At first glance, this album might appear closer to a challenging scholarly challenge than a new popular music record from a musician who just had a previous hit was a collaboration with an international pop star. Divided across four different sections and sung in thirteen languages, it is a dizzying classical-tinged album exploring female mystique, spiritual ascent, and physical transformation, often through the prism of various saintly figures. The end of a romance—a theme treated with raw honesty on another major 2025 album—soars heavenward here, buoyed by the lush sound of a major orchestra and work from an award-winning composer within a long list of contributors. Its sheer ambition by itself renders the efforts of contemporary pop stars seem rather small.
Transcending Academic Exercise
That Lux manages to escape overly academic chin-stroking is almost a miracle, with full credit going to Rosalía. While it's not her first album to fuse historical sounds with the present, its stakes are far higher on Lux, with the balancing act more precarious. The element that really raises this fourth album, outside of its multilayered tunes, rich compositions, and inherent theatricality, proves to be a core sense of fun. Similar to the legendary artist during her peak, there is a wondrous quality to the vocalist's voice that pulls the listener into its whirlwind. When she's tearing hearts in two, you nevertheless want to stay alongside her for the journey.
A Signature Example of Joy
This playful spirit shines clearly during the stunning piano-led song inspired by Saint Clare. It bathes in a string-drenched melancholy over more than four minutes. Suddenly, everything falls silent, and there's a spontaneous giggle and a declaration prior to a comically exaggerated orchestral crescendo thuds down with comedic force. The song then segues to the frenetic track featuring galloping orchestration, an imposing choral group, and a cameo appearance from none other than herself.
"The magic of Lux lies in the listener never quite understand—nor want to know—what you will go to next."
Almost every song ends in a totally different place than how it started. One moment examines the transient trappings of celebrity over a featherlight orchestration before disintegrating in electronic cacophony. Elsewhere, a cut echoing her previous rhythmic work starts off dark and brooding, with prowling beats, until fluttering flamenco rhythms and a heavenly choir enter to soften the song's rough corners.
The Balance Between Experiment & Accessibility
A key achievement on Lux is straddling the line of bold experimentation and broad accessibility. This is little coincidence that the album has become the artist's highest-charting work to crack the upper reaches of major charts: its heart contains a suite of utterly undeniable pop songs. One track sung primarily in the English language swells on a refrain that feels to collect more and more infectious melodies as it spirals skyward. That trick is echoed by another powerful ballad that expands and contracts, intertwining multiple tunes like an intricate tapestry.
- A dance-infused song seduces with its playful, Disney-adjacent flair and an anthemic chorus.
- In its words, it aligns with pop culture honesty of contemporary breakup anthems, eviscerating an ex- lover described as an "emotional terrorist".
- Across these tracks, the singing have a painted-on edge, akin to a storybook figure hiding a blade: "Top prize in being a scoundrel / You've the podium of letdown."
A Maximalist Banquet for the Soul
This album represents popular music on a maximalist scale, a hungry reach for capital-A Art in an era of looming artificial blankness. It rejects self-absorption in favor of sublime transcendence, crafting a dramatic spectacle that skillfully manages its own inherent ridiculousness. It is a deep well of buried treasure that takes patience to fully mine but never seem like hard work. Where some big pop albums of the year seemed like a meager scraps, Lux is a lavish feast at which the characters around the table, some intoxicated on holy wine, flit between conversations about ancient saints, the profound feeling of soul-shattering grief, and shared stories about useless partners. It is a modern-day theatrical production from pop's truly restlessly inventive visionary.
