Rosalia is a Spanish singer. In 2025 she released an album called Lux. When the year-end lists were cobbled together by all of the major music magazines, many critics declared that Lux was the Album of the Year in the world. Furthermore, many of those same critics declared that today’s song “Berghain” was the Best Original Song. If you haven’t heard of either the album, the song nor the singer then consider this to be your invitation to see what all the fuss was about. It isn’t easy to be original anymore but Rosalia has managed to be just that with Lux. While I will get to “Berghain” in a few moments, it is worth starting out by looking at the concept for the album as a whole and why Lux stands as one of the music world’s most audacious albums in recent memory. It was not for nothing that this album was lauded as it was.
One of the first things to be aware of when discussing Lux is how it is organized. Going back hundreds of years to the age of the classical symphonic composers such as Mozart and Beethoven, there has long been a tradition of structuring symphonies in four movements. These four movements were allegro (an uptempo introduction to the overall story), adagio (a slower, more introspective look into the heart of the story, minuet and trio or scherzo (slower or faster dance sequences, dependent on the tone of the story) and, finally, the rousing conclusion known as sonata-allegro or rondo. Well, the songs on Lux are organized into suites in much the same way as classical symphonies are structured. The entire album is meant to touch on topics such as religion, spirituality, culture and the experience of being a woman in the midst of it all. There are eighteen songs on this album sprinkled over the four broader movements or thematic sections. So, there are many who say that Lux is as much a classical album as it is a modern Pop album. That is no mean feat but there is so much more going on here.
Rosalia has stated that she drew much inspiration for this album from studying the lives of female saints from various religions and various countries and cultures. Rosalia is officially a Christian and, specifically, a Catholic but she claims to not adhere to any specific religion or ideology. She believes more in the notion of spirituality which, when coupled with the experiences of women throughout history and throughout society today, provides a powerful wellspring of inspiration for her and others to emulate and respect. As such, Rosalia has interwoven the biographies of over a dozen female saints, along with her own life stories, arriving at the tracks on this album. To honour those women as much as possible, Rosalia learned to sing in each of their native languages. As a result, she and her writing partners created songs that are sung, either in part or in their entirety, in thirteen different languages! In order to have those linguistic expressions fall in line with the classical structure of each composition, Rosalia worked for almost three years with translators and linguists in order to understand, not just each of the languages but, also, the tempo of their structures so that they fit into her structural vision for the album as a whole. An interesting sidenote is that all the while Lux was receiving so many positive reviews from music critics on their year-end lists, Bad Bunny was gearing up to host the Super Bowl and was having to constantly reassure nervous audience members that a musical performance using a language other than English was not only possible but, in the end, would probably be a real treat for music lovers. The Super Bowl was fine, as we suspected it would be. Perhaps music critics knew a little something in giving an album like Lux, with its themes of religion, spirituality and feminism, its classical music construction and its desire to express itself in as many different languages as possible so many flowers, too.
If this is your first exposure to the music of Rosalia then, by this point in the post you might be tempted to think that an album that straddles the line between classical and pop music, is based on the lives of saints and of feminism and that is sung in almost as many languages as are spoken at the United Nations is a heavy, plodding, preachy affair. Well, allow me to introduce you to the song “Berghain”. The video for “Berghain” that you will be able to watch in the links below comes from the 2026 Brit Awards. I can guarantee that you have not seen anything like this before. It is a thrilling, epic performance that is unlike anything that passes for modern music today. In a world where it is increasingly difficult to be original, Rosalia has accomplished that feat with “Berghain”. This song was inspired by Saint Hildegard of Bingen. Among the many things that Saint Hildegard of Bingen is noted for is her songwriting, specifically her creation of monophonic compositions (simple tunes without harmonies or accompaniment) and her determination to be a creative force at a time when women were not allowed to be artistically creative and expressive in public. Consistent with the overall structural theme of the album, this song is also constructed in four distinct movements or themes. The opening theme is sung by Rosalia and a choir in German, accompanied by a full orchestra. In the second movement, Icelandic superstar (and one of my favourite singers ever) Bjork takes over and sings in English for the most part. Bjork is one of the credited co-writers on this song. In the third movement, a singer who goes by the name Yves Tumor takes over and samples a line from an infamous Mike Tyson event that went notoriously wrong, as he menacingly sings “I’ll f*ck you ‘til you love me” again and again. Rosalia was initially accused of speaking about a potential experience of being raped but went on to clarify that she was really trying to express that feeling of being powerless against an overwhelming emotion. *(If you are interested, you can listen to the original Mike Tyson eruption here. ***On the Brit Awards telecast, the song aired without the profanity). In classical compositional structure, the fourth and final movement is supposed to bring the piece to a rousing conclusion and this is certainly the case with “Berghain”. The ending of the Brit Awards performance is as electrifying as anything I have seen since Michael Jackson moonwalked live for the first time. You know you are witnessing artistry on a completely different level with this song and it will leave you breathless. As I said off of the top of this post, Rosalia is nothing if not original and thoroughly audacious.
In a world drawing ever closer to authoritarianism and white nationalism, all run by rich white men, an album like Lux stands in stark contrast with its rich musical structure, its themes of spirituality and feminism, as well as its use of so many languages other than English. Rosalia invites you into her world of multi-culturalism and spirituality and allows you to experience another side of how life can be if all are allowed to come to the table freely as they are. For my money, given the choice, I would opt to follow Rosalia’s vision. There are some who say that its time for women to be given a chance to rule the world. Well, if Lux is representative of what that future would look like then count me in. I highly recommend that you give this album a spin sometime. Unless you are multi-lingual, you probably won’t understand all of the lyrical content but that is ok. Let each song wash over you and enjoy the musicality of it all, just as we did with Bad Bunny and the Super Bowl. You can always do a deeper dive into the background of individual songs from Lux that you like later on. For now, get ready for something special. “Berghain” is cued up and ready to go. This was the Song of the Year in 2025 for a reason. Absolutely phenomenal! Enjoy.
The link to the video for the song “Berghain” by Rosalia, ft. Bjork and Yves Tumor, can be found here.
The link to the official website for Rosalia can be found here.
The link to a website about Saint Hildegard of Bingen can be found here.
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