Quién pudiera vivir entre los dos?
Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts
14/11/25 : Lux - Rosalia
Our third visit with Rosalia and I've liked our previous visits, so I was already quite looking forward to this - but I've heard it's quite the thing, so I'm looking forward to it even more!
Oh yes, it's quite the thing indeed. She uses a wide range of musical styles (I'd love to describe them in more detail, but I don't have the necessary words other than "classical-ish") and languages (I recognised Spanish, English and several others that are obviously neither Spanish nor English) - I imagine you're now just astounded at my powers of description. I'm afraid it does fall foul of my general aversion to foreign language albums - it's nothing to do "people should only record in English", it's just that I don't understand what's going on. She's got a lovely voice though and conveys a load of emotion so it feels like there's a lot going on here - I only hope that Wikipedia does a better job than I did at describing it (and it's not going to do a worse job, is it?). I did like it though - it's very atmospheric and has some gorgeous noises on it.
We're at #4 with a new entry in the chart this week which seems like a decent effort for the lass. The rest of the top five are Taylor Swift (back again!), Olivia Dean, Lily Allen and Sabrina Carpenter - the second week in a row that the ladies have had a clean sweep. And what's going on with the new entries this week?
Hayley Williams (#10)
Another third visit with a talented lady and she's gone for a slightly longer title than Rosalia - Ego Death At A Bacholerette Party. And I liked this one too - it's TaylorSwiftian, but indie-r and less binary/certain.
Wings (#12)
A best-of available in single or double CD format - and the single version is actually pretty decent. And I say that as someone who is very much not a Wings fan.
White Lies (#29)
I really didn't like this lot last time I met them with their 80s clichés - and they're very 80s clichéd again, but I was slightly more forgiving of them this time. But I still didn't love it though.
Gary Numan (#70)
A recording of his ONE THOUSANDTH live show. Get outta here!! Way to go, Gary. I only listened to "Cars" and "Are Friends Electric?" because they were the only ones I recognised, but they're done well
And that's your lot - it's a quiet week this week. And there's only one weird re-entry this week - Jake Bugg's fifth album is back thirteen months after it spent a solitary week in the charts. Can you believe it's thirteen years since his debut album? Last week I said that Florence would be at #13 and somewhat ironically, I should have gone for #23 which I used for several weeks last month because she's at #22. Rosalia feels like a tricky one to guess because it's relatively high and a decent album but I feel the foreign language thing will just kill it off so it's a "one and done" for me. And this week's Taylor stats are one in the top forty and five in the entire chart, with Lover hanging in there at #96.
Wikipedia has loads on it for a new album (310 milliPeppers) and it tells us this is her fourth album - and obviously a lot more besides! Genre-wise it's apparently orchestral pop, art pop, classical or avant-pop and there are a load of other people involved including the LSO, Bjork, Yves Tumor, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Pharrell Williams, Andrew Wyatt and a load of people with Latin names who I'm sure plenty of people know all about (but not me). The album took three years to produce, with a large amount of time taken planning out the lyrics which are in fourteen different languages (Spanish, English, Arabic, Catalan, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Mandarin, Portuguese, Sicilian and Ukrainian) with each one (obviously) representing a different female saint (who I won't list!). And it might have a relatively straightforward album cover but apparently the vinyl cover features eighty images which "contextualize the record" (whatever that means).
Interestingly, if you buy a physical version then you get three more tracks than you get digitally - I like this as a marketing technique. Critically, the album has been very well received (5/5 from The Guardian, Rolling Stone and NME) - it's also been praised by Pedro Sánchez, Spain's Prime Minister. And it's done well commercially, with the most Spotify streams in a day for a Spanish female artist and the highest UK chart placing for a Spanish language album. And it's done even better in other countries getting to #2 in France, Germany and The Netherlands - there's no news on Spain or the US yet, but I suspect she may do OK over there as well.
discogs.com only has one version available in this country for £55, but if you want to pop over to France you can pick up a signed copy for a mere 500 Euros! There's a whole load to this album which I've been spectacularly unable to unpack on my first listen but it certainly feels like I should give it some more listens and I feel every one would provide a bit more detail, so it certainly gets the album of the week award for me.
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