ROSALÍA: The LUX Interview | The Zane Lowe Interview

I think the best fiction is the fiction that has this blurry line between what's personal and what's universal, what's detailed and what's abstract. There has to be some sort of truth for me in it, but at the same time I think it's much more about the other. If you are writing from this place, then you can sing from this place. I promised myself I was going to make an album where I was going to finish the thought, finish the song, go all the way until the end. Motomami was minimalist. This is maximalism. So much to talk to you about about this album. Thank you for making this. I love it's an album. That's the best compliment that somebody can say, I think. It's almost like much of a framework for this. But we're in Madrid and you're causing chaos and you've launched your album here and you're running around getting fined, upsetting the politicians and doing what you should be doing. Oh my goodness. But it looked like you had a lot of fun. I just wanted to go see the carteles, go see the lights, even go outside. Yeah, but it's a fun moment. It's a beautiful moment, you know, when OK, now the album is finished finally and now it's about sharing it. It can be discouraging sometimes how long it takes, but I think it's teaching me patience. Each project is teaching me more patience. Well, you must have had so much patience to just get through this process of making this album because there's so much in it. Yes. I loved what you said about Leonard Cohen and the idea of finishing a record in the three stages, an area where it can just you can just feel very lost in it. Yeah. No longer yours. It takes on a life of its own. There must have been many moments during the making of this where that felt that way. Yes, because it's been three years. So all the things that can happen in three years, so many. But also I love that Leonard is a big inspiration and I love that he used to say, which I would repeat a lot while I was making the album. He used to say, forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. And I think that I wanted the light to get in and I wanted it to be called looks, how to make more space for the light to get in. I love that you refer to light as seen through the cracks and not necessarily the light that's all around us at all times. Sometimes we shield ourselves from the light or the light can be too bright. But you're right, the light that cracks in is different, isn't it? It's a glimmer of what's available to you that hasn't yet revealed itself. Yes, the possibility, the outside and beyond. When you're working on music, can you exist as a functional societal social way or do you need to sort of consciously remove yourself from the normal light side of being a human and a friend? Yeah, I kind of, I think I kind of isolate. But at the same time, I listen myself and if I'm like, okay, it's been maybe a week that I don't see nobody except these friends that I'm working with in the studio, which I consider friends. Dylan, David, which I've been working with for like six years at this point. He's an amazing engineer. Elliot, he's became a friend here through this project. So yeah, I feel like I hang a lot in the studio. It's a lot of hanging in the studio. But at the same time, there's a lot of being alone at home, writing, reading, writing, reading, just one year of that. It was an entire year. I remember guys were like, we need to, we need to come back to the studio. And I was like, I can't. No, I want, I have to make lyrics. And these lyrics are not good enough. I'm going to keep working on lyrics. I'm going to stay here working on lyrics until this is great. And then more music. When you were touring Motomami, being in this brilliant modern loop that we're all in, which is like album, tour, Lucy, like a song, maybe collaboration. It doesn't feel like that. It's like you stopped that hard. Yes, this is what I needed. I feel like I always do projects, find the excuse to study what I want to study and go through what I want to go through and feel like my heart is needing and it's craving. And in this case, it was reading more and it was studying more. If I was not having a musical career, I would probably just be listening in college, theology. I just wanted to like be studying theology. And that's what I kind of tried to like just study, learn more about spirituality, make ampliar mis horizontes of what spirituality is. Understanding how sainthood is understood and conceived differently depending on the cultures and religions, different religions. And how interesting is that, for example, in El Entorno del Cristianismo, there's a very specific way of understanding sainthood. But then there's equivalence in other religions. So in Hinduism, there's the Rishis, which are these maestros, sabios vedicos de los Vedas. I don't know, the Xi'an, they are immortals in the Tao. Zadikim in Judaism. Los amigos de Dios, God's friends, they call it in Islam. All around the world, you can find different ways of understanding sainthood. And that was so interesting to me. I was like, OK, wait, there's all these stories about saints. I was trying to pull from all these crazy, amazing stories from all around the world. I put a mapamundi in the room and I started reading hagiographias, just reading, reading, reading, reading. And I just tried to understand where did they come from? Which was the language that would be spoken there? What was the story behind? So there was a lot of women that were extremely interesting to me, that they were nuns, they were poets. And I was like, OK, I'm going to read about them. I'm going to read what they actually wrote. I'm going to try to explain these stories. I think it's important to, while collecting stories about the other, I feel like then making songs inspired in that, like I'm celebrating and giving love to the other. To the otherness, trying to understand the otherness better. It feels like nowadays, it's like everything is so divided. And no, I want the opposite. I need the opposite. At least that's how I feel. This deep curiosity that