Album Anniversaries: Rosalía’s 'El Mal Querer' Explores Solitude and Salvation
A look at why Rosalía’s breakout second album still has people talking over a year after its release.
In Album Anniversaries, writers honor their favorite aging albums and their subsequent legacies, revealing which projects have stood the test of time.
Written by Kameel Karim
Image courtesy of Filip Custic
By the time Rosalía Vila Tobello, better known by the mononym Rosalía, unveiled her second studio album in late 2018, she had already spent months cultivating hype with three singles that each contributed to her meteoric ascent to stardom. “Pienso en tu Mirá” took off on social media for its richly symbolic music video; “Di Mi Nombre” earned Rosalía her first number one in Spain; lead single “Malamente” has garnered five Latin Grammy nominations (two of which it won), is certified 5x platinum in Spain, and is platinum in the U.S. as well. Finally, El Mal Querer was released in its entirety on Nov. 2, 2018 to critical acclaim and the arms of an international audience that continues to grow with ferocity today.
Revisiting the album one year later, each track still delivers the gut punch it hit with the first time. Inspired by the 13th century novel “Flamenca,” which recounts the tale of a woman whose jealous husband locks in her in a tower as punishment for her supposed adultery, El Mal Querer originally began as Rosalía’s final undergraduate project in flamenco studies. However, as the narrative unfolds with painstaking precision, a new, vibrant energy suffuses the atmosphere. Rooted in centuries-old Andalusian tradition and dressed in fluttering, pitched-up vocal modulation, this interpretation dreamily blurs the line between past and present. Rosalía isn’t reciting anyone else’s story: she’s living her own, praying and weeping through it, and the listener has no choice but to take the plunge headfirst.
To call El Mal Querer a record about a breakup would be to do it a bone-deep disservice. Is an ultimately unhealthy relationship examined, then abandoned? Absolutely. But for all the hurt that Rosalía’s husband inflicts, she manages to rise. For all the power he attempts to monopolize, she finds a greater, irrepressible strength within herself. Organized into capítulos, or chapters, the album chronicles intoxicating highs that quickly devolve into wild, ruinous lows. The trilling guitar and muffled shouts of excitement on “Que No Salga La Luna,” an account of Rosalía’s fictionalized wedding night, give way to wretched, spiraling lament on the orchestra-backed “Reniego.”
In the quest to derive meaning from the emotional tapestry she weaves, attention to detail is crucial. Each song title (and corresponding chapter name) is meticulously chosen. The word reniego, for example, translates to “disown” in lyrical context, but it can also refer to blasphemy when used in the religious sense. The album cover alludes pointedly to Christian themes: levitating among the clouds and swathed in white like an angel, Rosalía emulates the pose of crucifixion, though whether her arms are spread in anguish or benevolence is impossible to discern. An ornate circle of gold surrounds her body, reminiscent of the halos frequently depicted around Jesus in Byzantine art. Christian imagery bleeds so profusely from breathtaking seventh track “Bagdad” that the listener may as well be kneeling in church alongside a grieving Rosalía while stained-glass windows filter moonlight over her clasped hands. “Join the palms and separate them,” she instructs over and over in the refrain, her voice gauzy and spectral. A choir chants somewhere in the background, the percussion sounds almost like harried footsteps, and distorted samples of Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River” drift in between. Suffice it to say that “surreal” doesn’t even begin to encapsulate the experience.
Yet this isn’t really an album about religion, just as it’s not about a breakup. Nor is it about the nameless, faceless man who imprisons Rosalía in her own marriage. El Mal Querer in English roughly translates to “the bad desire,” and what that is, exactly, is difficult to pinpoint at first. After all, the desires discussed range in nature from sexual to spiritual. What yearning is so sacrilegious, so all-consuming, that it outweighs all others?
Now that a full year has passed since its initial release, the answer finally seems within reach. More than anything, El Mal Querer is a conversation with the self. It’s an exploration of power and helplessness, of loneliness and honesty. As for unlocking the secret to her yearning, we must scroll back to the very beginning: according to the Biblical canon that so often recurs in Rosalía’s work, the original sin stemmed from rebellion in Eden, the pinnacle of all things beautiful and virtuous. A place where, practically speaking, one should have no reason to want for more. In shivering falsetto, Rosalía makes the argument that this selfish curiosity is as fated as it is forbidden. The worst desire of all is to demand love from the one who most often withholds it —- in short, to look inwards.
Image courtesy of Filip Custic
“If I name her, I confirm her,” she sings on “Maldición,” a chilling rejection of the kind of ardor she’s long been taught to crave. “The two of us know what’s going on / And no one wants to say it.” Driven to the brink of insanity, Rosalía confronts the lingering truth in the back of her mind: chasing romantic love has only ever left her ensnared. Acknowledgement of her repressed double, the woman who can fearlessly prioritize her own wellbeing, puts her one step shy of freedom.
With closing track “A Ningún Hombre,” she achieves it. “I don’t consent to any man / That he may dictate my sentence,” she announces, victorious. Self-possessed and openly embracing ego, she vows to tattoo her former lover’s initials on her body so as to never forget how she suffered. Yet, with invigorated perspective, she maintains sight of the future.
In the written manuscript of the captive woman’s tale, perhaps this is where she escapes the tower. In Rosalía’s, this is where her soaring vocals propel her to new heights in terms of both her music and her autonomy.