On her new album, Lux, Rosalía is opening up about her faith in God like never before.
The 33-year-old Spanish singer, known for blending flamenco, pop and avant garde production, has subtly referenced her faith before — flashes of devotion on Motomami, spiritual symbolism woven into visuals — but Lux is the first time she brings those themes forward with real clarity.
Her single “Berghain,” which features Björk, pulls from the visions of 12th-century abbess Hildegard of Bingen. “Divinize” plays with biblical imagery, and “God Is a Stalker” imagines God speaking in the first person. Rosalía kept a world map in her studio with pins marking every saint she researched.
“It was like a huge puzzle,” she said. “My love is plural and infinite, and it’s about trying to fit as much as I can so everybody could feel welcome when they hear this album.”
The spirituality isn’t a gimmick. Rosalía grew up going to church with her grandmother and still gravitates toward the habits that shaped her early faith. She said she still prays every night and reads the Bible regularly. She specifically mentioned the Gospel of Matthew as a favorite.
“Everything he says, I think it’s bars,” she said.
Her faith also shapes the way she navigates criticism and contradiction, especially in a hyper-reactive online culture.
“I see a lot of this cancel culture happening in general, in internet, for everyone,” she said. “I think there’s a need of much more culture of forgiveness. I wouldn’t cancel a friend because we think different. And definitely, I always feel like I have so much to learn and I always try to do things better. But at the same time, I like a lot something that Barthes said about the ‘anti-hero who can bear contradiction without shame.’ We all have contradictions. It’s impossible not to in a world as imperfect and contradictory as the one we live in. So I try to stay connected with what my mission is, which is to make music from the most loving place possible.”
She told The Guardian that her faith has also helped her through moments of isolation and difficulty, including vocal cord surgery at 16, a 500-mile solo walk along the Camino de Santiago at 19 and the two years she spent in Florida creating her previous album Motomami.
Rosalía doesn’t present herself as a saint on the project and says the women she studied weren’t perfect either. What unites them, she says, is honesty and devotion.
“The beauty of art is putting things on the table and proposing questions,” she said. “Finding more questions than answers.”
Rosalía also said the album intentionally holds light and darkness side by side.
“I’m not glorifying evil, but darkness is present in life,” she said. “Sometimes, when you put opposites beside each other, you can understand both better.”
That contrast is built into the title itself. Lux is Latin for light, and she said the darker moments were necessary “in order for the light to be even brighter.”
