenco Art-Pop From Spain)

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

new collab with J Balvin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7bfOZek9t4

I definitely prefer "Brillo," their collab from the J Balvin album, but it's always fascinating to hear Rosalia in the context of club music.

Grabbed a ticket for her SF show. Sold out in in less than a few hours last week.

Just a short North America tour this time-- West Coast plus NYC and 1 Canada show

Need to listen to "Brillo" again, think I recall liking it. x-post

I don't think there's anything "fascinating" about it. Rosalía's own music is fascinating. This is generic bullshit - literally any female voice could have been punched into that track. Ugh.

(I hate J Balvin's music in general, though.)

Yeah, same reaction here.

anyway, here she performs Con Altura live (along with "El Presiento)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6e9lCXT1xLs

she's a huge pop star--she's gonna do pop tracks. obviously her own stuff is gonna be more interesting than her collabs, but i do think she adds some stuff that generic singer x would not, like how she subtly subverts the synth melody in the pre-chorus.

ugh i mentioned this upthread but i am very very thirsty for "el presiento", "aute couture / esto esto enciendo", "santeria" and all these other unreleased songs she's teased live

the new song is fun, not her best ever obviously but if it turns out to be a hit i'm all for it

well, my thirst ^ is about to be partially quenched... "aute cuture" is out tomorrow

estáis ready????? AUTE CUTURE 💅🏼💅🏼💅🏼💅🏼💅🏼💅🏼💅🏼💅🏼💅🏼💅🏼💅🏼💅🏼💅🏼💅🏼 30/5 pic.twitter.com/jFEKzdR4Cl

— R O S A L Í A (@rosaliavt) May 28, 2019

Estoy ready!

Meanwhile, she’s also done a song for the Game of Thrones album:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2OxVKUf8a4

Rosalía ft. A.Chal • Me Traicionaste

“LLYLM” is really fucking good

it is. i like it a lot more than “despechá” personally

I hope that's not her new direction, those hooks sound too much like generic upbeat pop to me.

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

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.

It sounds a little tame

Yeah chorus sounds a bit… amateur?

Not sure if it’s hearing her sing in english and how generic it sounds. Verses are good.

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.

...and it's far far inferior to, say, "Aute Cuture"

(but I guess I'm just not a Rosalía fan at this point)

i only heard her first album. unimpressed by that "neo" flamenco sound

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.

the new single probably has more ‘neo-flamenco’ than all of Motomami combined

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.

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

great post

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...

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

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

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

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, 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

i hope she goes more in this direction, i would personally very much welcome a rosalia club anthem.

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.

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.

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.

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

Aka moka was right

drinking her "transformation"-flavoured Coke and I do not taste transformation of any sort

her EP with Rauw Alejandro is out today

like it a lot, tho she completely overpowers him vocally

also, they are apparently engaged!

the Beso video makes that pretty clear!

they have been an item for some time now and have shown admirable restraint by keeping away from each other’s recent albums

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=QXQQAsIhHMw
Rosalia - Beso

It's a very good chorus

Ok I've listened to this all day. This song radiates happiness.

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

I listened to it without the video, can confirm. Good lil tune.

Hard to watch that video favorably, in light of how cool & creative her videos was were.

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.

More comments about the song on the Bjork 2017 album thread