Maps of Music

Lux (2025)

Where the lyrics of Lux take you, and where it was really made.

The album's title is Latin for light, yet its listening parties were held in complete darkness, with the words 'complete darkness' projected before the music began.

Key places

AIR Studios in London (2025)

Recording site AIR Studios — AIR Studios is listed as a place where this album was recorded. The album's sessions were held in the United Kingdom among other countries. Google Maps · Apple Maps

How to get there: See the map for directions.

Larrabee Sound Studios in Los Angeles (2025)

Recording site Larrabee Sound Studios — Larrabee Sound Studios is listed as a place where this album was recorded. The album's sessions were held in the United States among other countries. Google Maps · Apple Maps

How to get there: See the map for directions.

L'Auditori in Barcelona (2025)

Recording site L'Auditori — L'Auditori is listed as a place where this album was recorded. The album's sessions were held in Spain among other countries. Google Maps · Apple Maps

How to get there: See the map for directions.

Monastery of Montserrat (2025)

Recording site Monasterio de Montserrat — The Monasterio de Montserrat is listed as a place where this album was recorded. The album's sessions were held in Spain among other countries. Google Maps · Apple Maps

How to get there: See the map for directions.

Studios La Fabrique in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence (2025)

Recording site La Fabrique studio — Studios La Fabrique is listed as a place where this album was recorded. The album's sessions were held in France among other countries. Google Maps · Apple Maps

How to get there: See the map for directions.

Album story

Overview

• Lux: fourth studio album by Spanish singer Rosalía
• Released 7 November 2025 through Columbia Records
• Recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra under the conduction of Daníel Bjarnason
• Rosalía serves as executive producer
• Physical editions contain 18 tracks; digital editions omitted three of them
• Digital reissue Lux (Complete Works) released 17 April 2026 with all 18 tracks
• Track listing split across four movements, with lyrics in 14 languages, each tied to a different female saint

Background

• Follows the third studio album Motomami (2022) and its world tour the same year
• Twenty-date festival run through the Americas and Europe in 2023
• Released the collaborative extended play RR with Rauw Alejandro in 2023
• Rosalía first mentioned working on new material during the Motomami promotion week
• Instagram posts in August 2025 included pentagrams, recording studios and Catholic art as teasers
• Shared the sheet music for the then-unknown Berghain on Substack on 13 October 2025
• Official announcement followed the next day, confirming title and release date

Recording

• The New York Times described the creation as taking more than two years; Billboard said the better part of three years
• Much of the process went to learning how to write and sing in other languages
• Rough drafts often started with Google Translate before going to professional translators and phonetics teachers
• Sessions took place from 2023 to 2025 in France, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States
• Charlotte Gainsbourg provided linguistic input for Jeanne; Justice did so for Sauvignon Blanc
• Rosalía said the album was created 97 percent by herself
• Mio Cristo Piange Diamanti took a year and was created in Miami and Los Angeles

Cover

• Shows Rosalía against a blue background in a white outfit resembling a nun's religious habit and veil
• Eyes closed, lips coloured gold, arms hugging herself under the outfit's torso
• Photographer Noah Dillon said he was approached in late 2024 by Rosalía and her sister Pili
• The vinyl foldout contains nearly eighty images

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

Tracklist

Disc 1

Disc 2

Sources: musicbrainz.org

Artist

Early life and career

• Rosalía Vila Tobella, born 25 September 1992 in Sant Cugat del Vallès, Catalonia, Spain.
• Studied musicology at the Catalonia College of Music, graduating in 2017.
• Early interest in flamenco, especially after discovering Camarón de la Isla.

Debut and El mal querer

• Debut album Los Ángeles (2017) made with Raül Refree.
• Second album El mal querer (2018) mixed flamenco with pop and urban music; won a Latin Grammy for Album of the Year.
• Ranked 315th on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

International career

• Motomami (2022) embraced reggaeton; best reviewed album of 2022 on Metacritic.
• Lux (2025) fused art pop and classical elements; praised by critics.
• Thirteen number-one singles in Spain, the most for a local female artist.
• Two Grammy Awards, eleven Latin Grammy Awards, and a BRIT Award.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

Reception

At release

• The Associated Press's Maria Sherman gave four and a half stars out of five, calling the album far more complex and iconoclastic than obvious
• The Guardian's Alexis Petridis gave five stars out of five, calling it a truly compelling, involving experience
• The Independent's Roisin O'Connor gave five stars out of five, declaring it a masterpiece
• NME's Rhian Daly gave five stars out of five, calling it a masterpiece
• Rolling Stone's Julyssa Lopez gave five stars out of five, calling it a transcendent album that sounds like nothing else in music right now
• Clash's Shahzaib Hussain gave nine out of ten, calling it an antidote to viral soundbites
• Financial Times's Ludovic Hunter-Tilney gave four stars out of five, saying it arrives with conceptual grandeur that would make a prog rock band jealous
• Pitchfork's Gio Santiago called it a heartfelt offering of avant-garde classical pop
• The Observer's Kitty Empire wrote the album places Rosalía in the conversation surrounding great female auteurs such as Kate Bush and Björk

Reappraisal

• Metacritic weighted average of 95 out of 100 from 17 critic scores, recorded as the site's best-reviewed album of 2025
• Later became the second best-reviewed album of 2025 on Metacritic
• Ranked eighteenth-best album of all time on Metacritic
• AnyDecentMusic? weighted average of 9.2 out of 10 from 19 critic scores

Records

• Debuted at number 4 on the Billboard 200 with over 46,000 album-equivalent units, including 19,000 in pure album sales
• First top 10 album for Rosalía on the Billboard 200
• Debuted at number 1 in Spain with simultaneous platinum certification
• Number 2 in Germany and France; number 4 in Italy and Ireland; number 7 in Sweden
• Debuted at number 4 on the UK Official Charts, the highest-charting album by a Spanish female artist in that market
• Debuted at number 15 on the ARIA Albums Chart in Australia
• 42.1 million Spotify streams in its first full tracking day, a record for a female Spanish-language artist
• Twelve of its fifteen available tracks charted in Spotify's daily global top fifty

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

Trivia

• The title Lux is Latin for light, and Associated Press writer Maria Sherman speculated that it also alludes to luxury (Catalan: luxe), matching the album's grand orchestral sound.
• At the New York City listening party, the phrases about complete darkness were projected onto a giant white sheet before the music began.
• The Barcelona listening party was held at the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, where Rosalía lay still in the middle of the room covered in white cloth as guests entered; about nine hundred attendees were estimated.
• Besides Catalan and Spanish, Rosalía sings in twelve additional languages on the album, including Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese, Latin, Mandarin and Sicilian.
• Berghain includes a lyrical phrase originally spoken by Mike Tyson.
• Fans who attended the New York City listening party were given Lux-branded lighters before departing.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

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