Rosalía (Post-Flamenco Art-Pop From Spain)

she also did a duet with bad bunny on his last album (they performed it on snl)

That's what I meant by "remember", I meant return the favor.

she’s still in the audience-expanding phase of her career. I’m when she works with the weeknd, she’s not the one doing the favor

*superfluous “i'm”

does Hentai mean something else here or

Las personas q os está molestando la letra de Hentai estáis bien??

— R O S A L Í A (@rosalia) January 16, 2022

Looks like it's a track on the upcoming album.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFJ4RHibjVw

Rosalia, have you considered naming it.... something else

that’s gonna be a jump the shark from me, dawg

It's totally different from where she is now, but I'm surprised her cover of "I See A Darkness" isn't better known:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg7GJghu4Zo

that’s gonna be a jump the shark from me, dawg
― Rockin’, and rollin’, and whatnot (morrisp), Monday, January 17, 2022 3:38 AM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Or a ride the chairlift

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6o7bCAZSxsg

took me a few listens to digest this one but i like it a lot

Yeah, I like this new song better than any of the other singles she's put out.

The instrumental slays, I'm not sure of her vocals yet. Nicely shot too.

too short and maybe slightly undercooked but wow what a sound!

this is the most compelling she's been in a while, i wish it was longer

"slightly undercooked" is right though

iirc it's the intro to the album, could explain the brevity.

yeah. odd one to shoot a video for but it feels more like a teaser of sorts in the context of the pre release strategy

rest of the album won't have songs that are that much longer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motomami

she’s flowing on this one lol, all the reggaeton collabs have rubbed off

She’s dating Rauw Alejandro now , who says, of course, her new album is great in his Rolling Stone cover story. No collaborations between the 2 of them on the album though

really not feeling this (but I guess it's not my kind of thing):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OG4gq9fCoRE

Yeah that one is not great and seems like it was just tailored for tiktok.

I stopped that 2:13 song after 1:31, not a good sign.
I get this strange feeling that she thinks the music is crazy and fun, when it's kinda boring and basic. All the weird affectations and vapid childishness don't really square with the image I had of her. It makes me realize El mal querer had all this darkness to it.

genuinely terrible, and listening to Saoko after hearing CT made me like Saoko less :/

Still crossing my fingers there's something that redeems her next album, these two singles so far have been pretty bad. I know some people vibed with 'Saoko', but she wouldn't have been as big as she is by releasing generic stuff like that. We're just listening because it's Rosalía at this point.

i thought she was great on SNL, "la fama" in particular felt completely reborn to me. it shed all the overblown pomp & circumstance of being a duet w/ the weekend, whose vocals render the song perfunctory, and put her back in what i feel like was her original context, singing over a sparse, traditional production, just in this case it's bachata instead of flamenco. the amount of emotion in her vocals compared to the released version is striking, listening back to the original the dullness is even more apparent

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnItVv1EsXw

"hentai" is a bit FKA twigs-y for me i think... i was hoping the beat drop would bring in some tempo & though the percussion does sound cool it all feels a bit inert & unfinished to me. reading the translation of the lyrics is cool tho lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6YCNd3ONUU

Her videos used to be so cool & creative, wtf

It's hard to imagine a less appealing (to me) creative direction she could have taken than the direction she has taken

x-post - I thought that the second song she did on SNL "La Fama" (with its bachata backing) , as Jordan S noted sounded great live. Was underwhelmed by first song though.

It's hard to imagine a less appealing (to me) creative direction she could have taken than the direction she has taken

This x 1000

I can't believe how unexcited I am for this record based on how much the last one blew me away.

this album is...probably better than I was expecting though that's not exactly a high bar to clear. There's an "Archangel" interpolation on the second track which works well

wouldn’t be surprising at all if it sounds better front to back than the singles do as pieces

not sure quite how to articulate this properly yet but it seems to have a similarly collage-y nature to Happier Than Ever. I guess I'm just still not convinced by her as a reggaeton artist

it's a weird album that's not a big pop move like one might have expected she'd eventually come out with after her 2019 run of singles, but it's not as good as happier than ever either in terms of slightly-left-of-centre pop albums

nothing as compelling as the best stuff from el mal querer or even those 2019 singles unfortunately

I've listened to about half of it (several tracks are grayed out on Tidal, for some reason) and it's pretty good. The singles, which I hated as standalones, work better in context.

One thing that's made me laugh pretty hard this morning: I guess a memo went around among pop critics that the new way to signify one's savviness and superiority to the reader is to quote her lyrics without translating them.

this works surprisingly well as a complete work
definitely lacks the intensity and extraordinariness of El Mal Querer
but on the other hand i was surprised that it's as quiet and melancholy as it is (resembles Los Angeles in that way) - not the dull pop cash-in that La Fama seemed to portent

i really love the off-kilter production quirks like the (so quiet!!!) piano on "Saoko" or the drums on "Hentai" - signals an art/experimental affiliation that i appreciate

It's definitely odder than I expected, which is a good thing, though I'm also finding it elusive in its disjointedness, lack of intensity is otm

The lack of translation in the pfork review annoyed me; fwiw the NPR review is an exception: https://www.npr.org/2022/03/18/1087060987/rosalias-motomami-is-a-complex-treatise-on-fame-and-her-place-in-latin-pop

she "presented" the album "live" on tiktok last night, with snippets and themed visuals for each song. for those interested: link

I'm still learning how to listen to her if I (still) have trouble finishing her albums.

I do laugh at "BIZCOCHITO," a bit of slang I've heard all my life locally.

Half-way impression: what I imagine Kanye West to sound like when people complain that he does half-finished products. This is mildly annoying, no cohesive sound, ideas scattered, bad choices, and I only wish it was pure reggaeton. Pretty big fall.

La Combi Versace is possibly what I wanted from this album

Whats the interpolation on “candy”? It’s killing me that it’s on the tip of my tongue but the different language is throwing me off.

Oh yes it’s Burial duh

This is actually not as bad as I thought it would be based on “chicken teriyaki”.

I’m actually surprised I’m liking a great deal of it on first listen.

Xpost: don’t agree that it’s a pretty big fall, but otm that more songs like “combi versace” would have been very welcomed.

“Candy” though

I know a big part of why I’m loving that one is the Burial connection but it’s a brilliant reinterpretation imho

great album

it's definitely not 'el mal querer' but that album also feels like such a lightning strike that i'm not sure she could make another album that sounds like it that would actually be better. best just to move on & expand the sound. just generally in terms of artists who are making fringe mainstream experimental pop i think her music is so much more rewarding and fresh than idk fka twigs, charli xcx, arca etc i'm sure there's some other artists i'm forgetting