Die flamme dringt in mein gehirn ein wie ein blei-teddybär

Completing my trip up The Guardian's 50 best albums of 2025.

#1 : LUX - Rosalia

With its lyrics in 13 languages and references to dozens of historical female saints, the fact that Lux manages to transcend scholarly chin-stroking and dry Wiki deep dives is near miraculous, and the credit is solely Rosalía’s. While this isn’t her first album to alchemise the past and present – see 2018’s second album El Mal Querer and its heady flamenco-R&B hybrid – the stakes are far higher on Lux, and the balancing act more pronounced. What elevates it, apart from its multi-layered melodies, rich compositions and engrained drama, is the playfulness at its heart. Like Björk during her effortless 90s peak, there’s a sense of wonderment to Rosalía’s voice that sweeps you up into its tornado. Even when she’s tearing your heart in two, as on La Yugular’s blossoming balladry, or the ascension to heaven on the closing Magnolias, you want to be right there with her.

The 25th album I've previously heard and the eighth I've written up and when I met it, I declared it to be "very atmospheric and has some gorgeous noises on it". I will to listen to it again, but I suspect I'm not going to be able to describe it any more than that. 

Nope - there's really just so much going on which just isn't my wheelhouse that I don't have the words for, but it's a really very impressive blend of such things. She's obviously put an awful lot of work into it and I'm not in the slightest bit surprised that it's at #1 - I just can't imagine the critics not saying they loved it (whether they actually did or not). If you've not listened to it, then I definitely recommend it - you may not love it, but I suspect you can't help but be impressed by the ambition and the execution on display.

This charted for seven weeks with it peaking at #4 in its debut week - which is an impressive run for a foreign language album. The Wikipedia entry is sizeable (372 milliPeppers) and tells us it's her fourth album and features 14 languages - there's a load more detail in there which basically tell us the lass really put the effort in here eg "the track "Mio Cristo Piange Diamanti" in particular took a year". It's also interesting that to get all the tracks you have to buy a physical copy, which is a marketing technique I approve of. 

Critically, there just isn't enough space to include 1% of the purple prose the critics were falling over themselves to type - "Rosalía leaves us in a place mentioned by no prophets and described by no poets. A place none of us have been before, imagined by no one but herself, and perhaps her God". It did so well on the year-end lists that Wikipedia only bothers to include ten such lists and she's #1 or #2 on all of them. Commercially, it did really well globally, getting to #1 in Austria, Belgium, Portugal, Spain (nobody expected that!) and Switzerland and #4 in the US. 

discogs.com doesn't have anything particularly interesting available in this country, but if you're willing to consider shipping from Europe, you can go for a signed, crystal clear vinyl (and I'm intrigued as to the difference between clear and crystal clear) version for 500 Euros. Whilst it may not be worth quite that much, I think this is a pretty special album - not immediately loveable, but incredibly admirable and I'm going to make an effort to revisit it from time to time to just soak it up. And finally, the lyrics used as the blog title translate to "The flame penetrates my brain. Like a lead teddy bear" - which conveys an image, I guess, but it's not one I'd attempt to describe.

And with that, we've got to the end of the list - and my first impression is that it's generally been an easier trip than most years. But maybe that opinion will change when I come to write up the summary post.

#2 - Pretty decent