El Mal Querer

"Mal Querer is getting what you might call the full pop star treatment: released by a major label rather than a tiny specialist imprint, promoted with a selection of expensive-looking videos, and attention drawn to the stars who have apparently fallen under the spell of her music - a list that ranges from Dua Lipa to Pharrell Williams....El Mal Querer is a rather more complex, interesting and left-field prospect than any of the Latin pop successes to date. At its most commercial - as on the flatly brilliant single Pienso en Tu Mirá (a gold-selling hit back in Rosalía's homeland) or the early 2000s R&B-flavoured Bagdad - it offers a sparse, spectral version of the kind of super-smart pop that Christine and the Queens produce....Even at its most pop, the focus on Rosalía's voice lends El Mal Querer a head-turning freshness. She can really sing - when she lets rip on the more traditional flamenco-styled Que No Salga la Luna or the a cappella closer A Ningún Hombre, it's a pretty visceral experience - but her voice is audibly rooted in a different musical tradition to the usual styles in which pop vocalists perform." The Guardian

"Rosalía's new album, El Mal Querer, is less rigorous than its predecessor, though even easier to like. Los Ángeles adhered closely to the structures of flamenco, with careful guidance from the producer Raul Refree. El Mal Querer drifts more freely, demanding less understanding of a specific musical tradition, thanks in part to production from Pablo Díaz-Reixa, whom English listeners may know for the albums he released under the name El Guincho.

So as Rosalía sings staunch, trembling lines about jealousy and rapture and romantic torment, there are riptides of festival-ready electronic bass in "Pienso En Tu Mira" and decaying lines of pitch-shifted vocals in "De Aqui No Sales" - along with that vrooming motor, screeching car-brakes and shrieking sirens. This one is primed to shred a club: During the song's second half, Rosalía introduces a ghost of a four-on-the-floor kick drum and changes her singing style so her voice becomes yet another form of percussion." Rolling Stones