Work Hard, Play Hard: How Rosalía Makes Her Music

“Bro, I’m the first to the studio and the last to leave,” says the Spanish singer, songwriter, and producer.
rosalia
Photos by Daniel Sannwald, treatment by Callum Abbott

Rosalía’s MOTOMAMI has been out for just a month when I call her in late April, and she’s already back in a Miami studio, working on new music that may not ever see the light of day. This summer, she’ll embark on a global tour that will consume the back half of her year, so the self-professed perfectionist is getting in some recording time while she still can. MOTOMAMI, her third album, was three years in the making: “I spent a year on vocals, just choosing the right [one] for every song,” she says, a boast and a lament. The album reflects a new era of experimentation for the Catalan musician, one bursting with ideas inspired by a sweep of international music—reggaeton, bachata, dembow, bolero, horny Disney ballads, and Björk, to scratch the surface—as well as literature, fine art, and architecture. So why stop now? She giggles about “la ética trabajo” (her work ethic) and stresses she’s always in the studio, that her “creative wheel” never stops.

MOTOMAMI was a marked turn from its predecessor, 2018’s El Mal Querer, a thesis project for Rosalía’s final year at the Catalonia College of Music, which translated a 13th-century text into a digitally adventurous flamenco epic. The intervening years brought her global renown—collaborations with the likes of Bad Bunny and Billie Eilish, a role in a Pedro Almodóvar film—and with these opportunities, the trappings of fame. The level of scrutiny seemed to serve as an impetus to shatter boundaries, whether socially or self-imposed; in our conversation, she speaks repeatedly about embracing musical freedom with the passion of a devotee.

Talking to Rosalía is, truly, a crackling experience. She is curious and vivacious, speaking at a rapid clip in Spanglish, stopping only to laugh or to pause and unfurl a soprano hm, as though she is filing away an idea to solve later. She’s got the energy and intellect of someone approaching an apex of inspiration, gushing about reggaeton as passionately as she does her first time seeing a Rothko in person (“I felt like the painting was swallowing me—I swear to God I didn’t do any drugs!”). As she recounts what went into crafting MOTOMAMI—not just the myriad technical aspects of it, but the heart and experiences that informed it—she speaks profusely in all directions, invoking the works of writer Ocean Vuong, artist Yayoi Kusama, architect Ricardo Bofill, and more across disciplines.

“The other day I read that Mozart had Tourette’s. He invented words, he wrote backwards and upside down, he would change language several times—apparently he would write in German and then freely jump to French, Italian, or Latin,” she says. “And that music would come from that freedom. That’s how I feel as a musician—it’s really hard for me not to create from this place of freedom.”

Pitchfork: You said that you were putting in 16-hour days in the studio to make MOTOMAMI. What’s a day like for you when you’re doing that?

Rosalía: Okay, I wake up every morning; I train, because for my mental health it really helps me to work out; I have breakfast; and then it would be 16 hours a day, for months and months and months. It’s been a tough process, I’m not going to lie to you. It’s been a lot of moments of cracking up in the studio and pasando el tiempo [passing the time] while some plug-ins were downloading, having fun but at the same time a lot of work, work, work, work. Of trying to find the song, trying to find the right arrangement. Some of the versions you hear, there are maybe like six or seven versions of the song until I get to the right one. “La Combi Versace,” we changed the arrangement completely right before I was going to turn in the album.

On a really basic level, how do you start writing a song?

It depends on the song. For example, I remember I had written down in my notes in my iPhone, “a song with reggaeton”—like OG reggaeton influence, because I love reggaeton, especially from the beginning—and then, “but with some touches of jazz.” I remember I told that to two people in the room doing the project, and they were looking at me like I was crazy or something. They were skeptical but it was an idea in my head that made sense. They tried to help me get it but it didn’t work. That was the last song I wrote for the project—“Saoko.”

I was at Electric Lady and I was waiting for a musician, a friend of mine, to come, and it was 12 in the night. He didn’t show up, so I was like, I’m not gonna lose the time waiting. So I went to the piano and I found the riff, I distorted the sound and started the beat like that. Then I was like, let me put something in the intro, let me say “Saoko papi, Saoko,” so it will say, There is so much influence from reggaeton and this music that comes from the Caribbean—and let me say it from the beginning that I have love for this. Once I had the beat done, I put some drums on it that I found in a library that a friend gave me, and then I started writing lyrics for a week. All the song is about transformation, trying to find different images that express that transformation.

For “Hentai,” I went in the studio with Pharrell and told him that I wanted to do a ballad that had some inspiration from Cinderella, Disney, Frank Sinatra-type of intervals, that sounded very like tender, gentle dreams—but then with super-explicit lyrics, ’cause at the end of the day this whole project is about contrast. How can I put this with this, because it’s gonna make these two elements feel even more radical and stronger. Pharrell instantly found these chords, and we started writing. “La Fama” started with the lyrics first, and then I was like, okay, I think these lyrics could work if I do a bachata with it. Every song is different. I am sorry that answer was so long. [laughs]

No, that’s great. Let’s go back to “Saoko” and the idea of having reggaeton and jazz on the same song. How did you think of that?

