Rosalía (Post-Flamenco Art-Pop From Spain)

her show that she's doing on tour right now is incredible. 90 mins straight thru, mostly motomami songs w/ some others peppered in & a really chic but fun set design. i'm hard pressed to think of many current artists who provide the same combination of experimentalism w/in the context of pop, pure raw vocal & performance talent, and modernist visual/aesthetic sense.

seeing her this Friday, v excited

j0rd otm

She's in DC tonight & alas I have a conflict and can't attend.

you should de-conflict because that show was one of the best large-scale shows i've been to in recent memory

Still bummed I had to miss it. Have checked out some video clips on IG that show her impressive choreography, vocals, music, etc

David Byrne email--

A few days ago I went to Rosalia’s concert at Radio City and was knocked out! I had seen her before at Webster Hall some years ago, along with Caetano Veloso. She’s not strictly Afro Caribe, like most of these tracks, but she sort of fits right in. Her roots are Flamenco (she’s from Spain), but she’s evolved and broadened her scope and now she kind of does it all but still pulls out the duende stuff as a soulful reminder. Her show had very innovative staging consisting of 8 dancers and a video cameraperson on stage. They mostly perform on a giant seamless which acts as a stage for the video screens. Making the video become part of the show. She seemed to be wearing no makeup- other than a little lipstick. Possibly because with all the sweating it might have become a mess? Her presence was very sincere and heartfelt - unusual for a pop show like this.

late pass but i was lured in by the promise of el guincho and it paid off. this album is dense and catchy and diverse and clever and fucking great. wasn't expecting a straight up experimental work but wow!

welcome, forks

i like the album too, do i get a welcome

i liked el mal querer a lot but then cooled as she became a megastar. didn't know she was working toward something as complex and fully baked as this; it's executing on the same level of difficulty as lamar and beyonce.
plus: Vistoso Bosses!

i agree w/ your assessment, her pivoting away from superstar collaborations (lead single aside) for an experimental and deeply idiosyncratic album is prob the most pleasant surprise in music this year for me. you should check out her interviews in NYT & pfork where she talks about her creative process

will look

I have seen a few Spanish language memes in Instagram stories critical of Spain raised Rosalia getting more attention for incorporating reggaeton and Bachata and other Latin American styles than artists who have long been using those styles from Latin America/Caribbean /Iberian locales , but those grumblers seem to be more the exception

"don't culturally appropriate reggaeton!!" has to be one of the funnier takes available

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.

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=gONN93t5aPg
Rosalía - Chiri

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.

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

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

“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