informs this music, it is a huge part of what is so immersive for us about it. I'm always interested in how artists can move so deeply into quote-unquote conceptual environments, but it has to be about you. It can't just be an essay about the past. I don't think it's about me. These songs, you don't feel are about you? I think, though, that it's an album that, fortunately or unfortunately, it will have pieces of me, little pieces of me. But I think the best fiction is the fiction that has this blurry line, there's a blurry line, like the sweet spot between what's personal and what's universal. What's detailed and what's abstract. Maybe what's implicit and what is explicit. It's both. And so I think that, yeah, obviously, because I wrote it, there has to be some sort of truth for me in it. But at the same time, I think it's much more about the other than about myself. Although there's going to be moments and specific things, journey, for example, Reliquia, that has journey, that has about, I've been here, I've been there, but it's inspired in Santa Rosa de Lima and how her Reliquias are spread around the world. So there was so many crazy coincidences while I was studying and learning about these stories. Santa Rosalia de Palermo, Gil de Galbonvingen, Vimala, there was crazy stories. Santa Olga de Kiev, so many women that were amazing and that I wanted to kind of, in a way, channel their stories. But I love the character studies that you created on this record. But at the same time, the way that you perform these songs, the emotion that you instill in these songs when you sing them, it's hard for me as a listener and a fan to not feel that you are feeling something deep within yourself, personal growth. I agree, I agree. I think it's more internal. Like when you get to Magnolias, I can't believe at the end that you're not projecting forward into the end of what's been a wonderful adventure to put the perfect ribbon on it, right? Kind of, yes. But it's inspired in Ananda de Lima. She had an amazing burial. There were so many flowers, like crazy. And apparently everybody felt so in peace. Apparently everybody was outside, everybody felt so much peace and joy. And so for me, I was like, wait, this is amazing to know that that happened. And I'm like, how would my entierro, how would my burial be? Maybe it's just about, please don't be sad when I die. Just please have a party. Yeah. That was what for me, what I was asking. And in the back of my, in my bag, I have a tattoo that is something that Manuel Molina wrote. Which is my favorite writer in Spain. My favorite writer in Spain, he said, Que nadie vaya a llorar el día que yo me muera. Es más hermoso cantar aunque se cante con pena. He's saying, nobody, better nobody cry the day that I die. It's more beautiful to cry even if you cry with sadness. So even if, okay, you're going to have maybe some sadness, but still like, just have fun, just enjoy. There must have been a lot of times during the making of this record, though, when you felt a very powerful emotion. I can't imagine working with the London Symphony Orchestra. Yeah, I mean, that's how uncontrollable it is. That was crazy. I definitely had chills so many times. Definitely. Making vocals, recording vocals. I don't think I ever cried so much making an album. I don't think I've ever, ever, ever, ever cried so much recording vocals. And I think that I didn't, I didn't maybe want to go through this before. I was like, I'm not ready. I know I had to do an album like this, but I wasn't ready yet. How did you know? How did you know that after Motomami, which was a resounding success, one of the most amazing tours, beautiful, high concept art, dynamics, just a lot of movement, everything. I mean, you've got to be happy at the end of that. But how did you know that I have not gone deep enough? I need to, like, not even close. It's so different. There was something that my sister said that stuck with me when I played Motomami for her. What did she say? Okay, so we were in the car. I played for her. She pointed out this kind of like musical tourette or something. This, this sort of like, kind of like, why do you have to destroy the song always? Yeah, that's Pili, right? That's my nonchalant. Only the ones who love you back, right? The only ones who get away with that. Yes, that's my nonchalant sister and my best friend, which I love so much. And she said that, and when she said that, it hurt so bad because I was like, what are you talking about? And I started fighting her and I started being like, what are you talking about? No, no, no, because you don't get it. I'm trying that. Yes, this makes sense. This disruption here. But at the end of the day, it stuck with me because I'm like, wait, why do I make music? I make music for people to feel, right? And maybe they're going to feel the most if I really go all the way. How can I, because maybe I'm not allowing myself to go all the way. Maybe I'm writing songs, but I'm not finishing the thought. So I was like, I'm going to make the next album. I promised myself I was going to make an album where I was going to at least try, at least try to finish the thought, finish the song, go all the way until the end. And I think that in this album, it allowed me to grow as a writer and as an arranger and as a producer because of that, because of going all the way and not trying to just, you know, break the song from here and there. No, like, this is the thought. How far I can go with this thought. In a way, you still retain some loyalty to that idea of being free with arrangements and break things. And there are movements in each song, but because you're moving in a space that has long been considered archaic or ancient or old fashioned, you know, this idea of working in symphony, Baroque art, inspiration, things that you study. Like, remember how it used to be hundreds of years ago. But why can't it be as powerful today as it was back then? And it definitely can. And I think that at least I'm always, my feeling is always I'm in service of the emotion. So, yes, this album don't have loops. And it's very intentional that it doesn't have loops. That was kind of a rule. We were like, we were not gonna do no loops. We have this in the back of our heads. Even at the end of Divinize, when it gets super frantic and anxious. Yeah, yes, yes, yes, yes. There's no loop in it. It's played. Or the vocals. Even if there's like a repetition in a melody, still it's sung. There's like the conscious decision of not using loops. Human. Yeah. So it's like, how do I go from point A to point B? How do I, como lo hilo? How do I, como transito eso? Instead of from A to B, boom. Next. Yes. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Go through the experience. As if the experience is the, the most important is the journey. It's not about getting to from point A to B. It's go through it. Let yourself go through it. And I wanted that it was acoustic instruments. Everything, it feels, I think it feels like that human wood. It feels like the space. Fabrics, yes. It feels entirely immersive, like the space. Yeah, material is physicality. And so at the end of the day, you have the sense, the feeling that there's a human in there. There's humans in there. It's made by a human. It's about love and from love, hopefully. Well, love is in every single iteration. I mean, adoration, uninterrupted, unfettered, pure obsession. Then judgment, conditional forgiveness, hate, anger, violence, a lot of violence on this trip. Also, also enough of what I needed. I felt like I needed to be in it. I think Berghain, for example, but it's not glorifying evil. As a protagonist, it feels like to me, as a writer of this experience, either other's experience brought to life through your filter or your own experience, the mixture of abstract and the literal. Yes. That in the middle of all of that, there is confusion about what it all means. You asking if there is some? I'm asking you if it was written out of pure instinct or experience. That's a tough one. I think it starts with instinct. And I think that later there's this moment where you just analyze with cold head, you are chirurgical about it. But it's pretty much, I think everything, usually for me, it's pretty much intuitive. I don't rationalize it too much. I try to nurture myself with whatever I feel like I need to explain. And later, so I let it happen intuitively. If you nurture yourself the right way, you're going to be able to explain it, be the vessel and explain it. And so later I think that I start rationalizing it when I see what I'm doing. I don't think I'm thinking what I'm doing when I'm doing it. Okay. Let me be specific about like me and Christy. Yeah, yeah. Okay. That one, it took me a whole year. I'm not surprised. A whole year to do. Yeah. And thank you for seeing it through. It's a remarkable piece of music. But as a sentiment, a story, is it a generalized appreciation or is it a specific appreciation about one person or something specific? Because it's so delicately written. I think that the whole project has that balance. And definitely I found very, very beautiful, very, very inspiring. When I found out about Santa Clara de Asís and San Francisco de Asís, apparently they had this really, really, really strong friendship and this very strong bond. And that was beautiful. And I was like, okay, let me experience how to write about this, about this friendship. How would that be? And you have friendship that is similar. You could create, you could refer back to your own experience in that way. I mean, the whole album has that, has a truth on what I've experienced for sure. Because otherwise I couldn't write it. And especially it's also in Italian. I try to write first in Spanish, a lot, a lot, a lot of it. And then I would send it to a translator and also would use Google Translate. So I would kind of go back and forth with that for an entire year of writing. It took me a lot of attempts in front of the piano of trying to make the aria. And I will remember, I would talk with Noah and I would say, I really want to make an aria. I want to write an aria, but I need time to study. I need time to understand how an aria is. How an aria is written, how usually the structures are. Or, and let's see. And so it took me a year in Miami, writing in Miami, in this house in Miami. I finally found it. I found the, just improvising, I found the hook in the piano. Very, very little notes with the left hand, just to understand a little bit how the chords could be. And then I brought it to LA. I kept working on it. And then one day finally I got to the studio and I was like, finally, I have the aria. What an aria, what I say, what I call an aria. I don't even know if it's an aria, okay. But it inspired me. Yes, yes. It honors that. The communication that comes through the record in multiple languages, 14, I think, languages. But anytime that it switches from Catalan or Spanish into Japanese, it's very natural to the point where I had to look at the lyrics and be reminded that you was even singing in Japanese. Oh, that makes me happy, man. That makes me so happy. Because, because you made them your own. So why did you choose to have that moment of self-reflection, the queen of chaos? Why did you choose to express that in Japanese? Because there's this saint, she was called Rionne Genso. She was a Japanese saint. And it was very interesting, the story. Apparently she destroyed her face in order to be accepted and to be accepted, so ella quería entrar en un monasterio. She wanted to get in that monastery and be accepted in it. And she destroyed her face in order to be admitted in it. And that woman, I felt like the story was insane. That was incredible, like the level of sacrifice in order for her to both achieve what she wanted and also maybe how a lot of times it's considered craziness. You know, what's an extreme can be considered craziness. Or it can be like catalogued in that way. Do you think that that was extreme, to do that? One might to judge what is extreme or not. I think that each person has a different path and I'm nobody to judge if that's extreme or not. But maybe for me as a Rosalia, it would be very