At first glance, this album may look closer to an arduous university quiz than the latest popular music project by a musician whose last single was a collaboration with a global K-pop star. Broken across four different sections and voiced in thirteen languages, it is a breathtaking classical-tinged album exploring female mystery, spiritual ascent, and corporal change, frequently through the perspective of different female saints. The dissolution of a romance—a theme treated with raw honesty on another major 2025 album—is shot heavenward here, carried by the constant sound of a full symphony orchestra and input from an award-winning composer within a vast list of contributors. The pure daring by itself makes the efforts of other pop stars look quite laughable.
Transcending Academic Pretense
That Lux manages to escape dry intellectual posturing is nothing short of a miracle, with complete praise going to Rosalía. While it's not the first time project to alchemize the past and modern styles, the ambitions are far greater on Lux, and the tightrope walk far more dramatic. What really elevates this fourth release, outside of its multilayered tunes, dense arrangements, and inherent drama, is an essential sense of playfulness. Similar to the iconic artist at her peak, you find a captivating sense to the vocalist's singing which sweeps the listener into its tornado. When she's tearing hearts apart, the listener nevertheless want to be right there through the journey.
A Prime Moment of Exuberance
This playful energy shines clearly during a stirring piano-led ballad about Saint Clare. It bathes in a string-drenched melancholy over more than four moments. Then, all the music falls silent, and we hear a gleeful laugh and a comment prior to a comically exaggerated string surge thuds in like comedic force. The track immediately shifts into the frenetic track driven by racing strings, an imposing choir, and a surprise role from none other than Björk.
"The charm with this album lies in you rarely quite understand—or even wish to know—where it is going to next."
Almost each song finishes in a totally different point from where it started. A track explores the transient nature of celebrity over a delicate symphony only to collapsing into electronic chaos. Another, a song echoing the artist's previous rhythmic work starts out moody and sinister, with prowling beats, before sudden traditional rhythms and an angelic choir arrive to smooth the song's jagged edges.
The Bridge Between Experiment and Pop
Another crucial achievement of Lux is straddling the gap of bold experimentation and mainstream appeal. It is no coincidence that the album has become her highest-charting work to crack the upper reaches of key charts: at its core a suite of truly catchy hits. A song performed primarily in English builds around a chorus that seems to collect increasingly nagging melodies as it spins skyward. That trick gets repeated on a different expansive ballad that expands and contracts, intertwining layered tunes as a complex weave.
- A waltz-like song seduces with its jaunty, Disney-adjacent drama and a chant-along chorus.
- Lyrically, it aligns with pop culture impact of other heartbreak songs, eviscerating a former partner described as an "emotional bully".
- Across these tracks, the vocals have a painted-on smile, like a fairy-tale figure hiding a blade: "Gold medal in acting like a motherfucker / You've won the trophy of letdown."
An Opulent Banquet for the Ears
This album represents popular music on a maximalist scale, an ambitious grasp for capital-A Art in an era of impending AI-generated blankness. It rejects self-absorption in favor of sublime elevation, crafting a dramatic drama that masterfully manages its own built-in excess. It is an abundant well of hidden gems that requires time to fully explore but doesn't feels like hard work. While some major releases of the year seemed like feasting on meal, Lux offers a sumptuous feast where the guests around it, perhaps intoxicated on sacred wine, flutter between discussions about historical figures, the galvanizing feeling of soul-shattering sadness, and shared stories about hopeless men. It is a contemporary theatrical production from pop's most endlessly inventive practitioner.
