Chris Schulz: Rosalía - LUX

The fourth studio album from Spanish singer Rosalía is a linguistic tour de force.

‘LUX’ is symphonic album, recorded in 14 different languages, its song’s inspired by the lives of various female saints.

Chris Schulz joined Jack Tame to share his thoughts on the album.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Time podcast
from News Talks at Be Really Hard.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
He love Madri m Mala Stimberia. Here Crystal Draski, Philip.

Speaker 3 (00:58):
Is Rosalia. The song is called Reliquia. She's got a
brand new album called Lax and christ has been Good morning, Jack.

Speaker 4 (01:07):
Did you get all that?

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Did you understand it?

Speaker 3 (01:09):
Well? She was running through. It was a bit of
a like a Tokyo Berlin Buenos Aire's situation. But no,
I didn't quite get all of it. I can tell
you that much. That means relic in Spanish.

Speaker 4 (01:20):
But ah, well done.

Speaker 3 (01:21):
Yeah, that's about you know.

Speaker 4 (01:23):
That is the thing with this album. It is is
her fourth album. It's very different to her first three.
Her first three albums followed this kind of traditional pop structure.
There were hip hop bangers and there were dance bangers.
And she's got this great voice. She was always mostly
singing in Spanish. She is one of the most popular
Spanish artists. I think she's got one of She's got

(01:44):
twelve number ones in her home country, She's one Grammys,
She's headline Coachella. Yeah, everyone knows of her. But this
album is the one where she's jettisoned all that and
she's just gone for it. This is fifteen songs, I
think eighteen on physical copies. It's split into four parts.
It's referencing ancient religions and sacred texts and saints and yeah,

(02:07):
she's singing in thirteen different languages.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
Yea, as you do.

Speaker 4 (02:12):
It's a whole lot. I tried listening to this in
an airport for the first time, and it was too much.
I could not take it in. Too busy. She said.
This is her rejection of TikTok culture, of playlist streaming culture.
She wants you to listen to this as a full
body of work in a darkened room with fifteen minutes. Jack,
I'm a dad with two kids. I don't get fifteen
minutes in a darkened room to myself. But I did

(02:34):
give it a go. I listened to a few songs,
and it does connect more when you do that.

Speaker 3 (02:38):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, when you can actually focus on it
as it were.

Speaker 4 (02:41):
Aha, Yes, because.

Speaker 3 (02:43):
Yeah, I mean she's like, I am not someone who's
known for being up with the cool music, but I
have listened to a bit of Roslia over the years,
and she is a bit of a kind of unique entity.
But it feels like she's at the apex of the
Spanish language music movement at the moment.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
Is that fair?

Speaker 4 (03:00):
Her and Bad Bunny, I yes say, are right up there,
not just not just in Spain, but like around the world.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
You know.

Speaker 4 (03:07):
Bad Bunny, I think, has topped the Spotify streaming charts
three of the last five years.

Speaker 3 (03:12):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (03:13):
Huge, She's headlining the super Bowl. Yeah, of course he's massive.
Rosalia is massive. Like I said, I streamed her coach
Alli set and magnificent. You know, the language barrier doesn't
really matter. You can feel the intention and emotion behind
the music. My problem with this album, which has been
widely praised by almost every credit ninety seven percent on Metacritic,

(03:37):
it is one of the highest rating albums of the year.
I've got a bit of a different take, and that
is that this is an album you can admire. It's
really hard to enjoy it. Yeah, there's no bangers, there's
very little kind of the trap beats, there's no kind
of pop song. She's recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra

(03:58):
and often it's just the orchestra and her voice, which
is stunning. Yeah, but it feels like someone's on a
stage doing showhands, belting out these operatic anthems at you. Yeah,
but you can't see what's happening on stage.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
You know.

Speaker 4 (04:16):
It's like a movie that you're listening to the soundtrack
of that you haven't seen.

Speaker 3 (04:20):
As harder to connect as a result. Yeah, that's it.
That's really interesting because even when we were just playing
that song, it like I was like, is this is
the is the chorus coming up here? What's happening? Like
I'm waiting for that, I'm waiting for a catchy bit.
And it was like, oh, it's beautiful sounding, but it's
not necessarily something that's going to stick in my head.
And if you are a pop musician, maybe I don't know,

(04:41):
maybe it's nice to do that.

Speaker 4 (04:42):
No, it's really interesting because here in Altero we you know,
bad Bunny is playing Australian. Yes, yeah, he's not coming here.
And there's a reason for that. I was at an
events conference with Live Nation, the biggest touring company in
the world, and they said that that kind of music
hasn't really connected. Maybe that's because our population base is

(05:03):
too small. We don't have enough Spanish speaking residents to
fill I mean, these artists are at stadium levels they
are huge, so to come here that they wouldn't be
able to do that because we just don't have that audience.

Speaker 3 (05:16):
Interesting, Hey, before we let you go on, before we
give us a rating on lucks from ROSSLA, actually do that.
They do do the rating first. So Medico gets his
ninety seven percent. Everyone's giving it five stars, but Chris
Shultz is actually six. Okay, No, we appreciate that. We
appreciate the honest.

Speaker 4 (05:32):
I feel bad though, I feel bad about that. This
is good. It might go up with more lessons, but
I need that time in a darkened room to myself.

Speaker 3 (05:39):
Yeah, totally get it. This is good.

Speaker 4 (05:41):
This is good Oasis, Holy wow. I was worth every
since because of the fans. Yeah, one hundred percent. Because
of the fans. The happiest, the drunkest fans I've ever seen.
I didn't see a single push or shove or argument.
Everyone was just over the moon, this thing happening that
they never thought would happen. It was the biggest song

(06:02):
a sing along you've ever seen. I've never seen that
many people together in a stadium before, and I've never
seen that many people just so happy that I'm hilariously happy.
I saw these two big, burly guys during Roll with It,
sing every word, hug each other for ages, and then
I just watched one of them lean into his ear
and go, I love you man.

Speaker 3 (06:24):
You're like, yeah, OK, yeah, see that probably isn't gonna
happen with lux from Us, but that's all right, but
perhaps tending to different taste. Hey, thank you so much.
I'm glad that you had a wonderful time last weekend.
I was certainly burning with MB after we spoke, so
I'm really pleased that it lived up to your expectations
on that front. We will pick another song to play

(06:45):
you from Rosalia's new album in a couple of minutes,
maybe something that is a bit interesting, and we will
catch you again very soon. Of course. You can find
Chris Shultz on his substack. His substack is called boiler Room.

Speaker 1 (06:57):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
to News Talks' b from nine am Saturday, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio.