Last autumn, the lights were pulsing on the stage of a small theatre in midtown Manhattan. A reggaeton medley swarmed like an elevated heart rate, shifting, swelling and cascading across the room and out on to the streets of the city. The last 20 songs have led up to this moment – the top of the third act in her live shows – when Rosalía invites up a small group of audience members to dance with her on stage.
As I joined the stage rush, and the previous hour of carefully executed choreography and acrobatic vocals gave way to a frenzy of pure energy, I realised just how easy it was to be drawn into Rosalía’s orbit. At 30 years old, she’s prepossessed, exuding a kind of calm you’d find in the eye of a hurricane. And from my vantage point behind her that night, I felt, just for a few minutes, the gravity of her stardom.
To be honest, I hadn’t been a longtime fan when I joined her up on stage that night. I’d first seen her perform a few years earlier and came away impressed by her sound. She was at the Austin City Limits music festival, and even amidst an eclectic lineup that ranged from Cardi B and Mumford & Sons to Kacey Musgraves and Thom Yorke, Rosalía stood out. Her performance literally stopped people in their tracks, pausing if only for a few minutes in the bustle of the festival to take in the larger-than-life emotion of her singing.
From then on, I kept tabs on her, listening to her music intermittently, but it wasn’t until last year, when I was commissioned to profile her for a magazine, that I had the chance to get to know her. Having spent some time digging into her catalogue and poring over her interviews, I got increasingly nervous ahead of our first meeting. Given the length at which she spoke about her influences, how much she put into studying her craft, I was certain she would be intimidating, or overly serious. Instead, she immediately disarmed me. Bright-eyed and friendly, anyone who meets Rosalía will tell you that she exudes a joy for life.
Our first meetings together reframed everything I thought I knew about her. Looking out into the pop landscape, it’s difficult to pinpoint other artists who would threaten to take over the path she’s carved out for herself so naturally. She has defied categorisation, refusing to negotiate herself with anyone, and she’s been rewarded for it. Her success isn’t due to her careful calculations or the machinations of record label executives, it’s because of her simple, innate love of creating – something so plain to see in the way she lights up any time she talks about the production of a song, or a particular lyric.
She was constantly laughing, keenly aware of the insane circumstances of her surroundings – beachfront hotel stays and brief excursions exploring cities with her friends in rare downtime amid the frenetic pace of the tour – and absorbed them with gratitude. So many artists talk earnestly about making music for their fans, but for Rosalía it’s slightly different. She makes music because she craves connection, and she can only hope that her fans will follow where that urge leads her. It goes back to a childhood memory she once described to me – the experience that kicked all of this off.
From the beginning, Rosalía has been chasing that sense of community. She first felt it in a church