hard to do something like that. Consider it maybe extreme for who I am, but I don't consider it extreme that for her she did that. But in a way, the fact that you've gone ahead and made something so different to what you did before and you've done so much studying and learning in order to get there, in a way, isn't it continued mutilation every time you reject something you've created before in order to grow and potentially lose people in the process and leave the things that could give you comfort behind? Isn't that just a form of violent change in a weird way? Yes, and please, yes, every day. I hope that happens every day. I hope that every day identity can always be something that it dies and burns every day. And that every day you can choose who you are and every day you can understand who you are and you can change every day. That's a discipline, isn't it? Because again, in your substat and your birthday post, you talked about the idea of wanting to stay in all the time but then missing people's birthday parties and events and being like, man, I'm just going to not get invited anymore. You know what I mean? People are just going to stop inviting me. There's FOMO here, like what I'm missing out on. So I guess the question is like the idea of having the courage to move forward and leave all that behind. But is there a part of you that's asking, are you sure you've just achieved this and people want to see you and hear you like this? Yeah, yeah. But having doubt, it's a proof that you're alive that what you're doing is true and it's alive. Having doubt, faith. They say that faith, you know that it's alive because there's doubt in it. And I think here it's the same. You know that you are here, that we're here. There are doubts about if you are here, no? Probably you're feeling that doubt. That doubt is reminding you that you're alive, that you're here. So yeah, I think that maybe the sacrifice. Sacrificing, I think that it's part of it. I accept it. I think I'm kind of in peace. The more I grow, the more I'm in peace with the fact that I'm going to miss so many things. I would like to spend the whole day just talking and vibing and being here and studying about this building and all of that I would love to do. But I know that I won't be able to. Maybe we'll just have this brief moment. So I hold into it and I'm like, yes, okay. This is how much I'm going to see today and I'm okay with it. I'm not trying to do too much. Just a little, just enough. But it brings to light the idea of what is the present moment. Can you sit in the present moment? I'm always moving around. I would always be like this. So, you know, like I'm always, I want to always be moving, doing things. I have to remind myself, it's okay, chill, calm down. So yeah, I have a hard time being in the present. How do you do that? Do you meditate? How do you find inner peace? Where do you...? Desiring less. I'm not meditating as much these days. I'm praying more. I'd give it all away. You talk about this on the album. I'd give it all away. And you even mentioned some of the trinkets and things that we... I'm learning. I'm trying, I'm trying. It's hard because this world teaches you how to desire a lot. But it doesn't teach you enough how to not desire. I want to learn more how to desire less. And that's what you pray about, amongst other things? I pray to different things, depending on what I'm lacking and what I'm missing more. If I'm lacking inner peace, then I will do one type of prayer. But if I'm feeling in peace and I feel like there's so much that I have to celebrate, then I pray and give thank you. I do more something that has to do with gratitude. And the idea of searching for balance from something greater than yourself and asking for that from somewhere. What's at the top of your asking list? I think that sometimes it's not about asking. It's about listening. It's about stopping maybe and listening. Is it maybe about projecting yourself towards something that is bigger than you that reminds you who you are, that reminds you your path. So sometimes it's about asking for guidance when you don't see clear enough. Sometimes it's about asking for blessings for the people that you love. Sometimes it's asking about peace, more inner peace maybe. So each time it's different. I love this woman, she's called Alana Portero. She says that we should all pray even if you don't believe, even if you don't have faith. She says that even if your prayer is more like a pagan prayer, that's still okay because you are projecting yourself towards what's beyond you. There's a way of getting rid of veneno, of poison. And I like that. I think that we all do carry some sort of poison. We all have questions. We all carry questions. We all carry stain, you know? So I think that if you can, in a way, you can get closer to the source. You can get closer to what's your center. You can get closer to where you're supposed to be, who are you supposed to be surrounded or what are you supposed to be surrounded with. If you understand that, I think you find more peace and you're happier. Life is just better. I gotta say something. I wish that I could play with you here to the game that they used to play, the pelota vasca. Because I feel like I'm enjoying this conversation so much and you're so good at revolverla. Two things can be right and two things can be very wrong. I'm okay with it, I think. I'm sure. I'm alright with it. I want to play also. I would love to play more ball games. I don't know enough. I've never played tennis. I've never played squash. I've never played. Did you ever play sports when you were a kid? At all? I used to dance. Okay, that's athletic. I used to dance and when I was 16, I used to play soccer. Oh, you did? Did you like it? Sister. Did she beat you? She was amazing. She basically was a defensa. She was defense and I was constantly the one who scored the goal. How do you call it? Striker? Yeah, I was striker, she was defense. Which I think that it's very much... It speaks to your relationship? Yeah. No, no, she strikes a lot too. Yeah, I bet. But she defends me so