Motomami
Motomami is the third studio album by Spanish singer Rosalía. It was released on 18 March 2022 through Columbia Records. Rosalía enlisted producers Noah Goldstein, Michael Uzowuru, Dylan Wiggins and Pharrell Williams as well as longtime colleague El Guincho to create a concept album about her feelings during the past three years, including troubled times with fame, homesickness and isolation in the form of a collage of the singer's musical influences, especially in Latin music. Separated in two parts, it features guest vocals from the Weeknd, who sings in Spanish, and Tokischa, and is presented as Rosalía's "most personal and confessional album so far."
The album's release was preceded by three singles along with "Hentai" as a promotional single. "La Fama" was released on 11 November 2021 as the album's lead single, attaining both critical and commercial success. The song peaked at number two on the US Hot Latin Songs chart and reached the top ten in France, El Salvador, Spain and Panama. "Saoko" and "Chicken Teriyaki" were released as the second and third singles, respectively, both reaching the top twenty in Spain. Other promotional initiatives included a Grand Theft Auto Online radio station and a performance on Saturday Night Live, becoming the first Spanish solo act to serve as the show's musical guest. Rosalía embarked on the Motomami World Tour from July to December 2022, traveling around Europe and the Americas. A deluxe edition of the album, titled Motomami +, was released on 9 September featuring five additional tracks, including the hit single "Despechá".
Upon its release, Motomami received universal acclaim from music critics, many of whom praised the experimentation and genre-bending sounds. It later became the best reviewed and most discussed album of 2022 on Metacritic. Commercially, the album entered twenty-two charts in nineteen countries and reached the top ten in seven of them. Motomami entered major market charts, reaching the top forty in both on the UK Albums Chart and the Billboard 200. In Spain, it peaked atop the PROMUSICAE chart for six consecutive weeks. It also became the second most-streamed female album of the year worldwide.
At the 23rd Annual Latin Grammy Awards, Motomami won Album of the Year, Best Alternative Music Album, Best Engineered Album and Best Recording Package, making Rosalía the first woman to win Album of the Year twice, whilst "La Fama" was nominated for Record of the Year and "Hentai" for Song of the Year and Best Alternative Song. It also won Best Latin Rock or Alternative Album at the 65th Annual Grammy Awards, while its lack of nominations in the general field categories was widely considered a "snub" by the Recording Academy.
Background
In November 2018, Rosalía released her second studio album El Mal Querer to critical acclaim and commercial success. The concept album, inspired by the 13th-century anonymous Occitan Romance of Flamenca, launched the singer into mainstream stardom. The album received critical acclaim for its avant-garde production, which fused flamenco music with pop and urbano. El Mal Querer was listed in many year-end publications as well as in Rolling StoneRecording sessions for the singer's next project began in Los Angeles as early as 2019. While on tour that year, Rosalía released a collection of singles. In March, the first of eight, "Con Altura", featuring J Balvin and el Guincho, was released on digital platforms. It topped the charts in Argentina, Venezuela, Spain and Colombia among others and was the second most-watched music video released in 2019 on YouTube as well as the most-watched female music video that year. 2019 also saw the release of "Yo x Ti, Tu x Mi", featuring Ozuna, "Aute Cuture", "A Palé" and "Milionària", whilst "Juro Que" and "TKN", featuring Travis Scott, were released the following year. The latter of which became her first entry on the Billboard Hot 100.
When Dutch radio station 3voor12 asked the singer through a Zoom press conference about a possible single compilation or box set, Rosalía expressed total rejection to the idea explaining that "I don't really enjoy records that are just a collection of singles. I usually enjoy records that tell a story and that are alive and involve a lot of thinking." She continued by stating that "as a musician I feel the responsibility to release a cohesive album, one that makes sense; one in where the songs are linked and share an essence". Rosalía was later seen in the recording studio with Michael Uzowuru, Mike Dean and the Neptunes among others.
During 2021, Rosalía released the standalone singles "Lo Vas a Olvidar" and "Linda" alongside Billie Eilish and Tokischa, respectively. In May, talent manager Rebecca León confirmed that Rosalía wouldn't release an album in 2021. In August, the singer revealed to Santiago Matías that the album "was already taking shape". In October, the singer teased on TikTok that the project would be released "soon" and premiered 30 seconds of the album's lead single. During a fan meet and greet in Mexico organized by Exa FM, Rosalía revealed that her new album would be "very different" from its predecessor and that the lead single would be released in November.
Motomami was officially announced on 2 November 2021, the third anniversary of El Mal Querer, along with a 15-second trailer directed by Daniel Sannwald, containing a snippet of the title track as well as a tentative '2022' release date. Sannwald also pictured the album cover, which was revealed on social media on 31 January 2022. On 8 November 2021, Rosalía announced the album's lead single, "La Fama" featuring the Weeknd. It was released on 11 November.
