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The day Rosalía’s brillant Motomami redefined pop music
The passionate and lyrical Spanish singer will soon be releasing a brand-new record titled Lux. Her previous record, the cult Motomami (2022), blends genres, nationalities, and timelines to offer unique, mesmerizing sounds. Let’s dive into the behind-the-scenes and influences of this audacious, shape-shifting major pop album, drawing equally from flamenco and reggaeton.
By Violaine Schütz.
Published on 16 October 2025. Updated on 22 October 2025.
Some pop stars manage to completely redefine a musical era, making their contemporaries seem outdated. Last year, Charli xcx, Sabrina Carpenter, and Chappell Roan did just that. With their unifying hits and carefully crafted aesthetics, these three artists rewrote the rules of the musical game.
But before them, Rosalía boldly paved the way. With her album Motomami, released in March 2022, she took the world of pop culture by storm. Let’s dive into this a landmark album, as the artist is now working on her new project Lux…
Motomami by Rosalía: an album born out of uncertainty
Flashback. After her second album, the ambitious, epic and romantic El mal querer (2018), which was a phenomenal critical and commercial success, Rosalía faced high expectations. Would the avant-garde Spanish singer, who fused flamenco with modern pop, abandon the daring mixes that made her famous in order to reinvent herself? And how could she continue to innovate after such an adventurous musical and visual project?
To meet the challenge set by her previous songs and her universe of fascinating collages, Rosalía spent two years recording her third album, Motomami, mostly in Los Angeles. The mixing phase alone took over nine months.
During the various lockdowns, the singer-songwriter struggled with writer’s block and tried to overcome it by reconnecting with Frank Ocean in a New York studio. She also brought in iconic producers The Neptunes (Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo) to work on her tracks. And judging by the final result, it was a brilliant idea.
Deeply personal themes, from sexuality to feminism
Motomami tackles deep, personal topics, such as sexuality, feminism, heartbreak, transformation, spirituality, self-respect, and isolation. According to the 32-year-old Spanish singer, it’s her most personal album to date. In an interview with Apple Music 1, Rosalía described the record as a concept album shaped like a self-portrait. The artist, who has collaborated with Billie Eilish, then with The Weeknd on the track La Fama featured on that album, chose the title Motomami – “motorbike-chick” – because it merges two words with contrasting energies.
For her, the album explores two very distinct sides of her personality. “Moto” evokes Rosalía’s experimental, shiny, and abrasive side, while “mami” captures her more genuine, solemn, and vulnerable self. It’s her way of expressing that she is total female artist, embodying all the obsessions of her generation.
Michèle Lamy and Patti Smith as inspirations for Motomami
But the name of the album is also a tribute to the Barcelona-born singer’s mother, Pilar Tobella, a sort of Catalan Kris Jenner who runs an artist management company called Motomami S.L. Rosalía often compares herself to New York tailoring icon and counterfeit king Dapper Dan as they share a similar taste for remixing. The artist drew her inspiration from other strong figures too to write her album.
Among the electrifying muses that fueled Motomami, she often mentions salsa legend Héctor Lavoe, Nina Simone, Patti Smith, Bach, Michèle Lamy, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Pedro Almodóvar. The latter indeed cast the neo-flamenco artist to sing in his film Pain and Glory (2019). When the album dropped in March 2022, everyone wanted to be a “Motomami“, just like everyone would later want to be a “brat” girl when Charli xcx released her eponymous album in 2024.
A freewheeling blend of genres
Regarding the music, Rosalía told the New York Times that when she envisioned a new album, she wanted to hear sounds she had never heard before. That desire guided her throughout the creation of the unpredictable Motomami.
With the support of her various producers, the artist weaves together a wide range of music genres. That includes pop, flamenco, hip-hop, industrial, electronic, jazz, champeta – a Colombian style rooted in Afro-descendant communities in the outskirts of Cartagena – bachata – a dance music genre from the Dominican Republic – and above all, reggaeton.
The singer was deeply inspired by the Latin music she used to dance to with her cousins as a child. It felt like a homecoming, yet she also draws from Japanese culture – one of her tracks is titled Chicken Teriyaki – and the English-speaking world in order to craft a hybrid aesthetic that borrows from the past and future. She effortlessly knows how to shift from playful tones to more melancholic moods.
Even more impressively, the singer-songwriter never opts for the easy route. Each track is imbued with experimental sonic gems without ever sacrificing the art of the catchy melody. A daring feat that was boldly defended on her dazzling Motomami World Tour, which cemented the Catalan artist as the fearless younger sister to visionary figures like Björk, M.I.A., and Madonna.
Motomami (2022) by Rosalía, available now. The singer new album Lux has no release date yet.
