Rosalia’s Lux: Get to know the features from Bjork to flamenco stars

This week, Rosalía fans got the news they were waiting for: solid details on the Catalan pop star’s hugely anticipated fourth album. First we learned the album’s title (Lux) and the release date (November 7), announced via billboard. A press release shed more light on the project and promised music that traversed “feminine mystique, transformation and spirituality.” We also got a list of the “feminine voices” who will appear on the album.

At first glance, the list of guests suggests that Lux will be a celebration of Catalan musical traditions. Artists who, like Rosalía, have helped revolutionize flamenco, stand out: Carminho, Estrella Morente, and Silvia Pérez Cruz. But an appearance from Yahritza, a star of the regional Mexican subgenre urban sierreño, suggests ambitions that cover the Spanish diaspora. The “spirituality” themes will likely be prevalent on songs that feature the youth choir Escolania de Montserrat and chamber group Cor Cambra Palau de la Música Catalana. Such a roster makes the presence of artists of Björk and Yves Tumor, names more familiar to Rosalía’s stateside listeners, stand out.

Rosalía had previously discussed the album in an August interview with Elle, saying that the new project “doesn’t sound like my previous album at all.” Recorded with the London Symphonic Orchestra as conducted by Daníel Bjarnason, Lux will be Rosalía’s first without her go-to producer El Guincho since 2017’s Los Ángeles. Still, the list of featured artists is unlike any other on a major label pop release this year, and worth diving into. Below, you’ll find brief introductions to all the artists we know so far are making an appearance on Lux.

If you know who Rosalía is, you’re almost certainly a fan of Björk as well. But a quick primer if you’re stumped: the Icelandic singer behind classics like Post, Homogenic, and Vespertine set the stage for artists like Rosalía to push boundaries and develop new ways of thinking about pop music. They even collaborated on the 2023 song “Oral,” a charity track benefitting activists and groups protesting open pen fish farming in Iceland.

Maria do Carmo Carvalho Rebelo de Andrade, known by the mononym Carminho, is an icon of fado, a centuries-old Portuguese folk music. Rosalía herself is a fan, and performed one of her songs “Escrevi Teu Nome No Vento” on the Motomami tour. Carminho released her sixth album Portuguesa in 2023 and continues to tour worldwide.

Over 20 years ago, Estrella Morente helped introduce flamenco music to a new generation of listeners with her debut album Mi Cante y Una Poema (My Songs and a Poem), a record which sold over 100,000 copies. Releases like that no doubt had a profound effect on Rosalía, who came to prominence in 2018 with her sophomore album El Mal Querer, a project of provocative flamenco-pop experiments. Morente sang the song “Volver” from the 2006 Pedro Almodovar movie of the same name; this year, Rosalía called the song “really important” to her.

“I sing to cleanse,” Silvia Pérez Cruz said in 2018, “to bring about an emotional revolution which awakes us to defend ourselves from everything else.” The classically trained Catalan musician has been a prolific force for flamenco in Spain, forming the quartet Las Migas and releasing her own acclaimed solo projects. Her 2012 song “No Te Puedo Encontrar (I Can’t Find You),” won Best Original Song at the 2012 Goya Awards (Spain’s equivalent of the Oscars).

The Escolania de Montserrat is a Catalan boys’ choir found at the Santa Maria de Montserrat in Barcelona, with history dating back to the 14th century. A popular destination for tourists and pilgrims, the location also doubles as a boarding school for the children of the choir who are accepted into the program.

Founded in 1990, this Catalan chamber choir started “with the goal of sharing universal choral music, helping to recover Catalan musical heritage and encouraging new compositions.” Its 16 members have toured original works and established choral canon within Spain and around the world.

After forming the urban sierreño trio Yahritza y Su Esencia with her brothers Armando and Jairo, Yahritza Martinez shot to stardom within the regional Mexican music genre with the 2022 hit “Soy El Unico,” with the group winning Best New Artist at the 2022 Latin Grammys. Their debut album, Obsessed, dropped that same year.

After beginning their career as an electronic musician spanning harshest noise to most serene ambient, Yves Tumor entered their mutant rock era with 2018’s Safe in the Hands of Love. That transition was completed in earnest with 2020’s Heaven To a Tortured Mind, a glammed-up gutter clogged with swinging disco and grungy post-punk. Their crossing paths with Rosalía isn’t exactly out of left field, but it should be fascinating nonetheless.