On the surface, this album may look more like an arduous scholarly challenge rather than the latest pop project by a musician whose last hit was a collaboration with an international pop icon. Divided across four different parts and voiced in thirteen tongues, we have a head-spinning symphonic opus exploring female mystique, religious ascent, and physical change, often via the lens of various female saints. The end of a love affair—a topic treated with grounded honesty on another major 2025 album—is launched skyward here, buoyed by the constant sound of a major symphony orchestra and input from a Pulitzer-winning songwriter among a vast list of collaborators. The pure daring alone makes the efforts of contemporary artists seem quite modest.
Rising Above Scholarly Pretense
The fact that Lux manages to avoid overly intellectual chin-stroking is nothing short of a miracle, and full credit going to Rosalía. While it's not her first project to blend the past and the present, its ambitions are far greater here, and the tightrope walk far more dramatic. The element that really elevates her fourth album, outside of its multilayered tunes, dense compositions, and inherent theatricality, is a core spirit of playfulness. Similar to the iconic artist during her height, there is a wondrous quality to the vocalist's singing that pulls you into its whirlwind. Even when she's breaking hearts apart, you nevertheless desire to stay right there for the ride.
A Prime Moment of Exuberance
This playful spirit comes forth clearly on a stunning piano-led song inspired by Saint Clare. It bathes in a string-drenched whirlpool over more than four moments. Suddenly, all the music drops away, and there's a gleeful giggle followed by a comment before a hilariously exaggerated orchestral crescendo crashes down with cartoonish force. The song immediately segues into the wild track featuring galloping orchestration, a powerful choir, and a surprise appearance from none other than herself.
"The charm with Lux lies in you rarely exactly understand—nor wish to predict—where you will go to next."
Almost each track ends in a totally different point from where it started. A track examines the transient nature of fame over a delicate orchestration before collapsing in digital chaos. Elsewhere, a song echoing the artist's earlier rhythmic style starts off moody and brooding, with menacing vocals, until sudden traditional rhythms and an angelic choir arrive to soften its jagged edges.
The Balance Of Experiment & Accessibility
A key balancing act of Lux is navigating the gap of radical innovation and mainstream accessibility. It is no surprise that it has become the artist's first release to crack the Top 5 of key charts: its heart contains a suite of truly catchy pop songs. A song performed entirely in English swells on a chorus that seems to gather more and more nagging melodies while it spins upward. That trick is repeated by a different expansive track that expands and constricts, intertwining multiple tunes as an intricate weave.
- A waltz-like song seduces via its jaunty, Disney-adjacent drama and an anthemic chorus.
- Lyrically, it shares the pop culture impact of contemporary breakup songs, lambasting an ex- partner labeled an "emotional bully".
- Across the album, the singing carry a sharp edge, like a storybook character hiding a blade: "Top prize in acting like a motherfucker / You have the podium of letdown."
An Opulent Feast for the Soul
This album is popular music on a grand level, an ambitious reach for high Art in an era of looming AI-generated blankness. It rejects self-absorption for glorious elevation, creating a dramatic spectacle that masterfully controls its own built-in ridiculousness. It is a deep well of buried gems that requires patience to fully mine but never seem like hard work. Where some big releases of 2025 felt like feasting on scraps, this record is a sumptuous feast at which the characters around the table, perhaps intoxicated on sacred wine, flit from discussions about historical saints, the profound sensation of soul-shattering sadness, and common stories about hopeless partners. It is a contemporary musical from pop's truly endlessly inventive practitioner.
