Initially, Lux could seem more like a difficult scholarly challenge rather than a new popular music album from a musician who just had a last hit was a collaboration with a global K-pop icon. Split across four distinct movements and voiced in 13 languages, we have a breathtaking classical-tinged opus that delves into female mystique, spiritual transcendence, and bodily transformation, often through the prism of different women saints. The end of a romance—a theme treated with grounded honesty on another major 2025 album—soars upwards here, buoyed by the lush sound of a major symphony orchestra and work from an award-winning songwriter within an extensive list of collaborators. Its sheer ambition by itself makes the work of other pop stars seem quite modest.
Transcending Academic Exercise
The fact that this album succeeds in avoid dry academic chin-stroking is nothing short of miraculous, and sole praise belonging to Rosalía. Although it's not the first time project to blend the past and the present, the ambitions feel much greater on Lux, and the tightrope walk more dramatic. What truly elevates her fourth release, beyond its complex melodies, rich compositions, and engrained drama, proves to be a core spirit of playfulness. Similar to the iconic Björk at her height, you find a wondrous sense to Rosalía's voice which sweeps the listener into its tornado. Even when she is breaking hearts in two, you nevertheless desire to stay right there through the journey.
A Signature Moment of Joy
This playful energy comes forth brightly during a stunning piano-led ballad inspired by a saint. It bathes in a sorrowful melancholy for several moments. Suddenly, everything drops away, to reveal there's a spontaneous laugh and a comment before a hilariously exaggerated string surge thuds down with cartoonish impact. The song immediately shifts into the frenetic single featuring racing orchestration, a powerful choir, and a surprise appearance from none other than herself.
"The magic with this album is that you never quite understand—nor want to know—what it is going next."
Almost each track concludes in a completely different place than how it began. A track explores the fleeting nature of fame with a featherlight symphony before disintegrating in digital chaos. Another, a cut echoing her earlier trap-infused style starts out dark and brooding, featuring menacing beats, before sudden traditional rhythms and a heavenly chorus arrive to smooth its rough corners.
The Balance Between Art & Accessibility
Another crucial achievement on Lux is navigating the gap of radical experimentation and broad appeal. This is no surprise that the album has become her highest-charting work to crack the upper reaches of key charts: at its core a suite of utterly undeniable hits. A song sung entirely in English swells around a refrain that seems to collect more and more infectious melodies while it spins upward. This feat is echoed on a different powerful ballad that expands and contracts, intertwining multiple melodies like a complex tapestry.
- A dance-infused number charms via its playful, Disney-adjacent flair and a chant-along chorus.
- In its words, it shares the cultural honesty of other heartbreak songs, lambasting a former lover labeled an "emotional bully".
- Across the album, the singing have a painted-on smile, akin to a storybook figure hiding a blade: "Gold medal in being a scoundrel / You have the podium of disappointment."
A Maximalist Banquet for the Soul
Lux is popular music on a grand scale, a hungry grasp for high artistry in an era of looming AI-generated sameness. It eschews self-absorption for glorious elevation, crafting an over-the-top drama that masterfully controls its inherent ridiculousness. It is an abundant well of hidden gems that takes time to fully mine but doesn't seem like hard work. Where other major releases of the year felt like feasting on scraps, this record is a sumptuous feast at which the guests around the table, some intoxicated on holy drink, flit from conversations about ancient figures, the galvanizing feeling of heartbreaking sadness, and shared gossip about useless men. It is a modern-day musical from music's most endlessly inventive visionary.
