For the longest time all my friends knew me as their source of new music. I was keeping up with the latest new bands, and spreading the word to them. I made compilations for them each year—three tracks per album, about eight hours of music, like the Year in Review playlists on this site. I was the new music guy.
And then several years ago, I embarked on the retrospective listening binge that has since become this website. I suppose to most readers of this blog I am now the old music guy.
But I’ve spent a decent chunk of the past month listening to one newer artist in particular: Rosalía. She’s from Spain, not far from where I’ve been living for the past decade. I moved to Barcelona in 2011, which makes me a little out of touch with American culture these days. (Recently, my family and I have moved north to the mountains near the French border, which means I’m now out of touch with just about everything.)
It seems Rosalía has gotten some critical acclaim in the U.S., but I don’t know exactly how popular she is. That said, I rarely know what’s popular or not, anyway. (That’s been true of me for decades. I read the critics far more than I listen to pop radio.)
I’d heard of Rosalía through word of mouth here in Spain, and my niece played me a couple songs I liked earlier this spring. Somehow my wife and I started listening to her music more thoroughly this summer. And, damn, she’s good.
Rosalía’s debut album doesn’t really grab me much, to be honest, but with her 2018 sophomore album El Mal Querer Rosalía became a force to be reckoned with, bringing flamenco into the AutoTune age. The album also served as her thesis project, with which she graduated from the Catalonia College of Music. Pretty impressive.
And throughout a sequence of subsequent single releases and her masterful 2022 follow-up Motomami, Rosalía expanded her range even further, incorporating a wide range of electronic, dance, and pop influences.
This playlist starts with a few recent favorites, before shifting back to follow a chronological sequence.
Listen and learn.
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