much. I think I defend her a lot. Yeah, yeah. I mean, obviously that support that you have with family is incredibly important. I don't think you can make the decisions that you make, take the risks you take with the confidence that you obviously have without knowing that there are people who are going to keep it very honest with you. They got my back. Yeah, they got my back. My mother got my back. She always supported me so much. My dad also, like my sister. I'm so lucky. Yeah, I have a really supportive family. You had a fun childhood? A good childhood. I think I know how I just get in my world. Basically, I would always be in my head and be having fun and just didn't care a lot. And music played a huge role in you disappearing into that space? I think that in a way, yes, because I think I would dissociate a lot. And I think I would be singing a lot in my head. Like, I think there was a lot of melodies would get stuck and I would stay in repetition with that. And I wouldn't even listen to what was happening or nothing. I would just be here. And yeah, I think that music has been always there in a way. Yeah, God is a stalker. No, but it's true. That's an impossible exercise, okay? Yeah. The first person trying, the first person of God in a song, it's impossible. That's why it's already from a sense of humor point of view. But in title, what the title suggests isn't necessarily what the song says. It's not literal. It's not like I don't feel like, you know, you're doing a character assassination on God's obsession with humanity or with yourself. It feels far more like I'm not even sure who God is sometimes on this record. Sometimes I feel like it's in human form. It's in a relationship. Sometimes I think you're referring to yourself. I think it's imperfect. It's in a imperfect way because it's made from a human and humans. So whatever it's made, human made, it will be imperfect. Just that it's in the divine, it's perfect. So yes, there will always be different ways of approaching it because I'm trying. It's an exercise, an impossible exercise, which is trying to put words and sounds into something that it's much beyond that. And you said in your post as well that, you know, like, I, again, to quote Leonard Cohen, I hope I never find the one song that you'll have in us, right? The idea to have the space and the runway to create for as long as God will allow you to create, right? And yet when I listened to this album, it's almost like it could be your life's work up to this point. It feels so powerful and impactful, like almost a desperation to get it all out onto one record. Does that make sense? That's interesting. I don't know what I felt though when I was doing it. It's that I don't know if something like this could be repeated. Right. I really had the feeling that this just sometimes come maybe once. I don't know if something like this could, at this level of intensity, I don't know if I could do it again. Were you emotional when you finished it or just relieved? I was about to have a mental breakdown. I really was about to because meeting the deadlines, there was a point where it was like, okay, if you really don't turn it in for the vinyl right now, the next week, you have to release it next year. And I was like, something in me told me like, I really cannot miss this window. Even if it's so important, and I always respect them so much. I knew this album had to come out in this year. I know it was now. Something in me told me, this you cannot extend forever, Rosalia. This has to come out now. And then I pushed myself so much. And I remember shaking all the time because that's how much the level of stress was. What was the last song you were working on when you knew it was time to stop? All of them at the same time. Oh, wow. It's always all of it at the same time. It's always such a process of, it's all simultaneous. Everything at the same time, everything happening at the same time. And I'm trying to learn how to exist with this uncertainty and all these things happening at the same time. And it felt like I had to abandon it and I had to just send it to be pressed in the vinyl. And then I changed more things for the digital. And some songs are a little bit different on the vinyl. Yeah, because it's been processed. It's been a process through making this project, the different stages of it. How long did you work with the London Symphony Orchestra for? Very little, like maybe three days or something, three, four days. You did all of this in three or four days? Everything was written. Everything was arranged. Everything was done with so much precision for us to go there, get there with the partituras, with the scores and be like, this is exactly what needs to happen. This is how we wanted it to be. We're just going to try a couple of different intentions. Maybe, you know, more pianissimo or less, or we're going to try this and that. But we had to be very precise. We had to be very much like, okay, no, actually this should be metales, or no, actually this should be just a timpani doing this or that. But it all was written. Like, I remember Porcelana, the hook of Porcelana. It was inspired in a piano type of bass, but with a timpani. And, you know, we had that very much written. And it was just getting to the studio and being like, this is the line. This is the melodic line we need. Boom. We record it. So super chirurgical. There are songs on this record, which if you wanted to take them away and individualize them and present them before the album came out or do videos too, that would go, okay, that is a pure extension of the Rose that we know, right? But you decided to introduce the album with Berghain, which is like... Yes. Which I love. And it's, I mean, it's so beautiful, but so front foot aggressive. It starts aggressive. Eve's tumour ends it aggressively. The statement is just so powerful. So can you speak to the thinking process behind saying, hey, I'm back. Eat this. Why not though? Why not? I think that maybe it's a piece that it's represented, the representativa of the orchestral intention throughout the album. And also