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Rosalía offers an exasperated laugh as she sits down, having tried on a variety of equally stunning outfits only to end up in the casual clothes she arrived in: black pants and a camo jacket lined with fur. It’s the same jacket she was spotted wearing at a Parisian cafe in early October, seated alone with a cup of tea while poring over the sheet music of a song from the 1900 Puccini opera Tosca.
The Barcelona-born singer’s candid moment with the canonical tragedy was significant — one of many subtle nods that she was pursuing something outside the typical parameters of modern mainstream music. Rosalía studied musicology in college, and over the last eight years has often meshed a wide variety of genres and influences in her songs. But for someone who rose to global fame on the cutting edge of culture, studying the musical notation of a century-old opera communicated a pointed message.
Weeks later, fans began to understand why. On the evening of Oct. 20, she took to Madrid’s Callao Square with giant projector screens, where a countdown unveiled the release date for her fourth album, Lux (Nov. 7 on Columbia Records), as well as its cover art, which features Rosalía dressed in all white, wearing a nun’s habit and hugging herself under her clothing.
Every move Rosalía has made over the past three years while crafting Lux has been considered, intentional and entirely in her own world. Having risen to fame with the flamenco-inspired pop of her Columbia debut, 2018’s El Mal Querer, she flipped the script with her eclectic, energetic 2022 album, Motomami, which spanned pop, reggaetón, hip-hop, electronic and more and became her first album to chart on the Billboard 200, peaking at No. 33. But Lux is something different: an orchestral, operatic opus recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra that blends history and spirituality and experiments with form, language (she sings in 13 different ones throughout the album’s 18 tracks) and the very idea of what is possible for a major recording artist in 2025, for a project that’s more Puccini than pop — not that it doesn’t have its moments of catchy relatability.
“It’s like an album she wrote to God — whatever each person feels God is to them,” says Afo Verde, chairman/CEO of Sony Latin Iberia, which works with Rosalía alongside Columbia. “This is an artist who said, ‘I want to walk down a path where few walk.’ And when you navigate inside the album, you completely understand the genius behind it.”
Rosalía spent the better part of three years crafting Lux’s lyrics and instrumentation, drawing from classical music, native speakers and instrumentation, and the giants of the past — women including Saint Rosalia of Palermo; the Chinese Taoist master/poet Sun Bu’er; the biblical figure of Miriam, sister of Moses; and even Patti Smith all figure into its cosmology — to create something that feels both worldly and otherworldly, a distinct take on navigating life’s chaos. It was also a period where she experienced personal and professional changes: She broke off her engagement to Puerto Rican reggaetón star Rauw Alejandro, switched management and landed her first big acting role in the forthcoming third season of hit HBO series Euphoria, all while immersed in making the album.
“In general, just to be in this world is a lot; sometimes it’s overwhelming,” she says on a fall day in Los Angeles. “In the best-case scenario, the idea would be that whoever hears it feels light and feels hope. Because that was how it was made and where it was made from.”
“This record takes you on a complete journey; the singing on it is just astounding,” says Jonathan Dickins, who runs September Management, home to Adele, and who began representing Rosalía in June. “I think she’s a generational artist. I’m lucky enough to have worked with one, and now I’m lucky enough to work with another. She is an original.”
To make Lux, Rosalía relied on several of her longtime collaborators — producers Noah Goldstein and Dylan Wiggins and engineer David Rodriguez among them — and tasked them with taking a new approach. “The whole process helped me grow as a musician, as a producer, as a sound engineer,” says Goldstein, who has also worked with Frank Ocean, Jay-Z and FKA twigs. “That’s one of my favorite things about working with Rosalía: I’m always learning things from her.”
She also tapped new collaborators such as OneRepublic singer and decorated songwriter Ryan Tedder (who spent three years DM’ing Rosalía, hoping to eventually work together) and urged them to push their boundaries. “For an artist to give me the freedom to just express myself in that way, God, that is the most fun I’ve ever had,” says Tedder, who has worked on mammoth albums by Adele, Beyoncé and more throughout his career. “I’ve been asked by everybody, ‘What does the new Rosalía stuff sound like?’ And I literally say to everybody, ‘Nothing that you possibly would imagine.’ ”
Fans got their first taste of Lux when Rosalía dropped the single “Berghain,” which features Björk and Yves Tumor, in late October. The song kicks off with a string orchestra introduction followed by a Carmina Burana-like chorus and then Rosalía singing in an operatic soprano voice — in three languages.
For Rosalía, challenging preconceptions about the type of music she, or anyone, can make is part of the point — thinking outside the box, following her inspiration and constantly learning, finding and creating from a place of curiosity and openness to new experiences and ideas. “I think that in order to fully enjoy music, you have to have a tolerant, open way of understanding it,” she says. “Because music is the ‘4’33” ’ of John Cage, as much as the birds in the trees for the Kaluli of New Guinea, as much as the fugues of Bach, as much as the songs of Chencho Corleone. All of it is music. And if you understand that, then you can enjoy in a much fuller, profound way, what music is.”
When did you start working on this album?
