Rosalía (Post-Flamenco Art-Pop From Spain)

great post

i think it's a novel way of expressing emotions typical to a pop song & to me that isn't "generic" ... unless you want to call pop music in general "generic," which is a POV one can have just not one that i share personally.

It's possible find the chorus melody generic (as I do), and the chorus lyrics nothing special, without calling pop music in general generic...

the idea of a “generic” melody is a slippery one to me but yeah i mean everything comes down to taste at the end of the day, which, you know, hey

Like if this were track 5 on, say, a random Selena Gomez CD, I'd skip it every time. It's an unremarkable song to me, guess I'm not hearing what I should.

What really gets me about Rosalía is that she has an amazing voice (as I recently reconfirmed by revisiting El Mal Querer), but she chooses not to "use it" now... she sings in this pinched tone... idk

it's funny the song "LLYLM" made me think of in terms of production was selena "bad liar" at least in terms of the bulk structure under the verses. but rosalia is an infinitely better artist than her in every facet and my feelings about those two songs are reflected in that

What really gets me about Rosalía is that she has an amazing voice (as I recently reconfirmed by revisiting El Mal Querer), but she chooses not to "use it" now... she sings in this pinched tone... idk

― degenerative AI (morrisp), Monday, January 30, 2023 5:37 PM (forty-nine minutes ago)

i feel this... i have a huge gripe w/ "la fama" bcuz she sings it w/ this really flat affect on record & then when you see her do it live there's so much more emotion in her vocals & it changes everything about the song for me. the official version of her performance on "SNL" has been taken off youtube for some reason but there's still bootlegs on there that spell this out. otoh i think the parts on motomami where she really lets her voice go really standout for reasons of scarcity but i get where you're coming from

i hope she goes more in this direction, i would personally very much welcome a rosalia club anthem.

At least I don’t hate it like I hate Chicken Teriyaki. This is alright… not a winner for me but certainly not bad. She can do way better.

It’s growing on me though… wouldn’t be surprised if I end up with regret for underrating it on first listens. Already happened to me with Motomami.

aiming for a bigger audience is hardly cynical; it's just good business. you want to play arenas and reach a worldwide crowd, people gotta sing along to your choruses.

A week more of listening sees me coming around on this song as a casually enjoyable pop track, if not anywhere near the many heights of motomami

Aka moka was right

drinking her "transformation"-flavoured Coke and I do not taste transformation of any sort

her EP with Rauw Alejandro is out today

like it a lot, tho she completely overpowers him vocally

also, they are apparently engaged!

the Beso video makes that pretty clear!

they have been an item for some time now and have shown admirable restraint by keeping away from each other’s recent albums

I have the impression Rosalía's has used her higher soprano range more and more in the last years and it's now one of my favorite aspects of her performance, the way she lets her voice thin to flute-like sounds, and the contrasts she finds with piano etc. For example the first 40 seconds of Beso = wow.

Song is good enough to post I think

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXQQAsIhHMw
Rosalia - Beso

It's a very good chorus

Ok I've listened to this all day. This song radiates happiness.

New single/video. It's pretty good. I need to listen to it again without the video to see if it holds up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F84pjEryeC0

I listened to it without the video, can confirm. Good lil tune.

Hard to watch that video favorably, in light of how cool & creative her videos was were.

The new song (a collaboration with Björk as a legal benefit for some Icelandic villagers who are suing fisheries for environmental damage) is pretty good:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jsi2Tgvx6A

Backstory:

Björk and Rosalía have joined forces to release a powerful new single “Oral.” Produced by the artists alongside Sega Bodega, “Oral” marks the first collaboration between Björk and Rosalía. It aims to shed light on the alarming cruelty, and severe environmental and ecological consequences of open-pen ocean salmon farming in Björk’s native country, Iceland.

“Oral” dates back two decades - first written by Björk between 1997’s Homogenic and 2001’s Vespertine, the track was lost to her archives after feeling like it wasn’t the right fit for an album. Björk rediscovered the song after being reminded of its name while on tour in Australia in March 2023, the same month a report was released about the devastating impact of poorly regulated, Norwegian-owned commercial salmon farming operations on Iceland’s native ecosystems.

After deeply resonating with the cause, and as a passionate campaigner and protester for much of her life, Björk enlisted Rosalía to help bring the song to life and in turn raise awareness of the issue. The cruel practice of open-pen farming, introduced to Iceland after Norwegian businessmen began purchasing fish farms in the country’s fjords, involves intensively farming fish by penning them into open water nets that are anchored in natural waterways, where the fish are kept enclosed until they reach marketable size. This accelerates the fish’s development and, in many cases creates genetic mutations in the salmon’s DNA, as well as being a breeding ground for a number of parasites and diseases. The industry in Iceland has grown tenfold since 2014, producing under 4,000 tones to 45,000 in 2021, with it now estimated that the annual production could be up to 106,500 tonnes. Iceland has the largest untouched natural area in Europe, and the waste and pollution associated with open-pen farming threatens to permanently damage its entire ocean ecology. Lack of regulation and the industry being largely unsupervised has also meant that thousands of these genetically altered, diseased salmon regularly escape the pens and swim upriver to Iceland’s highlands, where devastating genetic mixing occurs and endangers the future of Iceland’s wild salmon population.

Proceeds from “Oral” will be used to support a legal case against the fisheries, brought forth by residents of the town of Seyðisfjörður on the eastern side of Iceland.

More comments about the song on the Bjork 2017 album thread