On paper, Lux reads more like a particularly tricky bonus round on University Challenge than the new album by a pop artist whose previous single was a collaboration with Lisa from Blackpink. Split into four distinct movements and sung in 13 languages, Lux is a head-spinning, classical music-adjacent opus exploring feminine mystique, religious transcendence and corporal transformation, often via the prism of various female saints. The dissolution of a relationship – grounded and laid bare on Lily Allen’s West End Girl, 2025’s other dissection of heartbreak – is shot heavenwards here, buffeted by the constant presence of the London Symphony Orchestra and the input of Pulitzer prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw among a scroll-sized list of collaborators. Its audacity alone makes the efforts of Rosalía’s pop peers look pretty laughable.
The fact that Lux manages to transcend scholarly chin-stroking and dry Wiki deep dives is near miraculous, and the credit is solely Rosalía’s. While this isn’t her first album to alchemise the past and present – see 2018’s El Mal Querer and its heady flamenco-R&B hybrid – the stakes are far higher on Lux, and the balancing act more pronounced. What elevates her fourth album, outside its multilayered melodies, rich compositions and engrained drama, is the playfulness at its heart. Like Björk during her 90s peak, there’s a sense of wonderment to Rosalía’s voice that sweeps you up into its tornado. Even when she’s tearing your heart in two, as on La Yugular’s blossoming balladry, or the ascension to heaven on the closing Magnolias, you want to be right there with her.
The best example of this exuberance comes towards the end of Italian piano ballad Mio Cristo Piange Diamanti. Inspired by Saint Clare of Assisi, it luxuriates in its string-drenched whirlpool of sadness for more than four minutes. Suddenly, however, everything falls away and we hear Rosalía giggle “that’s gonna be the energy” before a comically OTT string crescendo thuds like a cartoon anvil. The song then segues quickly into batshit single Berghain, which gallops over the horizon on a gale of Vivaldi-esque strings, an imposing German choir and a cameo from Björk playing agony aunt.
That you never quite know – or want to know – where you are with Lux is part of a charm that burrows deeper the more you listen. Nearly every song ends somewhere completely different to where it started. Reliquia explores the trappings and transience of fame over a featherlight symphony before disintegrating entirely into an electronic cacophony. On Porcelana, which tracks closest to 2022’s sweaty Motomami and its trap-adjacent pop collage, things starts off moody, Rosalía prowling around sinister drum fills and chopped-up male vocals, before fluttering flamenco handclaps are joined by an angelic choir to smooth out the song’s jagged edges.
Another of Lux’s balancing acts is one between experimentation and accessibility. It’s no coincidence that Lux has become Rosalía’s first album to break the Top 5 in both the UK and the US: at its heart is a suite of undeniable pop songs. Divinize, the only song featuring Rosalía singing in English, is built around a chorus that feels as if it’s collecting more and more nagging hooks as it spins skywards. It’s a feat repeated by La Yugular, which expands and constricts as it weaves together layered melodies like a tapestry. The waltz-like La Perla seduces with its jaunty, Disney-adjacent musical drama and chant-along chorus, while lyrically it aligns itself with the pop culture-shifting honesty of West End Girl as it eviscerates (in Spanish) an “emotional terrorist” of an ex whose only “masterpiece is his bra collection”. Throughout, Rosalía sings with a painted-on smile, like Cinderella hiding a knife: “Gold medal in being a motherfucker / You’ve got the podium of disappointment.”
Lux is pop on a maximalist scale, a hungry reach for capital-A Art in the face of impending AI blankness. It eschews solipsism in favour of glorious transcendence, creating an OTT drama that controls the parameters of its own ridiculousness. It’s a deep well of hidden treasure that takes time to fully mine but never feels like hard work. While some of 2025’s big pop albums felt like feasting on scraps, Lux is a banquet where the characters around the table, some tipsy on holy wine, flit from conversations about historical saints to the galvanising feeling of soul-shattering sadness, to shared gossip about useless men. It’s a modern-day musical from pop’s most restlessly creative practitioner.