I don’t think that it’s easy to measure when something like this happens or starts. The album is heavily inspired by the world of mysticism and spirituality. Since I was a kid, I’ve always had a very personal relationship with spirituality. That’s the seed of this project, and I don’t remember when that started.
How did you approach Lux differently?
This album has a completely different sound than any of the projects that I’ve done before. It was a challenge for me to do a more orchestral project and learn how to use an orchestra, understand all the instruments, all the possibilities, and learn and study from amazing composers in history and say, “OK, that’s what’s been done. What can I do that feels personal and honest for me?” And also the challenge of having that inspiration in classical music and trying to do something that I haven’t done before, trying to write songs from another place. Because the instrumentation is different from all the other projects I have done. But also the writing, the structures, it’s very different.
After Motomami, your success and fame hit a new level. How did that help you make this album?
All the albums I’ve done helped me be able to be the musician I am today and make this album now. Lux wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t taken the previous steps. Each album helped me release something, to free myself as much as possible. Every time I go to the studio, it’s from wanting to play around, try something different, to find different styles of making songs. I always try to stay open.
You’ve said Motomami was inspired by the energy of L.A., New York, Miami. What was your mission in making Lux?
It’s made from love and curiosity. I’ve always wanted to understand other languages, learn other music, learn from others about what I don’t know. It comes from curiosity, from wanting to understand others better, and through that I can understand who I am better. I love explaining stories. I like to be the narrator. I think as much as I love music itself, music is just a medium to explain stories, to put ideas on the table. So that’s what this project is for me. I’m just a channel to explain stories, and there’s inspiration in different saints from all across the world. So you could say it feels like a global thing, but at the same time, it’s so personal for me. Those stories are exceptional. They are remarkable stories about women who lived their lives in a very unconventional way, of women who were writers in very special ways. And so I’m like, “Let’s throw some light there.”
What I know is that I am ready, and this is what I needed to do. What I know is that this is what I was supposed to write about. This is my truth. This is where I am now.
What contributes to the fact that the album feels so global is you sing in 13 languages on it.
It took a lot of writing and scratching it and sending it to someone who would help me translate and be like, “This is how you would say this in Japanese. This is how it sounds.” There were so many things that I had to play with and take under consideration. Because it’s not just writing. It’s not just on paper. It has to sound good. There’s a big difference for me when I write, for example, a letter for somebody that I love than if I write a song. It has to have a certain sound, a certain intention of musicality.
It was a big challenge, but it was worth it. It made me grow so much. And I feel like every word on this album, I fought for it, I really wanted it, and then I waited for it, and then it came. It took me a year to write just the lyrics for this album, and then another year of arranging music and going back to the lyrics and retouching. It took a lot of effort searching for the right words: “How is this not just going to be heard, but also, if you read it, how does it feel?”
The lyrics read like a novel.
There’s a whole intentional structure throughout the album. I was clear that I wanted four movements. I wanted one where it would be more a departure from purity. The second movement, I wanted it to feel more like being in gravity, being friends with the world. The third would be more about grace and hopefully being friends with God. And at the end, the farewell, the return. All of that helped me be very strategic and concise and precise about what songs would go where, how I wanted it to start, how I wanted the journey to go, what lyrics would make sense.
Each story, each song is inspired by the story of a saint. I read a lot of hagiographies — the lives of the saints — and it helped me expand my understanding of sainthood. Because my background is Catholic from my family, so you understand it through this one [lens]. But then you realize that in other cultures and other religious contexts, it’s another thing. But what surprised me a lot was that there’s a main theme, which is not fearing, which you can find shared across many religions. And I think that’s so powerful because probably the fears that I have, somebody on the other side of the world has the same ones. And for me, there’s beauty in that, in understanding that we might think that we’re different, but we’re not.
All of these songs are very personal, but “Focu ’ranni” feels especially so. What was the experience of writing that one?
I found out that there’s this saying by Santa Rosalia de Palermo — she was supposed to get married and then she decided not to; she decided to dedicate her life to God. I thought that something in that was very powerful. I researched her story, and that’s why there’s some Sicilian thrown in that song. It was a challenge to sing in that language. That was a challenging song to do and to sing, but I feel grateful that it exists.
You create a world, and a sisterhood almost, on this album. How does a more playful song like “Novia Robot” fit in?
There was this woman who was very inspiring named Sun Bu’er; she dedicated her life to becoming a teacher of the Tao. And the way she lived her life was unconventional at that time. I thought there was something powerful about her story. Apparently, in order to make a journey, she destroyed her face to be able to travel safely. And she had a partner, she had a family, but she decided she wanted to dedicate her life to spirituality. It was so bold and courageous. And at the end of that song, you hear another voice, which is in [Hebrew], that’s inspired by Miriam, this figure who led an entire people and was a rebellious woman and considered close to the idea of sainthood in Judaism. So I thought that it was cool to have those two voices, the same way how in opera there are so many voices co-existing. So I thought in that song that could happen with that playfulness, yes, and playing with the sound of how Chinese Mandarin would sound.
The album is so operatic and orchestral. How did you begin to immerse yourself in those styles and find the people that you worked with to deliver that?
