The Vatican praises new Rosalía album ‘LUX’ for 'provocative' songs about faith and spirituality

The Vatican has shared praise for Rosalía’s latest album ‘LUX’, in which the Spanish pop sensation draws inspiration from the stories of female saints.

Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, the Vatican’s prefect of the Dicastery for Culture and Education, has praised the singer and celebrated her exploration of religion throughout the album.

Speaking to Spanish news agency EFE, he said: “When a creator like Rosalía speaks of spirituality, it means that she captures a profound need in contemporary culture to approach spirituality, to cultivate an inner life.”

The Cardinal is not the only church leader to commend the 33-year-old singer-songwriter on ‘LUX’.

Xabier Gómez García, bishop of Sant Feliu de Llobregat, which encompasses Rosalía's hometown of Sant Esteve Sesrovires near Barcelona, wrote an open letter to his congregation. In it, he shared that while some of the songs are “provocative” (the track 'Dios es un stalker' - 'God Is a Stalker' – could fall in that category), the singer “speaks with absolute freedom and without hang-ups about what she feels God to be, and the desire, the thirst (to know God).”

He added: “When I listened to LUX and Rosalía speaking about the context of her album and the creative process, I found myself faced with a process and a work that transcended the musical. Here was a spiritual search through the testimonies of women of immense spiritual maturity.”

‘LUX’ represents a break from the Spanish artist's previous fusion of traditional flamenco stylings with modern-day pop, hip-hop and reggaeton. Backed by the London Symphonic Orchestra and the likes of Björk, Yves Tumor and even Daft Punk’s Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Charlotte Gainsbourg as composers, the album sounds like a haunting baroque opera punctuated by electronic effects and bolstered by infectious hooks.

It was described by a press release as exploring lyrical themes of "feminine mystique, transformation, and spirituality" and was indeed inspired by the lives of female saints - including German Benedictine abbess Hildegard of Bingen, Hebrew prophetess Miriam and Sufi mystic Rabia Al-Adawiya.

Arranged in four movements, Rosalía sings in 14 different languages throughout ‘LUX’, including her native languages Catalan and Spanish, as well as German, Arabic and Latin.

Shortly after the album’s release, it became the most streamed LP in a day on Spotify by a Spanish female artist, shattering the record previously held by Karol G. ‘LUX’ also dethroned Taylor Swift’s ‘The Life of a Showgirl’ as the world’s most-streamed album in a week.

In our review of this astonishing record, we wrote: “A few times in a generation there comes along a sound that so radically goes against the conventions of a genre that it redefines its very boundaries. (...) Rosalía’s fourth studio album is defined by how it sounds completely unlike anything else.”

In other words, expect this immersive and innovative modern masterpiece to feature very high in our end-of-year list of best albums.