Rosalía Explores the Trappings of Fame on Deluxe Edition of ’Motomami’
After teasing the possibility of new material during her wildly successful Motomami World Tour, Spanish songstress Rosalía delivered Motomami+ — a deluxe edition of her critically acclaimed album that features her latest single “Despechá,” along several reworkings of Motomami standouts and a handful of new tracks. Rosalía first announced the release of Motomami+ during a tour stop in San Juan, Puerto Rico on Sept. 3.
Among the reimagined songs on the expanded Motomami is remix of “Candy” featuring Puerto Rican reggaeton trailblazer Chencho Corleone, along with a live version of “La Fama” recorded during her recent appearance at the Palau Sant Jordi in Barcelona, where the singer attended the Catalonia College of Music. (Her standout sophomore album El Mal Querer served as her baccalaureate project required for graduating from the university.)
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Many of the new tracks featured on Motomami+ deal with the 29 year-old singer exploring the darker sides of her ever-expanding fame. On the delicate “LAX,” Rosalía boasts about her Louis Vutton handbags, Rolex watches and holding an O-1 American visa — a golden ticket only extended to individuals with “extraordinary” abilities in the arts and sciences. But as the song progresses, she talks of “nights alone” and laments that “hardly anyone sees what I lost” in her quest for success. “Se siente heavy,” she coos. “Los focos pa’ mí, lo quise pa’ mí, lo tuve pa’ mí.” (“It feels heavy/The spotlight’s for me/I wanted that for me/I had it for me.”)
Standout track “Aislamiento” explores many of the same themes, with Rosalía taking aim at not only TMZ and paparazzi, but also the isolation and loneliness her celebrity demands. “Hay un muro entre yo y el mundo,” she says. “No quiero que pienses que eso me da orgullo.” (“There’s a wall between myself and the world. I don’t want you to think it makes me proud.”)
In keeping with Motomami‘s unique diary-as-audio assemblage form, the deluxe edition concludes with “Thank Yu 🙂,” a brief spoken word message from the singer herself. “Let’s see, let’s see,” she says, giggling. “I don’t hear my voice so much. Hi. I’m Rosalía, and you’ve heard Motomami. It seems that this is the end. So, thank you so much for listening.” The audio then abruptly cuts out, as if the singer has dropped her phone or another recording device.
The Motomami World Tour marks Rosalía’s first-ever global trek, and as Rolling Stone noted in a review of the show’s stop in Madrid, the spectacle is a testament to the frenetic, varied stylings of Motomami itself, both “all about minimalism and showcasing her raw talent” but also “loud and eclectic.” Her continental U.S. leg kicks off Sept. 15 in Boston and wraps Oct. 22 at III Points Festival in Miami.
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