I think that I really love when an artist does that to me. I really like when an artist slaps me. It's like it's doing something that I didn't, maybe doesn't move musically that I didn't see coming. Maybe just... Provocation to some degree. A conscious provocation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just a little, just a little. Not too much, but I feel like the album starts gentle. I have the intention of starting in a soft way. So I think that when people experience the project and the album, they will have the gentle feeling that I think it's so present throughout the album. But then a way of saying we are not going to do Motomami again. That's releasing Berghain. They're releasing Berghain first. It's releasing that and saying this is what we... Esta es la apuesta. And also it's one of the most that are intervenida. The orchestra está intervenida. So I think that it's interesting that how much the sound is pushed in that one. The orchestral sound is pushed in that one. And it has all the elements. I feel like it has it all. It has the full orchestra. It has the full choir. It has it all. And I think maybe it's the way of saying Motomami was minimalist. Few elements. This is maximalism. Yes. Like brutalista. Yes, yes. A lot, you know, big. And so I think that Berghain shows that. And there's all the elements in it. Named after the club? In a way, it's... I think that I've always had the desire to go to that club, but I never dared to. Same. But it's always been there, Berghain, Berghain. And then Berghain means Arboleda de la Montaña. It means a group of trees in the forest. And I feel like we all kind of have these labyrinths in our heads, these forest of thoughts that you can get lost in. You know, so it's like Berghain cannot be the heart, it can be your mind. Berghain, it's your mind. It's everybody's mind. The meeting of minds now that you've been able to establish with Björk, I feel like you are a child of Björk in some respects. Mother. Yeah. She's my mother, mother, mother, mother for sure. So now that, you know, you two have collaborated again and found a space to be able to work together again and figure it and build on this. Yeah. Let's talk about Björk. I love her. It's just the best. It's so inspiring. The most inspiring human, maybe. Her and Mati is me. They're my two favorites. Yeah. My mothers. And both are so free. And I think both are so irreverent. Both are so... Like I think it's what's most inspiring to me is how a woman can be, you know, a human being, can be so free and so amazing and so exciting and so many layers, so contradictory. It's amazing the way they create, the way they've been creating and they keep creating and they still have that passion. I saw Patti the other day here in Madrid. I saw her performing. She was performing Horses. That was insane. That was a masterclass. Seeing her spit on stage with so much grace and so much like not giving a ****. Not giving a ----. Hip hop energy. I was like, whoa. Yeah. Whoa. That's how I wanna... That's how it should always be. Just that you don't care. Reminding yourself to not care. I think that's important. I think there's a few mantras that I've had through this project. Not giving a ****. It's obviously... That's important. And then also I had this tea, cup of tea, sorry. This mug. This mug that I draw with my friend, Alexa. And I wrote in it... Which is like, write, stretch the bow and say the truth. And that's what I was all the time trying to do with this album. And I would wake up in the morning, do my tea in it, and I would always read it. And I'd be like, okay, that's what we are aiming for today. If pressure makes diamonds, why aren't we all shining? Yes. That is a very powerful statement, at least what I took from it. Especially at the end of that. I haven't heard the song because I've only got the digital. But I read the lyrics. Yes, yes, yes. I'd love to know what it means to you, that statement. I feel like we are all... We can all maybe relate in a way in feeling some sort of pressure. At least that's... Or maybe this that I'm saying is wrong because maybe not everybody feels like this. But a lot of people that I have around, I can tell that in a way we carry some weight, right? And damn, how contradictory it could be, you know, that pressure can make diamonds. Does this happen to us as humans? Maybe it does. Maybe there's some pressure applied from above that maybe brings the best of us out. Isn't that the story of this album, of Lux, to some degree? You know, the pressure you felt at the end and all the deadlines missed. What you set out in front of you to try to achieve with this record, the expanse of it. At least to me, I let the pressure come to me. As if I let that hand can pressure me until the point where I allow pressure to happen in my life. Because I know that I'm in this mission of making music and I know that I wanted it. I know that this is not esto no es gratuito. I begged for it. 10, 15 years ago, I begged for it. I wanted it so bad. What did you want? I wanted this. I wanted to be able to be a musician and do it hopefully at the biggest scale possible and make the biggest projects and tours, all of it. I wanted it all. And I knew that maybe that would be being always in this kind of like al borde de quebrarme, al borde of breaking. And so that's where I'm always. I'm always in this about to break, about to break. And I cannot complain. I can complain. That's not true. I can complain. I can complain, but I can complain. But at the same time, I try to not complain too much because that was my desire. I asked God to push me. And so that's how I feel because that always maybe brings the best. How important was the arrival? At the end of Motomami, it worked. I'm on the world stage. People are interested and excited by what I create. They seem to like me as a person and who I am. How important was getting to that place for you to be able to make this record? I guess what I'm asking is, to your point, you couldn't have done this two albums ago. I don't think so. No. And also, I don't think that I could have