Recording
Rosalía began work on Motomami in January 2019 and finished in August 2021. However, during the first year of production, she was still promoting her sophomore album on El Mal Querer Tour and was still figuring out the direction she wanted to go in. Rosalía had begun thinking of several ideas for the album before El Mal Querer was released in November 2018. The confection of the album went through many stages as Rosalía was once convinced of making "four projects at the same time" differencing a flamenco record, a piano ballad one, a dark pop one, and an alternative reggaeton record. The singer ended up "finding a purport within chaos", committing to a color palette at the sound level. The production on Motomami distinguishes six elements that get used in almost every track: "aggressive" drums, filters that "make the music seem distant", a nude voice, the use of vocal chops, and a repeated minimalist production. During the album's creation, Rosalía drew influences from artists of all disciplines such as Héctor Lavoe, Nina Simone, Patti Smith, Bach, Michèle Lamy, Ocean Vuong, Yayoi Kusama, Ricardo Bofill and Andrei Tarkovsky. On 25 April 2022, she shared a seven-hour Spotify playlist of music that she was inspired by, dubbed "Inspo$ Motomami", which included artists such as Daddy Yankee, Madonna, David Bowie, Björk, Snoop Dogg, Manuel Molina, Carla Bruni, etc.The majority of the album was recorded between 2020 and 2021. The process was registered on the singer's private Instagram account 'holamotomami', which she made public in December 2021. During tour season in 2019, Rosalía suffered from writer's block as she was constantly releasing new material and performing live, with isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic and partly moving with Frank Ocean to New York City helping the process flow despite being homesick. Rosalía didn't leave the United States until June 2021 due to travel restrictions during the pandemic. During her time in the States, she had "twelve-to-sixteen hour long" studio sessions almost every day, whether at her rented home in Miami or at recording studios in Hollywood and Manhattan, where she recorded upwards of nearly 30 songs for the album. Rosalía had troubled time with deadlines, pushing the album's release a couple times. The mixing and mastering process of Motomami took nine months, being completed on 15 April 2021. "Saoko" was the last song Rosalía wrote for the album and "La Combi Versace" the most modified as she "changed the arrangement completely right before she was going to turn in the album" as well as the featured artist, which was originally Tego Calderón.
Music and lyrics
Primarily, Motomami is an experimental pop and alternative reggaeton record that also explores bachata, hip-hop, flamenco, art pop, chiptune, bolero, electropop and dembow as well as mambo, merengue and funk carioca in its expanded edition. In an interview with Diego Ortiz for Rolling Stone, Rosalía described the album as a "brave" record that is "heavily influenced by reggaeton". She then expressed that the album is the "most personal and confessional album that I've made so far", revolving around lyrical themes of transformation, sexuality, heartbreak, celebration, spirituality, self-respect and isolation. Motomami is largely inspired by the Latin music she danced to with her cousins as a child, and encountered again traveling the world as a budding pop star.Critics compared "the degree of lyrical, rhythmic and sonic experimentation" to Beastie Boys' Ill Communication and Moby's Play, and found similarities in Lorde's Pure Heroine and Nine Inch Nails' The Downward Spiral and in the works of Frank Ocean and Kanye West. Some media outlets later found resemblances of Motomami in Charli XCX's Brat and in Tini's Un Mechón de Pelo.
Songs
Motomami begins with "Saoko", an alternative reggaeton and experimental track with industrial and avant-jazz elements. The song features heavy synthesizers, distorted pianos and traditional reggaeton drums; while its lyrics celebrate transformation and change. The reggaeton sounds continue into its "slow-building" second track "Candy", where Rosalía sings about a broken relationship over "shimmering" synthesizers. Its third track, "La Fama" featuring The Weeknd, is a midtempo bachata influenced by electropop that details the downsides of fame. Rosalía returns to her flamenco background in the fourth track "Bulerías", which sees her defending her position as a celebrity over communal chants.The fifth track "Chicken Teriyaki" has been described as a "TikTok dance-ready" reggaeton track where Rosalía raps about a trip to New York City. The song is highlighted for its use of "ironic" and humorous lyricism. The sixth track "Hentai" is a "delicate" piano ballad with pulsing electronic beats that explores the pleasures of sexual intercourse and female sexuality. The seventh track "Bizcochito" is a chiptune track that's "so playful it sounds like an ice cream truck rolling through the neighborhood." Rosalía sings about isolation and homesickness during her time in the United States within the pandemic in "G3 N15" as she also delivers a pessimist point of view of Los Angeles in between piano melodies. It features a voice message of her maternal grandmother in Catalan. Followed up by the title track, "Motomami" serves as an interlude. The tenth track, "Diablo", lays Rosalía's pitch-shifted vocals over ominous electronica and an off-kilter reggaeton beat. It features uncredited guest vocals by Leyvan and James Blake.
The eleventh track "Delirio de Grandeza" reimagines Justo Betancourt's 1968 track of the same name, adding a sample from Soulja Boy's remix of "Delirious" by Vistoso Bosses. The twelfth track "Cuuuuuuuuuute" is a clattering cyberpunk and deconstructed club song that suddenly switches to piano balladry and back again. It draws inspiration from Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights". The thirteenth "Como Un G" is a piano ballad about an unrequited, ephemeral love. The following track "Abcdefg" serves as an interlude. It features a voicenote in which Rosalía recites an acrostic poem based on the alphabet. Rosalía and featured artist Tokischa describe having fun dressed in Versace in "La Combi Versace", a minimalist dembow/neoperreo track. The sixteenth track "Sakura" is an "emotionally authoritative" closing track that sounds like it was recorded live in an arena as it features audience cheers recorded during the El Mal Querer Tour. In "Sakura", Rosalía compares her time as a pop star to the brief life of a cherry blossom.