They’re the people I feel comfortable with, so I love sharing time with them in the studio. For example, I worked on [Lux song] “Mio Cristo” for months by myself in Miami and L.A., and I delayed the moment when I would share it. I wanted to make a song that was like my version of what an aria could be. So I remember just going to the studio after so much work, after so much back and forth with an Italian translator, and I [had been] improvising on the piano, trying to find melodies, to find the right chords and notes. I went to the studio and I shared it with Dylan [Wiggins], with Noah [Goldstein], with David [Rodriguez], and I remember they were like, “Yes. That’s the song. There it is.” So it’s been a lot of isolation on one side — a lot of writing — and then on the other side a lot of collective effort in the studio.
It’s such a vivid album. How are you plotting out how it will look visually?
My sister and I work together a lot. I’m very lucky that I get to just keep playing around and having fun like how we used to when we were kids. Her and I love recommending things to each other, we send books to each other. Having a project together is something I feel so grateful about, the fact that my family is involved — my mother, my sister, they’re very important people in my life, and I feel like I can share everything with them. And on the visual side, it was just playing around with references and imagination, just trying to think, “What can we do with this?” Just playfulness. That’s how I think the best things happen — out of joy.
Have you given any thought yet to what a live performance of this album would look like?
Thoughts are never lacking, but we’ll see. I don’t want to think too much how that would look until that really is happening, if that makes sense. But there’s definitely a lot of creativity with how this could be translated to the stage.
At the same time you were working on this, you were filming the third season of Euphoria, your first major acting role. Was that difficult?
It was very challenging to do both. I was recording the album and producing and checking mixes, everything, while I was shooting Euphoria. I had to divide my mind between both and it was also the first time that I was doing something like this — preparing a character, studying lines. These are new things for me and I’m not used to it. It’s very different from making an album and making music. For some reason, I didn’t completely go crazy, and we’re still here.
Did any of that experience seep into the album?
[Euphoria creator] Sam [Levinson] and I are both very sensitive people. For some reason, whatever he’s creating for me resonates for this moment. When we were shooting, when we spoke about the [show’s] story, I didn’t know him that well. I really admired his work, but I didn’t know how his mind worked, how he is as an artist. I realized he has so much sensibility and I connected so much with that, not just with his work, but also him as a person.
How did that role come about?
I shared that I really wanted to start acting, that it was something that I would love to do. The only thing I had done was [the Pedro] Almodóvar [film Pain and Glory in 2019], and when I was 16 I studied theater for a year. I feel like being a musician and being onstage is being a performer, but I had never experienced it as being filmed, learning lines; it’s a very different job. I had done it with Almodóvar, but I was like, “I would love to do it with somebody like Sam, somebody that has a vision as strong as him. Or someone like Sofia Coppola.” So then I heard the third season was happening and I was like, “I would love to audition.”
You had to audition?
Of course! Because I’m not an actress, and that was really scary. But at the same time, something told me that I was supposed to do it. So I did an audition tape, then met an audition person and then something else, and then it happened.
At the end of your album, you address the concept of death. Are there things in your life that you worry about not having enough time to do?
No. Whenever God decides it’s time to go, it’s time to go. Whatever I have come here to do, I feel like I’m doing; whenever I have to leave, I will leave. That’s how I try to live. I would love to know how it feels to be 100 years old, but that’s not on me to decide. But I would love to keep writing, I would love to keep making music, I would love to keep learning how to cook better, I would love to keep studying — one day I would love to go to college again and study philosophy or theology — and I would love to keep traveling. There are so many times that I travel and feel like I haven’t seen enough or haven’t had enough time to just experience places.
But for now, I’m dedicating myself to my mission, which is making albums and performing. And for me, performing is an act for others. I don’t like touring. I like to be onstage and I love my fans, so I do it. But I love being in my home, calm, reading, cooking, going to the gym, lifting weights and going to sleep. Literally, that makes me so happy; I don’t need a lot. (Laughs.) When you travel, it’s much harder; psychologically it’s a challenge, always. But I also know that there are other jobs that have so much complexity and challenges, and I feel so grateful that I can be a musician.
What’s the biggest challenge that you feel like comes with this career?
The price you pay, the sacrifice, the amount of moments that you lose with your family, with your loved ones. My grandpa died when I was at the Latin Grammys in 2019, and I was about to perform when I found out. I couldn’t even be at the burial. Those things, I’ll have to live with the sadness and the regret of not being there. Those are things that are not the good side of being a musician: always struggling, always being committed to whatever you’re doing, to the people who are there in the audience that night who paid for their ticket to see your performance. Maybe that’s the thing they’re looking forward to the most that week. The price is really high, but this is what I chose, and I’m fully conscious that this is the decision I’ve made.
In releasing this album, what would success look like for you?
Success, for me, is freedom. And I felt all the freedom that I could imagine or hope for throughout this process. That’s all I wanted. I wanted to be able to pour what was inside, outside. And those inspirations, those ideas, make them into songs. I was able to do that, and I will not ask for more.
This story will appear in the Nov. 15, 2025, issue of Billboard.
English (US)