It has taken three years of work; composing and singing in 13 languages; running a brief but impeccably polished media campaign;; and winning unanimous approval (98/100) from the voices that feed ‘Metacritic’ for Rosalía to see ‘LUX’ rise to number one among the most-streamed albums worldwide on Spotify.
The Swedish platform, which updates its most-listened charts weekly, shows that ‘LUX’ was the most-played worldwide from 7 to 13 November, leaving behind Taylor Swift’s ‘The Life of a Showgirl’, which premiered on 3 October and had been comfortably topping the charts.
Rosalía’s LUX already boasted being the most streamed album in day by any Spanish-language artist with more than 42 million steams of its first day.
Her latest release although dominated by Spanish also explores the hagiographies of different saints around the world in their respective languages, such as the Ukrainian Olga of Kyiv or the Italians Francis and Clare of Assisi.
In a work described by the artist herself as maximalist and which moves through children’s choirs, fados, waltzes and string ensembles across four operatic movements, Rosalía delves into her desire to commune with a higher entity (‘Sexo, violencia y llantas’); the sadness of a love that is fading (‘Berghain’); the subsequent onset of apathy (‘La Perla’); and even how her own death will be celebrated (‘Magnolias’).
Her third, previous studio album, 2022’s ‘Motomami’, had already made its mark on global platforms.
With 5.79 million streams in the first 24 hours after its release, her dabble with duality, reflected in both the lyrics and the production, was previously the second-best Spanish-language launch in Spotify’s history, only surpassed by Bad Bunny.