Rosalía doesn’t do small gestures. The Spanish pop maverick’s follow-up to MOTOMAMI was always going to be an event, and then she posted a video with the London Symphony Orchestra. “Berghain,” the lead single from her forthcoming new album, Lux, is all spectacle. Never before has Rosalía flexed her classical training this hard: composing in three languages, turning in a performance that’s almost all coloratura. “Berghain” feels as ambitious as Lux’s supposed four-movement structure, cantering from violin fireworks à la Vivaldi’s “Winter” to a pummeling Rite of Spring grand finale. Yves Tumor is here—to usher us into the final act—as is Björk, whose own gale force presence threatens to knock the song on its side like a two-dimensional façade.
Then there’s the matter of the titular Berlin nightclub. Last year, French Lebanese DJ Arabian Panther accused Berghain of cancelling a scheduled performance due to his pro-Palestine views. Controversy is built in with Rosalía—a Catalonian who sang in an Andalusian accent on 2018’s El Mal Querer and became a superstar making reggaeton—but “Berghain” never quite earns its provocation.