sung how I'm singing in this album. What changed? The way I'm writing, for example. It's allowing me to sing in another way also. You cannot rush things. And in order for me, in Motomami, I remember I wanted already to be singing, pushing the boundaries of my voice, how I did in this album. But I couldn't do that yet. Why? Because I've been thinking about it for these last years. And I'm like, why couldn't I? And it's because of the writing. I wasn't able to write in a way that I could allow myself to sing like this. There has to be an openness and a surrender that just comes like this. If you are living like this, if you are allowing it to happen, if you are writing from this place, then you can sing from this place. Then you can explain things from this place. Because it's your truth. And maybe my truth in that moment, even if I had the desire that my truth was another one and I was in another point of my life and it was another journey, another type of journey. And I feel like spirituality has always been around for me. In one way or another, it's always been around. And my connection with God, it's always been there. It feels like when that rush of speed of two, three albums and Botomami was so stylistic and more materialistic, openly materialistic. More grounded, I think. Less searching the verticality. It was more about, oh, the world is... I'll take that, I'll take this, I'll take this, I'll take this. Yes, like the world is my... I like what Addison says, the world is my oyster. Yes, like, let me just, you know, open this. Let me open this, let me play with this. Let me make a jewelry out of this. What's behind this door? And you'll give me this? I'd like that. This is... Yes, yes. Like, kind of like this. Kind of like, I'm not gonna try to talk too much about the contradictions that I might feel about being placed in this... I'm just gonna have fun with it and explore it. But it is artificial. And I don't mean that as a criticism. There's a lot of artificiality that goes into this world. Even the idea of going on stage and creating a connection for two hours is meaningful for those two hours, but the love is different. It's not like love. It's like a different love. I get what you're saying, but also, I think that anything that is extreme might be performative. So being two hours exposed in a stage in front of a thousand people, there's an extreme in it, right? Or, yeah, I feel like anything... These days, I've been thinking about extreme femininity, it's performative as much as extreme masculinity. And maybe it's just anything that is pushed to the extreme will always have some sort of, like, performativo. I think everything's performative, isn't it? To some degree. I mean, in a construction, no? Always in how you present yourself to the world, in how you communicate to the others, there's always some sort of construction. And maybe an artist does that, maybe even to the more extreme, which is construir un avatar, construir una obra, construir un momento, you know? And then artists like David Bowie just accepted that. They were just like, oh, 100%. I don't need to pretend that this is anything but shape-shifting. Yes, or the same with Nick Cave, which I've been obsessed during making this album. I've been listening a lot, and I've been listening a lot of Bach, a lot of Mozart, but also a lot of, like, Strokes, Nick, The Smiths. But I really like Nick Cave because of that acceptance of I can be something that I'm not all the time. I can sing a murder ballad right in front of you. Skull. I can tell the story in all of its layers. Yes, it's theatrical. There's so much theatrical. And accepting that, accepting that you are creating a fiction, and I love that. I heard you playing a bit of the Strokes, actually, in your live stream that day. And something about the way Julian sings, and you can't quite make out what he's saying, so you have to lean in. I think he's so good. I already told him. I think that he's so good. I love his writing. He thought that I was messing with him, and I was not. And I meant it, that I really like his writing. And I think he's so unique, and I would love one day to write with him. Because I feel like, you know, when you write with other people, they can push you to do things in different ways and to understand writing from another point of view. And I'm really interested in always learning. But that must be open to you now that you spend so much time writing just from your perspective. This Hot Lux has been an exercise in pushing yourself as a writer to get to the truth. Yes, and I didn't try to write 50 songs, no. You know, sometimes I've heard that people, I've never did this in an album, of writing 60 songs, 50 songs, and then you decide which ones you want to finish. It's like, that's not how I do. That's not what I did. I chose to do the pieces that I really wanted to do, like, let's say, Anaria, and then a song more inspired in Raviel Aduilla, which is this Sufi woman, so venerada in Islam. Which song is that? La Llugular. And there's Arabic in it. So, you know, like, I was like, okay, I'm going to do a song like this, and a song like this. And I focus on this, the idea I want to do, and I execute it. And I don't try to make 50 songs. I try to do 18. But you finish them. Yeah, I finish them. You honor them. You don't sit down and go, okay, I'm uninspired by that. It's like, no, I must push through and see this through. Yes, yes, exactly. Not opening a lot of parts. Opening this, as I was saying before, and try to finish it. Can you talk about La Llugular for a second? Because that song is so powerful and so beautiful, and the ending is just incredible, and it sits so perfectly in the album sequence as well. Can you tell us a little bit about the story behind that song? So this woman, Rabia, she used to say, she used to speak, and people would write what she was saying. And apparently, she would talk a lot about the idea of loving God, por Dios mismo, querer a Dios por Dios mismo, not because trying to get a reward, not because trying to do something out of fear. It should be just por el