Because I love Miles Davis or el Coltrane the same way that I love Wisin & Yandel, Héctor, Lorna, or Ivy Queen. For me, in my head, these stars are at the same level. As a musician, that’s who I am. I’ve said it before and I’m always gonna say it: I don’t see music in a way that’s like, Oh, this is right, this is wrong, this is better, this is worse. Does it give you goosebumps? Plus in the lyrics, you can find the same approach to spirituality, the same level of sexuality… all of that, it’s part of life.

How was it different making MOTOMAMI compared to El Mal Querer?

El Mal Querer was inspired especially by the classic octosyllabic quatrain that is very present in flamenco, but this project has all inspirations. I love Patti Smith, how she writes; I love Ocean Vuong and how he writes too. As a musician, it’s always been in the back of my head of: How can I be freer? Every move that I do, I do it searching for that. In MOTOMAMI there’s room for a sense of humor, irony. That’s something that didn’t happen in the other projects, maybe because as an artist I didn’t feel comfortable expressing myself like that yet—also because I was growing. But I’m still growing now.

I love thinking every project should be different than the one before. I’m not interested at all in any formula, or some shit like that. MOTOMAMI is built on letting things that happen affect my songs and the way I write—the travels, all of that, letting that affect it sonically, visually. I would love to express what is happening in these three years, so when I’m 70 or 80 and look back and listen to this album, I really can feel and see what was happening in that moment. I don’t have the time to keep a diary, and I didn’t like that. With this album, I created an excuse to actually write about what was really happening. I tried to convey the ambivalence, if that makes sense—a place or context can be really exciting, but at the same time it can be very hostile. There’s a violent oscillation between feeling the emptiness of esta máquina, this machinery, and the warmth or intimacy that family or your people can give to you, you know? Or like the artifice that supposes success sometimes, or fame. There’s contrast in that feeling against the unconditional affection.

I wondered about that, because you have songs like “La Fama” where you’re talking about how fame is empty, but so much of the album is about family and God. How have you dealt with the way your life has changed over the past three years?

My life changed completely. I never experienced being exposed, and I felt like I just needed to write about it. Everybody nowadays, because of social media, we all have to deal with it, and in my case I was really experiencing that and I wanted to talk about it.

Also, my favorite artists are changing constantly, and they’re the most human ones. I love that approach and I feel like my musical taste over the years has changed a lot. What used to bother me, maybe they’re now my favorites. Like Coltrane. I’d be like, Why does this man do that? Why does he sound like that? And then one day I was on the train on my way to Barcelona, and A Love Supreme changed my life. I understood it, it clicked, and I was like, Of course, it’s about spirituality and about freedom. Then [flamenco icon] La Niña de Los Peines, who is one of my biggest references—her records sound so bad because it comes from long ago and it’s hard to appreciate music when it sounds of this quality. It took me time but then I really appreciated it. Or John Cage—there’s music that really challenged me then, that nowadays is my favorite music ever.

Do you think getting a little older helps?

I mean, I’m excited para cuando sea mayor [for when I’m older]. [laughs] For example, my grandma—you can hear her in the song “G3 N15”—is my idol. She created such a big, beautiful family, and I’m excited for that moment in my life one day.

I wanted to ask you about your grandmother. I know your sister Pili does all your styling, and that you named MOTOMAMI after your mother. What do the bonds of those women mean to you?

The women in my life are my main inspiration. MOTOMAMI wouldn’t exist without my grandma, my mom, my sister. I have so much love for them and that’s why I’m a motomami, because they were a motomami before me. My mom was the OG motomami. She would have this long blonde curly hair and she would be driving a Harley when I was a kid, and I hugged her while she was driving. I remember the wind in her hair in front of my helmet in Barcelona. Because of the experiences I’ve had with my family, nowadays I feel like: oh, I’m a woman.

Alongside that, I wondered about “Hentai.” To me it’s really fun because it embraces women’s sexuality, which is always so judged, and puts the reality into it, which is that it’s not that serious.

That’s it! It's just desires! Why not make a song about desires? And again the contrast between what’s tender with something that is more explicit—obscene, if you wanted to call it that. It just made sense for me in a ballad, just a voice and a piano, and that’s really naked. When people heard the whole song and the album and saw the video, I think that they understood and felt it and were very positive, but with the 15-second snippet, some people critiqued it, no? That just shows you the discomfort that happens when a woman expresses herself openly about her sexuality. I really thought, like: Lil’ Kim. Madonna. Björk. It’s been done. How is it possible this is something that people would still talk about? It’s uncomfortable for some people. But well, they’re gonna have to get used to it! [laughs]

I read in another interview where you talked about how it can be hard as a woman producer if you work with men, because people will just assume you’re not doing the work, like they did to Björk.

