Rosalía sang in 14 languages, each tied to a female saint, on Lux
For her fourth album, Rosalía spent two to three years learning to sing in languages she does not speak, from Ukrainian to Mandarin, starting with rough drafts in Google Translate and then working with translators and phonetics coaches. Each language honours a holy woman, from Hildegard of Bingen to a Buddhist nun, backed by the London Symphony Orchestra.
Lux, Latin for light, came out on 7 November 2025 on Columbia Records, recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra under Icelandic conductor Daníel Bjarnason, who first met the singer on the day sessions began and described her as intensely hands-on with every note. Its songs are grouped into four movements. Beyond her native Catalan and Spanish, Rosalía sings in twelve further languages, among them Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese, Latin and Sicilian, and critics noted that whole songs, not just stray lines, are given over to them.
The inspirations span faiths. Alongside the Christian mystics Hildegard of Bingen and Olga of Kiev are the Sufi mystic Rabia Basri, the Jewish prophet Miriam and the Buddhist nun Vimala; Rosalía said many rose from violent or materialistic lives towards holiness. She also drew on the philosopher Simone Weil and the Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector. Raised Christian but attached to no single religion, she described the record as a gift back to God, while stressing her interest in mysticism over religious rules. Not everything is devotional: The Guardian's Alexis Petridis detected an ex-boyfriend taking some heat.
The rollout was theatrical. In October she posted the sheet music for the unreleased 'Berghain' on Substack, prompting musicians to perform their own versions, then unveiled the cover, showing her in a nun-like white habit with gold lips, live from a Madrid square. She insists no artificial intelligence was used and says she made the album '97%' herself, though collaborators include Björk, the fado singer Carminho and Pharrell Williams.
Critics were unanimous. Lux became Metacritic's second best-reviewed album of 2025 and its eighteenth best of all time, and it set a Spotify record for a female Spanish-language artist with 42.1 million streams in a single day. It earned Rosalía her third Latin Grammy nomination for Album of the Year.
Source: Lux (Rosalía album)