amor, por Dios mismo. And there's also, I think, something so beautiful when I've been reading more about Islam, la cultura islamica, and it's so interesting how this conception of everything connected. Everything is connected with everything, right? And I was trying to write and express that the best I could in the outro of it. When I say, lo grande y lo pequeño, right? And then that goes to micro. Exacto, el micro y el macro, and the juxtaposition of it, right? And the stretch of it. And that force, that tension between both, it felt exciting to me how between lines, I could be pushing that, stretching that. And I think it might be my favorite part. Sometimes that feeling of lo pequeño y lo grande siendo lo mismo, at least it's something I experienced, and I wanted it to put in a song. It's clear you have very high observation abilities. Even just what you said about Los Angeles and how the trees grow against the pavement. I love that because it's so cool. It's like you think you won, but you didn't. We will win in the end. At the end. We will win. Yes. And all the roots, you call it? All the roots. It's a very powerful lesson. It's such a simple thing. Most people step over them or walk their dogs over them, but it actually says everything you need to know, which is we are temporary. Beautiful, yes. And I like to not fight them. When I walk in LA, which I would try to do here and there during the week, just at least one hour, I would just be like at night or in the morning, just walking and listening to albums. I will listen a lot of albums. But I was trying to study classical music. So I would listen a lot of the classics. Some Chopin, some Wagner, some Mahler, a lot of Mahler, Albéniz, Granados, Faya, lots of Bach, a lot of the suites played by Paul Casals. Paul Casals really liked, and so a lot of cello, a lot of strings, lots of strums, and a lot of Maria Callas. Amazing. A lot of Maria Callas, yeah, which is my favorite of all time. And so I would remember, I would just be walking in the street and maybe you could have a little bit of like the roots, no, like it's annoying, but no, later I would be friends with it, of the fact that they make me go up and then they make me go down and that I would see them and I would appreciate how strong they are and big and how amazing is that they just break the pavimento. I really like when things break, they break something that it's not supposed to be broken and that's what they do. I want to talk to you about Memoria. Memoria, yes, yes. Carminio wrote those lyrics. Carminio is a great writer and I love that she used this fado, and she shared it with me. She sent that and I was like, wait, this is so crazy because this is so perfect. This is the thing that I'm talking about in this album, and how much you can forget who you were and who you are. And also remember me in my imperfections. How often people say when they're about to pass, remember me fondly or think fondly of me or remember the good sides of me. It's like, just remember it all. And I like how you sing and there's a moment in that where your voice changes and it becomes a deeper resonant experience. That's really like in that moment, it's just a very powerful change in the way that you're performing the song. What inspired you to do that? These lyrics now after singing with the chest so open and everything, now there's a confessional moment. A lot of times memories, there are memories that are real and there are others that are a little bit fabricated. And there's a vulnerability in it. Most of them. Yeah, I mean, right? Like there's both. And maybe I was just like, okay, this is kind of a confession to say that there might be memories of my life that I might be more true than others. And maybe sometimes I explain it in a way and sometimes I explain it in another. But every time I explain it, in that moment, if I'm explaining it, that's gonna be my truth. This is my truth and there's truth in it. And I like how imperfect memory is. And yeah, I think that it was just trying to have some dynamics in the song where it would be a little bit more soft, lower. I wanted to end with this list. Relic? Yeah, yeah. True stories? Some. Some? Some. Okay. A lot. Okay. Maybe a lot not. Who knows? You lost a lot of time in LA. Who knows? That's fact. Did you lose your heels in Milan? I think some I've missed because I lose so many things every time I'm traveling with suitcases. I've learned how to travel with just one or two. I'm trying to be better at it. Yeah, keep it simple. Keep it simple. Yeah. And then I'm fucked if I lose the heel. Lost my smile in the UK. I've laughed a lot in UK also, by the way. Okay, I did. It's just that, you know, here and there, it will be rainy. And... I lost my faith in DC. Yeah. The sky was born in Buenos Aires. Yes. It's the most beautiful sky I've ever seen in my life. The sky is so close. The sky is like you can reach it. You could like almost like... Ceilings like that. You could eat it. Take the clouds and save it with you. You could, you know, like the sky is crazy there. The colors and the proximity. I cried in Japan. I love Japan. Yeah. And Japan, Japan put me in my feelings. Japan is like this juxtaposition between playfulness and like, whoa, parque de atracciones, like an amusement park. Whoa, this, that colors so much... ¿Cómo se dice? Stimulation. But I find it calming. For my sense, yes. Don't you find it calming? But also that. Calming also to a point where it's... You're gonna be in touch with that sadness that you didn't wanna face, or that whatever, that nostalgia, that whatever, it's gonna come out. You're not gonna be able to fight it. That's how powerful Japan is. We are finishing this conversation in Madrid. Yeah. There's a lousy love out there somewhere in Madrid. ¡Ay, Dios mío! ¡Ay, Dios mío! I can't believe it is. I had, yeah, I had una historia de amor aquí. A tough one, a tough love. Yeah. You are no saint, but... I'm just a human. I'm just Rosalia. But you're blessed. But I have so much blessings in my life that I always me siento agradecida. That I'm so grateful for. Yeah.