Why You Should Listen to ‘Motomami’
By Kasia Pendlebury
Rosalía performing on the Motomami tour in Chile. Photo: Andrés Ibarra, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Me: I’m going to see Rosalía in December.
Friend X: Who?
Me: You know her. Listen.
I whip out my phone and press play on ‘BIZCOCHITO’ from her 2022 album, Motomami. I see a look of recognition as I play what is known to my friends through memes. In them, the creator pretends to chew gum while reacting to common misconceptions or an annoying situation, or just to show off their outfit with the backing track of a viral song to boost their shot at TikTok fame.
Right, painful description of a meme over, which was either immediately understood or went straight over your head. Now onto the lady herself. Classically trained in flamenco in Barcelona, Rosalía’s music has exploded following the path trod by the majority of contemporary Hispanic artists from their genre of origin into the hallowed halls of reggaeton. You’d be forgiven for thinking she’s Latina. In fact, she’s born and bred Catalan and has been criticised for her adoption of a Latin-esque aesthetic, and appropriation of gitano (gypsy) culture in Spain These are both valid conclusions, and issues that deserve a platform, but in my opinion they fall too quickly into a trap of cancel culture and ignoring artistic appreciation and intent.
Her latest album is a bit love-hate and on my first couple of listens I wasn’t entirely convinced. Rosalía is known for the straight-up unintelligibility of her songs, and this album seems to push at the very limits of what native Spanish speakers can claim as their language. This is no more apparent than on tracks such as ‘Saoko.’ Comments on the music video wryly joke that they can’t wait for the Spanish version to come out and that this song made them question if they really knew their mother tongue. For some music purists this experimental mash-up of language is a big no, but for me it’s what Rosalía owes her success to. Not only does she infuse her lyrics with obscure references and slightly random English words, she also fuses genre with as much skill as anyone in the industry. This successful negotiation of a career in flamenco, reggaeton, and bachata amongst other genres is a testament to her artistic talent, and a public that appreciates the musical hybrid that she has to offer.
If anything, the unintelligibility of her lyrics places all listeners in a similar position - Rosalía has a mass-following outside of Hispanic countries. That both Spanish and non-Spanish-speaking fans often have to google her lyrics to make full sense of them speaks to a power of music that transcends the spoken word. Even the name of her album is not one that can be sufficiently articulated in words. As she noted on the Jimmy Fallon Show, it’s a feeling and an attitude that resists narrow definition. When asked by Fallon what a motomami is, Rosalía replies that it’s ‘an energy,’ and tells him ‘probably you’re a motopapi too’: that’s it, the only explanation this word needs. Rosalía’s album title is captured in movement, in attitude, and in song; it cannot be reduced to the format of a chat show to promote the work, and if it were to be broken down, in root and in use, it would cease to hold that intangible quality that makes it so appealing.
‘Candy’ is perhaps the most obvious distillation of her two strongest genres. The title and lyrics reference a song by reggaeton Puerto Rican musical duo Plan B (a track that is full of sexual innuendo in a manner typical of early 2000s reggaeton) and fuses Rosalía’s deep flamenco vocals with an intermittent dembow beat. The lyrics are heartfelt in contrast to the ‘kinky, nasty’ tones of the Plan B song, yet it is equally catchy. This is just another example of Rosalía operating through patterns and associations rather than directly in her lyrics. Another favourite of mine is the slightly more commercial, but tirelessly catchy ‘La Fama’ that features The Weeknd in which they meet on the sensual ground of bachata, a territory that is unfamiliar to both artists. That The Weeknd sings in Spanish instead of his native English, or both in their respective languages, showcases Rosalía, and Spanish-language music’s dramatic ascension in the estimation of the music industry. With Spanish language record sales booming, and Rosalía’s own career on the up and up, it no longer matters that fans of The Weeknd might not be able to understand the lyrics; they feel the music and appreciate the beat.
In case you have been living under a rock, or perhaps in a TikTok void of your own making, I’d strongly encourage you to venture further into Rosalía’s discography than the first fifteen seconds of ‘BIZCOCHITO.’ Check out Motomami and her older stuff too. If you’d like a starting point, ‘Malamente’ is a synthy flamenco track that will always have a very special place in my heart. Rosalía might also be a gateway drug into foreign language music (if of course English is your dominant language). She’s one of those ‘Oh I don’t really listen to non-English music, but I like her’ people. Believe me, she’ll definitely convince you that you do, indeed, like foreign music.