#WCW: Rosalía
A quick Wikipedia search tells us everything we need to know about Rosalía: she’s a Spanish singer and songwriter, with a long history of studying music, who has the same birthday as my mom (September 25th—Libra’s rise up)! Some other facts about her are that: she is trilingual (Catalan, Spanish, and English), she is politically and socially active and she was the first Spanish singer to be nominated for a Grammy in the Best New Artist category.
I discovered Rosalía this year because I’m incredibly lame and always behind on music. But Motomami, a concept album, and her third studio album, is my shit. Unlike Rosalía, I am not trilingual, only speaking a little German and a few phrases in Spanish. I do have to look up translations for her lyrics, but I treat it like a little surprise—I feel the music and sound first, then I find the meaning.
Every song on Motomami is an enigma in itself. “La Fama”, one of the four singles released in late 2021, featuring the Weeknd (their second collab), contains these very fun lyrics (translated to English):
Translated lyrics:
Fame is a bad lover and she’s not going to love you for real
She is too treacherous, and just as she comes, she leaves
She knows that she will be jealous, I will never trust her
If you want, sleep with her, but never marry her
Original lyrics:
Es mala amante la fama y no va a quererte de verdad
Es demasia’o traicionera y como ella viene, se te va
Yo sé que será celosa, yo nunca le confiaré
Si quiero duermo con ella, pero nunca me la voy a casar
Fame, La Fama, is feminized and objectified here.
“Hentai” reads (in the English translation):
To every copy you see
You give your blessing
And I don’t want to compete
If there’s no comparison
With the chain until the foot
The heart of a devil
Don’t think that it’s sweet
Your sugarplum full of liquor (Prr)
Sugarplum of liquor??? Amazing.
“Cuuuuuuuuuute” is reminiscent of Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights”, where she takes inspiration. Kate Bush and Rosalia are a dynamic duo, considering TikTok is obsessed with them both (at least, the side of TikTok I’m on, where I will gladly stay).
Rosalía, I cannot wait to learn all the lyrics to all your songs. I cannot wait to go to the beach and cover my speaker with sand as the rhythms of pop, reggaeton, flamenco, and every other taste of genre that exists in Motomami blast into the air. I don’t want this #WCW to seem like an album review, even though, I just can’t take my mind off the album. But, not only does her labor in the music industry matter for our consumption, but the representation and empowerment she provides in the mainstream music business for Spanish-speaking feminist women is empowering for everyone. Thinking about language translation fascinates me, and I love hearing Spanish words roll off Rosalia’s tongue as I try to mimic her, feeling the rhythms of her language and music move through my body. Her music transcends language, space, and time, something not every artist can do, while also simultaneously grounding us through her words, sound, and overall musicality.