Initially, Lux might appear more like a challenging university quiz rather than a new pop project by an artist who just had a last hit featured a global pop star. Divided across 4 separate sections and performed in 13 tongues, this is a breathtaking symphonic album exploring female mystery, religious transcendence, and physical change, often by way of the perspective of various women saints. The end of a love affair—a topic treated with raw openness on another major 2025 album—soars upwards here, buoyed by the constant presence of a major symphony orchestra and input from an award-winning composer within a vast roll call of collaborators. Its sheer ambition by itself renders the work of contemporary artists appear rather laughable.
Transcending Scholarly Exercise
That this album succeeds in escape dry intellectual chin-stroking feels nothing short of a miracle, with sole credit belonging to the artist. Although this is not her first project to alchemize the past and modern styles, the stakes are far higher on Lux, and the tightrope walk more precarious. What truly raises her fourth release, outside of its complex melodies, dense arrangements, and engrained theatricality, is a core spirit of joy. Similar to the legendary artist during her peak, you find a captivating sense to Rosalía's singing which sweeps the listener up in its tornado. When she's tearing hearts apart, the listener nevertheless want to stay right there for the journey.
A Signature Moment of Exuberance
This playful energy comes forth clearly during the stirring Italian song about Saint Clare. It bathes in a string-drenched melancholy for more than four minutes. Suddenly, everything falls silent, and there's a spontaneous laugh and a comment before a hilariously over-the-top string surge crashes in like comedic force. The track immediately shifts to the frenetic single driven by galloping strings, a powerful choir, and a surprise role from none other than Björk.
"The charm with this album lies in you never exactly understand—or even wish to know—what you is going to next."
Almost every track ends at a completely distinct place from where it started. A track examines the fleeting trappings of celebrity with a delicate symphony only to collapsing in electronic chaos. Another, a song that recalls the artist's earlier trap-infused work starts out dark and brooding, featuring menacing vocals, until sudden flamenco rhythms and a heavenly choir arrive to soften the song's jagged corners.
The Bridge Between Experiment and Accessibility
A key balancing act of Lux involves straddling the line between radical experimentation and broad accessibility. This is little surprise that the album has achieved her first work to crack the upper reaches of major charts: its heart contains a suite of truly catchy pop songs. A song performed entirely in English builds around a refrain that feels to collect more and more infectious hooks while it spirals skyward. That trick is echoed on another powerful ballad that expands and contracts, intertwining layered melodies as a complex weave.
- A waltz-like song charms with its jaunty, Disney-adjacent flair and a chant-along hook.
- In its words, it aligns the pop culture impact of other heartbreak songs, eviscerating a former lover described as an "psychological terrorist".
- Across the album, the vocals carry a painted-on edge, like a fairy-tale character concealing a knife: "Gold medal in being a motherfucker / You have the podium of disappointment."
An Opulent Feast for the Ears
Lux is popular music on a grand scale, an ambitious grasp for capital-A Art amid of looming artificial sameness. It eschews self-absorption for sublime elevation, crafting an over-the-top drama that skillfully manages its own inherent ridiculousness. It is a deep source of hidden treasure that requires time to fully mine but never seem like hard work. Where some major pop albums of the year seemed like a meager scraps, this record offers a lavish feast at which the characters around the table, some tipsy on sacred drink, flutter from discussions about historical figures, the profound feeling of heartbreaking grief, and common stories about hopeless partners. In essence, it's a contemporary theatrical production from music's most endlessly inventive practitioner.
