We cannot fully analyze the religious implications of an album that hasn’t been released yet. But we can put an unanswerable question on the table: aesthetically, and quite possibly also thematically, Rosalía has taken a turn towards Catholic iconography. It is an element to which she is not at all alien from previous works, but ‘Lux’ seems to have a deeper impact on it. Let’s see what it can mean and, above all, why it is not so much a whim of the artist or a marketing maneuver as swimming in a current that is very favorable at the moment: the modern and youthful vindication of the majority faith in Spain.
Rosalía the pious. Little by little, Rosalía is slipping elements of Catholic iconography into this new album beyond the enigmatic title, also with a clear spiritual component. We have seen it biting a rosary in the presence of an orchestra that was playing, perhaps, his famous score ‘Berhghain’. On the cover of the album she appears with a kind of white elastic habit, like that of the Cistercians or the Dominicans, but with her arms under the cloth (something that does not point to a straitjacket, as has been said, but to the tendency of the 19th century veiled sculptures). That’s it, although fans are already finding parallels in the most diverse places.
Well, almost everything: in the CD cookie we can find a reference to the philosopher and activist Simone Weilthe quote “Love is not comfort, it is light.” Weil’s spiritual aspect constitutes the core of his existential thought, characterized by a ceaseless search for truth, universal compassion and union with the divine outside of religious dogmas. For her, work, suffering and attention constituted forms of prayer and knowledge of God.
But that’s not all. At the moment, Rosalía is being accused of using religion as an advertising tool, but the truth is that Catholic iconography has always made small appearances in the visual section of her creations. His debut ‘Los Angeles’aside from the title, was full of references to religious rituals surrounding death. ‘The evil will‘ It was a thematic work that abounded in liturgical references, and had on the cover the image of Rosalía characterized as a Catholic Virgin. There are constant references to religion in choruses, psalms or prayers in the lyrics, versions of classics of sacred poetry such as the ‘Although it’s night‘ based on Saint John of the Cross and visual nods such as the famous Nazarene on a scooter from the video clip of ‘Badly‘.
And observers like the journalist Carlos Primo have seen more: for example, his collaboration with Bernat Vivancos for his appearance at the Goya ceremony covering Los Chunguitos with a choir. Vivancos has not only directed the liturgical choir of the Escolanía de Montserrat, but also released an album, ‘Blanc’, with sacred content.
It’s not the first. Whether it is an aesthetic or marketing maneuver or comes from a genuine personal feeling (of course, in the first interviews is giving everything in terms of spiritual dedication), it is not the first (as Noel Ceballos said, every pop artist is destined for a Catholic Era). There are those who even look back to the eighties and to Madonna, who with her ‘Like a Prayer’ stirred up Catholics from half the worldalthough the religious themes in his album came from both a personal conviction and a calculated turn in his career to move away from a frivolous image. Lady Gaga also carried out a similar transformation in recent yearsalthough here it was more due to experimentation with the religious aesthetics.
There is criticism. Some of the most visceral criticism it is receiving in this regard comes from content creators with progressive ideology. like skinnybangbangwhich relate nun habits to a conservative wave that has also reached pop artists. This is a turn that had already been noted when Rosalía left behind the overproduction of kilometric eyelashes and shrimp nails and hugged the nuncoreaesthetic neopuritanism and the voluntary celibacyas he has stated in recent interviews. A turn that journalists like Noemí López Trujillo They have been read more as an approach to mainstream schools of thought that criticize artists like Sabrina Carpenter for being excessively brazen and promiscuous.
This is the youth of the Pope. That is to say, Rosalía is part of a current trend of interest in the Catholic faith as a narrative and symbolic background. It is not so much a devotional return as an artistic and emotional approach to the religious experience, used to explore identities, family wounds or searches for meaning. The most striking and media examples of this trend are Los Javis and Alauda Ruiz de Azúa (apart from the creators who already make openly propagandistic creation, such as hakuna and Effetaand whose almost massive interest among a large sector of young Spaniards we have already talked about), but they are not the only ones.
To fame for being Catholic. Since ‘The Call’ in 2017, Los Javis incorporates Catholic symbolism passed through a pop filter (nuns, divine apparitions, prayers, songs) into many of their works. In ‘the messiah‘They explored it from a darker turn, but still without losing the spirituality, which is also seen as a therapeutic relief for those seeking to be comforted. On the other hand, Alauda Ruiz de Azúa, with ‘Los Domingos’ (recent Concha de Oro in San Sebastián) proposes an unusual story in Spanish cinema: that of a teenager who wants to be a cloistered nun. Far from ironizing faith, the director portrays the religious vocation from a respectful perspective, allowing characters with faith to speak on their own terms, with an austere and contemplative tone.
They are not the only ones. Multiple Spanish artists have entered into the theme of the Catholic faith and its impact on Spanish society, absolutely inescapable after forty years of dictatorship and imposition. Among the young people who, just as they are rediscovering the bulls rediscover Catholic icons, we could highlight Pilar Palomero (in ‘La maternal’ she introduces religious imagery to talk about sacrifice and female redemption) or Carla Simón (in ‘Alcarràs’ she shows rural Catholicism as an emotional fabric in crisis, with prayers, masses and processions). They are not the only media in which it is being perceived: also in literature authors have stood out like David Aliaga, Ernesto Artillo or Juan Gallego Benot. A splendid breeding ground for Rosalía to finish hatching.
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