Our Premier Album of 2025: The Artist's Lux Takes the Top Place.

On the surface, this work might appear more like a challenging academic quiz rather than the latest popular music album from a musician whose previous hit was a collaboration with a global K-pop star. Broken across four different sections and performed in 13 languages, this is a head-spinning classical-tinged opus that delves into female mystique, religious ascent, and corporal change, frequently through the lens of various female saints. The dissolution of a love affair—a topic treated with raw openness on another major 2025 album—is launched heavenward here, buoyed by the lush presence of a major orchestra and input from a Pulitzer-winning composer within a vast roll call of contributors. The pure audacity alone makes the efforts of other artists appear quite small.

Transcending Scholarly Pretense

That Lux manages to transcend dry intellectual chin-stroking is nearly miraculous, with full praise belonging to Rosalía. While this is not her first album to alchemize historical sounds with modern styles, its stakes are much higher on Lux, and the balancing act far more pronounced. What really raises this fourth album, beyond its multilayered tunes, dense compositions, and inherent theatricality, proves to be an essential spirit of joy. Much like the legendary artist during her peak, there is a captivating sense to the vocalist's voice that pulls the listener into its tornado. When she is tearing hearts apart, you nevertheless desire to be right there for the journey.

A Signature Example of Exuberance

This playful energy shines brightly on a stirring piano-led ballad about Saint Clare. It bathes in a string-drenched melancholy over more than four moments. Suddenly, everything falls silent, to reveal we hear a spontaneous giggle and a comment before a comically over-the-top orchestral surge crashes in like cartoonish force. The song then shifts into the wild track featuring racing orchestration, an imposing choir, and a cameo appearance from none other than Björk.

"The charm with Lux is that you rarely exactly understand—nor want to predict—what it will go to next."

Almost each track concludes in a completely distinct place from where it began. One moment explores the fleeting trappings of fame with a featherlight orchestration before collapsing in digital chaos. Elsewhere, a song that recalls the artist's previous trap-infused style begins off dark and sinister, with prowling vocals, before fluttering flamenco handclaps and an angelic chorus enter to soften its rough corners.

The Bridge Of Experiment & Accessibility

A key achievement on the album involves navigating the gap of radical innovation and broad appeal. It is little surprise that it has become the artist's first release to crack the upper reaches of key markets: its heart contains a suite of utterly undeniable hits. A song sung entirely in English builds on a chorus that feels to collect increasingly nagging hooks while it spirals upward. This feat is echoed by another powerful track that expands and constricts, weaving multiple tunes like a complex weave.

• A dance-infused number charms with its jaunty, theatrical drama and a chant-along chorus.
• Lyrically, it shares the pop culture impact of contemporary breakup songs, lambasting a former partner labeled an "emotional terrorist".
• Across the album, the singing carry a sharp edge, like a fairy-tale figure hiding a blade: "Top prize in acting like a scoundrel / You have the podium of disappointment."

A Maximalist Banquet for the Soul

This album is pop on a maximalist level, a hungry reach for high Art amid of looming artificial blankness. It rejects solipsism in favor of sublime transcendence, creating an over-the-top spectacle that masterfully controls its built-in ridiculousness. This is an abundant source of hidden treasure that requires patience to fully explore but doesn't feels like a chore. Where some big pop albums of the year seemed like a meager scraps, Lux offers a sumptuous banquet at which the characters at it, perhaps tipsy on holy drink, flit between discussions about historical saints, the galvanizing sensation of soul-shattering grief, and common gossip about useless men. It is a contemporary theatrical production from pop's most endlessly inventive practitioner.