Spanish superstar Rosalía's latest album, Lux, has dominated global charts and sparked intense debate, moving far beyond its initial 'nun-core' aesthetic to interrogate a world defined by perpetual crisis. The record, which debuted at number one in five countries and reached the Top 5 in both the UK and US, uses lavish religious imagery to explore profound themes of contradiction and moral complexity.
Imperial Phase Amidst Cultural Tension
The album's promotional campaign was an unmistakable statement of intent. From fashion-forward mysticism to bringing central Madrid to a standstill, the rollout positioned Lux as a global cultural event. This aligns with Rosalía's status as Spain's premier pop export, effectively acting as a one-woman campaign for la Marca España (Brand Spain) on the world stage.
However, the opulent framing of spiritual transcendence arrives at a jarring moment. During a severe cost-of-living crisis, and as the Vatican itself has criticised economic excess, the album's atmosphere of luxury initially struck a discordant note. Its embrace of conspicuously white national-Catholic aesthetics also raised questions about the messages being amplified by an artist of her immense reach.
An Intellectual Inquiry Into Binaries
To dismiss Lux as mere ecclesiastical pop, however, is to miss its deeper purpose. The album functions as a scholarly inquiry, continuing the intellectual rigour Rosalía displayed when her breakthrough album El Mal Querer served as her university thesis. Lux acts as an archive of female mystics, drawing on figures like Saint Teresa of Ávila and Hildegard von Bingen—women for whom devotion, authority, and eroticism intertwined.
The opening track sets the tone not with a declaration, but a desire: "to live between the two", loving both God and earthly pleasure. This refusal to settle into easy dualities is the album's core mechanic. In tracks like Reliquia, Rosalía sings "No soy una santa, pero estoy blessed" (I'm not a saint, but I am blessed), a line that carries the weight of heretical subversion, echoing philosopher Baruch Spinoza's excommunication for proposing God and nature as one.
Soundtracking the 'Permacrisis'
The album's resonance is amplified by the contemporary condition it soundtracks. In 2022, "permacrisis" was named word of the year, encapsulating an era where crisis is a permanent state. Sociologist Ronald Inglehart's work, referenced in critiques of the album, suggests such existential insecurity pushes societies toward authoritarianism and moral rigidity.
This theory finds disturbing confirmation in the Spanish context. Ultra-conservative actors have moved from the margins to the centre of public life, often via digital tools, framing themselves as moral defenders against a secular world. Tellingly, when the video for lead single Berghain premiered on YouTube, it was preceded by an ad from the Spanish bishops' conference titled "You too can be a saint"—a stark reminder that sanctity, too, is now algorithmically delivered.
Rosalía's work pushes back against the simplistic "las dos Españas" (the two Spains) binary that has long polarised the nation. Instead, Lux seeks to contain multitudes. In the climactic La Yugular, an all-encompassing love swells to abolish the concepts of heaven and hell. The song collapses scale repeatedly, suggesting "the entire galaxy fits in a drop of saliva," presenting the self as a site of both immense expansion and profound compression.
While the album occasionally veers into excess and its avoidance of direct politics can feel insulated, its ultimate achievement is its ambitious soundscape. It projects dense religious themes onto a maximalist sonic palette where the sacred and profane cohabitate in constant, thrilling tension. Lux doesn't offer resolution, but rather a demanding, exhilarating space to grapple with the complexities of a world unravelling.
