The spaces between the opening synths of “Malamente” are intoxicating. Ever-present handclaps float around the hazy, organ-like runs as Rosalía’s enigmatic voice erupts, dancing like a flame with the brooding energy of its flickering shadow. It’s a captivating track, pulsing with an energy that flows freely throughout the work of the Spanish sensation—and her own magnetic persona in turn.

“I was on the street with my friends. The cars would roll by, blasting music, and out of the loud speakers sounded Camarón, an iconic flamenco singer. Camarón was the one that captivated me and with whom I began to discover flamenco,”

Rosalía says when asked of the moment she first discovered flamenco. Camarón, an icon in and around Spain, rose to prominence for his contemporary interpretations of classic flamenco. Her adoration of the music genre and art form manifested itself in her musicianship, her leading instrument being that enigmatic voice—one with enough power to accelerate with the synthesizers and lilt above clouds of operatics, sometimes even on the same track.

Berta Pfirsich, Pitchfork

Rosalía’s second album, El Mal Querer, began first as a thesis for university, and its intelligence is immediately evident from its author’s intense passion for and erudite admiration of flamenco and its every expression.

Rosalía fell in love with modern flamenco thanks to Camarón, but quickly learned everything about traditional and contemporary interpretations before embarking on an inspired metamorphosis into her own understandings. That’s not to say it all happened without controversy—some diehard flamenco fans claim she is not the only innovator of flamenco, and that, contrary to Rosalía’s statements of flamenco’s wide-reaching nature (once stating that flamenco belongs to nobody, instead in a way to everybody), she is not as true or reverent to its roots as she seems, leaving less-recognized flamenco artists in limbo.

She is undeniably well-versed and still infatuated with every aspect of flamenco, studying it for eight years as she cultivated her own sound. Her outfits, the live performances, every viral video pairing with modern song—all are love letters to the sensation she first heard blaring by on the street.

Her previous album, Los ángeles, is less future-forward and boundary-pushing than El Mal Querer. That’s not to say it isn’t beautifully transverse in its own right— Rosalía set the foundation of her future international influence with more traditional offerings like “Aunque Es De Noche,” a layered string lullaby that lifts her voice above the moonlit tenderness with a liquid velvet power, glinting in the moonlight between the crests and valleys of intensity and tempo.

It’s a tour de force in Rosalía: her voice, her tradition, a glimpse into where she may take the future of her first love. Still, evidence of this more forward flamenco exist in El Mal Querer, often in slower songs like “RENIEGO – Cap.5: Lamento,” where dramatic strings pair once again alongside naturally shapeshifting vocals.

Rosalía’s sophomore effort, El Mal Querer (roughly translated as The Bad Love in English), exists in chapters, mirroring the ancient text of Flamenca, a 13th-century romance narrative surrounding a woman accused of infidelity who is trapped by her husband and ends up escaping in dramatic fashion with another man. It’s an eleven-chapter study on not just a single relationship, but where music genres have been and where they can excitingly go. The pairing of ancient story and song with modern instrumentation and experimentation is part of what makes Rosalía so singular in today’s pop landscape. She is the rare instance of an artist truly creating something new: discovering something loved, encompassing and wrapping yourself in it, letting it grow with you into something new and exciting.

She not only references and rearranges Flamenco/Flamenca in distinctive music, but cinematic videos to pair with the vitality of the music. The traditional flamenco dance is carried with a red dress; she dons blinding red outfits in the viral video for “MALAMENTE.”

She ushers bullfighting imagery into the modern era, likening the bull to modern motorcycles as she zooms through striking sets and gazes face to face with a matador in maybe the most beautiful music video shot of the last decade. (1:33)

She knows what she’s doing, she knows it’s progressive, and she keeps pushing the envelope forward with each new visual transformation and audio inspection.