I appreciate that you talk about Björk, because thank God that she opened up the path, thank God that she exists. There are women who are [producers] with big beautiful minds, but I feel like there’s not enough light put on that. At the end of the day, I push myself so much as a writer, as a producer, and in this process I really, really, really, really grew. So I just feel like it’s unfair when sometimes people see there’s men in the credits and it’s like oh, they did it—bro, I’m the first to the studio and the last to leave.

From your perspective, where does that bias come from?

I really think that it doesn’t make any sense and I wish that there were no assumptions. I wish people could see… you can ask anybody that’s been with me in the studio. Come se dice no se me caen los anillos? That’s how we say it in Spanish: “My rings don’t fall.” When I have to work, I work so much. If I have to play the keys, I play the keys. If I have to make a beat, I do. But at the end of the day I think about it like: time will tell. I know the truth. People that are with me in the studio, they know the truth. It would be great for future generations to see more women in the studio, because for me it’s been hard. There’s so much more room for la forma la que se trata las mujeres [how women are treated] to be different.

Tell me about working with Dominican rapper Tokischa. She’s the only feature on your album besides the Weeknd.

She has such a strong energy, she’s very playful. She writes her own shit, she goes to the studio, she knows what she wants. I love that she’s so unapologetic with who she is and how she is. It’s been such an amazing thing to be able to travel to La República Dominicana, to make music with her. In other projects, my main inspiration was flamenco, but since I was 12 I’d be with my cousins, we were all girls, and we’d always sing out loud Lorna songs, Don Omar songs. I have memories [with] this music, but it’s not the same when you actually travel and experience in person where these styles were created, the origin. I really learned a lot in Puerto Rico, making music there. And when I chose these styles—like bachata, reggaeton, dembow, bolero—it’s all because those styles felt familiar to me and were the perfect ones to express what I needed to express in this project. They were chosen from love, from admiration for this music. Sharing with Tokischa was part of that—love and admiration for her and the way she makes music.

Do you feel like you’re still getting pushback on that? I know you’ve talked about criticism of your work before—these styles of Latin music are marginalized and people are necessarily protective of it being made by someone who is an outsider.

I mean, that’s just my truth. This is my experience. And it’s very important for me to say that this is my truth, because I empathize with the fact that people feel differently, 100 percent. But for me, music is a human manifestation and this is what makes me feel excited to wake up every day. This is what I feel happy to do every day. It’s almost mental health to make music to me. I need to feel free in order to make music, and if I don’t feel free, I don’t feel like I can create, you know? MOTOMAMI is built on this freedom. When you hear, like, guajira, rumba, colombiana, milonga, those are all styles that are part of flamenco culture. This music that has been my main inspiration, its natural tendency is toward hybridization—it comes from hybridized liberación. Flamenco’s origin is Persian, it’s African, it’s Spanish, it has Jewish influence. It has so many different etnias [ethnicities] that make this music exist. So for me, I don’t see music in any other way than this cultural diversity, if that makes sense. Especially nowadays, because the paradigma of the contemporary artist is probably gonna be connected or related to this culture and diversity, you know?

It’s the internet. That’s what made it happen. Even David Bowie, like the way he made music, he would say something about the authenticity of lo heterodoxo [the unorthodox]. It’s an essential part of the modern experience. I feel very connected to the cultural diversity; I feel like a woman of del mundo. When they ask me where I’m from, yeah I’m from Barcelona, I’m from Sant Esteve Sesrovires, and I feel so proud of it, I would never want anyone to think differently from that. But at the same time, traveling affects me, affects my sound, and I have so much love for so many styles. I just work to challenge myself as a musician to express myself in different ways always. I’m never trying to repeat something that’s already there. I’m instead trying to put a very personal point of view on it.

We talked about the work that went into MOTOMAMI, but it also sounds like you’re having fun.

I always strike a balance. But honestly there are a lot of times I would prefer to be with my people having fun. There was this interview with an actress—I don’t remember who it was, but she was asked: Do you enjoy life or acting more? And she said something like, “Oh, I actually need to eat an ice cream in a movie when I’m acting to actually enjoy an ice cream. I actually don’t like eating ice cream in my life.” I saw that, and I was like I don’t feel like that AT ALL. I feel completely the opposite! I don’t enjoy life only through music—I just enjoy life, period, and I happen to be a musician. But I enjoy life first. Eating an ice cream is fucking amazing!

Like, I drink milk because it makes me feel instantly happy, and I don’t feel the same way when I drink water. I’m not supposed to drink milk because… blah blah blah, people say that it’s not good for your voice. But I love drinking milk and I drink milk. Or riding a bike, it’s instant happiness. I want to live my life, I want to have fun—and that’s something that makes me make better music. I just don’t want to forget all the things that I love to do. I want to keep doing them until I can’t do them anymore.