How Rosalía’s Motomami became a cult album
The exciting and lyrical 30-year-old Spanish singer will give the last concert of her “Motomami World Tour” at the Lollapalooza festival in Paris tonight. The opportunity to return to his latest album, Motomami , released in March 2022 and already cult, which mixes genres, nationalities and space-times to better impose a unique and bewitching style. A look behind the scenes and the influences of this mutant, daring and major pop work which owes as much to flamenco as to reggaeton.
by Violaine Schutz .
Rosalia @ Sony Music
1 – Motomami by Rosalía, an album born out of uncertainty
After an ambitious, epic and romantic second album, El mal querer (2018), which met with phenomenal critical and commercial success, Rosalía was expected at the turn. The Spanish avant-garde who merges flamenco music (which she learned as an autodidact) and modern pop was she going to deny the daring mixtures that made her famous in order to reinvent herself? And how could she still innovate after going so far in such an adventurous musical and visual proposal?
To live up to her previous songs and a universe made of fascinating collages, Rosalía will have spent two years recording (mostly) her third album, Motomami, in Los Angeles, while the mixing phase took more than nine months . During the various confinements, the songwriter suffered from the white page syndrome and tried to unlock her difficulties in finding inspiration by meeting Frank Ocean in a New York studio. She also called on cult producers The Neptunes ( Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo) to work on her songs. Which, listening to the final result, seems to have been a rich idea.
Saoko (2022) by Rosalia
2 – Very personal themes, between sexuality and feminism
Dealing with intimate and deep subjects such as sexuality, feminism, grief, change, spirituality, self-respect and even isolation, Motomami is, according to the 30-year-old Spanish singer, her most personal album to date. During an interview given to Apple Music 1, Rosalía describes this disc as a concept album in the form of a self-portrait. The one who collaborated with Billie Eilish and The Weeknd (on the track La Fama present on this new opus) chose the title Motomami (“girl-motorcycle” in French) because it is made up of two words with contrasting energies. For the artist, the album indeed explores two distinct facets of his personality. Motorbikeevokes the experimental, gleaming and frictional side of the Spaniard while Mami transcribes her more authentic, solemn and vulnerable facet. A way of saying that Rosalía is a kind of total woman and artist encapsulating all the obsessions of her generation.
But the name of the album also pays homage to the Barcelonian’s mother, Pilar Tobella, a sort of Catalan Kris Jenner who runs a company representing artists called Motomami SL. While writing the record, Rosalía, who compares herself to New York counterfeit king and tailor Dapper Dan for her way of remixing everything, was also influenced by other strong personalities. She willingly cites, among the electric muses who nurtured Motomami, the salsa singer Héctor Lavoe, Nina Simone, Patti Smith , Bach, Michèle Lamy , Andreï Tarkovski and Pedro Almodóvar . The latter had also played the one who reinvents flamenco in his film Pain and Glory(2019).
Hentai (2022) by Rosalia
3 – An uninhibited mix of genres
In an interview with The New York Times , Rosalía says she wants to hear sounds she’s never heard before when dreaming up a new album. That’s what seems to have driven her throughout the creation of the unpredictable Motomam i . The artist – accompanied by her various producers – crosses several musical genres there such as pop, flamenco, hip-hop, industrial, electro, champeta (Colombian musical style from the Afro-descendant communities of the marginal neighborhoods of Cartagena de Indias), bachata (dance music from the Dominican Republic), jazz and especially reggaeton.
As a return to her roots, the singer drew a lot of inspiration from the Latin music she danced to with her cousins during her childhood. But she is also eyeing Japan (one of her new songs is called Chicken Teriyaki ) and Anglo-Saxon countries to develop a mutant aesthetic that owes as much to the past as to the future. She also knows how to move, with the flip of a fingernail-claw, from a playful register to a more melancholic atmosphere. Even more impressive, the singer-songwriter never gives in to ease and innervates all her titles with experimental sound finds… Without renouncing the art of catchy melody. A challenge which completes to install the Catalan in intrepid little sister of visionary artists such as Björk ,and Madonna.
Motomami (2022) by Rosalía, available. The singer is the headliner of the Lollapalooza festival, in Paris, this Saturday, July 22, 2023.
La Fama (2021) by Rosalía featuring The Weeknd