El Mal Querer begins with the single that started Rosalía’s new era. Like a sleek spaceship organ cascading over a canyon waterfall, “MALAMENTE” glides. Accompanied by rhythmic clapping and mechanical synths, her voice enters with a smooth, commanding airiness. It sounds wildly different from today’s Top 40, but easily fits into any playlist, strengthening party beats or balancing chill aesthetics. That’s another massive part of what makes the act of slinging modern flamenco into the mainstream so intriguing, so gorgeous. The versatility of the voice, the vibe, the visual—it’s hard to come by in today’s landscape, especially when arriving in something so new. “MALAMENTE” narrates and revolves around the idea of “the bad omen,” and how such an omen can begin to falter its way into every room of one’s home; one’s life.

Ese cristalito roto (That little broken glass)

Yo sentí cómo crujía (I felt how it creaked)

Antes de caerse al suelo (Before it fell to the ground)

Ya sabía que se rompía [¡uh!] (I already knew it was breaking)

By the time the commanding chorus of “malamente, mal muy mal muy mal…” (badly, bad so bad so bad…) unfolds, it’s evident that El Mal Querer has a story to tell—one that harkens back to the red dress rotations of Spain while nudging the constructs and concepts of flamenco (and Flamenca) into the twenty-first century.

“MALAMENTE” was Rosalía’s first foray into daring interpretive waters, and the risk clearly paid off. The track lifted her ever closer towards legendary status in her native Spain, her persona quickly materializing into something of a visionary prodigy and talent enigma. When performing at the MTV EMAs, set in her native Catalonia, the audience sang so loudly it led a commenter to say, “Rosalia feat. El Publico. Brillante.” (Rosalía featuring the public. Brilliant)

Soon after taking flight in Spain, Rosalía found her way onto playlists overseas, effectively destroying language and distance barriers with each crafted distortion and constructed rhythm.

Album standout and second single, “PIENSO EN TU MIRA (Cap.3: Celos),” feels like flying. The title, roughly translated as, “I Think of Your Looks (Chapter 3: Jealousy),” hints at the drama of fierce love. The commanding, chorally-assisted chorus of

“Pienso en tu mirá, tu mirá, clavá, es una bala en el pecho”

(I think of your look, you look, it's a bullet in the chest)

sounds as much a command as a plea. It’s the third track on El Mal Querer, defining yet a new kind of layered synth. Transfixing hand claps build to fierce choral flourishes that oscillate between bass lines built like city streets. It’s the air of a motorcycle racing down cobblestone; the vibrancy of a blooming flower and the rushing of a cool river. The song has many sides and secrets, slyly revealing themselves alongside Rosalía’s versatile voice.

The “Cry Me A River” sampling-turned-operatics of “BAGDAD: Cap. 7: Liturgia” further prove the strength of EMQ in crystal clarity, regardless of any language or genre boundary. Perfect for when you want to literally drown in your own tears. Rosalía somehow makes a Spanish sampling of Justin Timberlake’s hit single work as a stroke of genius, the somber yet captivating vocals slowly distorting before unleashing a dam in waves of arresting operatics.

The album has no weak moments—the insistent strums and punching bass of the #1 single (Rosalía’s first!), “DI MI NOMBRE: Cap. 8: Éxstasis” is a strong showing of the complicated rhythms that build the backbone of El Mal Querer. Like a faltering heartbeat, “DI MI NOMBRE” twists and turns around jumping piano and punching bass, flexing its beats and beauty with the passing of every ever-present (and ever-changing) hand clap.

El Mal Querer, and the wild forays of Rosalía’s art and aesthetics, signal a beacon to where the future of music can go. Even more affecting, Rosalía epitomizes how bright it can shine when the artist is lovingly, passionately aware of its past. Her music is urban, traditional, pop, R&B; a fresh form of flamenco fire lighting up a new lane in which only Rosalía exists—complete with handclaps and synthesizers, motorcycle revs and operatic distortions. Let the phenomenon take you somewhere new.

*Rosalía in her campaign with Pullandbear*

ROSALÍA and the Reimagining of Flamenco