How do you stage an album like Motomami? Released in March, it put the pedal to the metal on Rosalia’s ride to international stardom. Her third record was a syncretic triumph: a mercurial combination of reggaeton, bachata, salsa, flamenco, hip-hop, electro-pop, Latin-pop, pop-pop – all bundled up in a padded leather motorcycle jacket. It swept the Latin Grammys earlier this year. But all those influences: how would they coalesce in a cavernous arena? Remarkably, it turns out.
Rosalia arrives on stage at Lisbon’s Campo Pequeno in fitting fashion, her presence preceded by the thunderous sound of an engine starting. The crowd follows suit, roaring to life. Rosalia emerges out of a makeshift vehicle; it’s a cohort of dancers, dressed in slinky mesh tops and light-up helmets, who move as one. At another point in the show, they contort themselves into a motorcycle that Rosalia straddles. Think Transformers but sexy. The set opens as the album does, with “Saoko”. It’s a skull-rattling introduction, the avant-jazz interlude, distorted piano and synth bassline spotlighting the mutability of her music and of Rosalia herself. “I’m very much me; I transform,” she declares. “I’m everything; I transform.”
Across the two-hour set, Rosalia’s presence is unflinching. She commands the stage with ease. It’s in the swoosh of her hair, the wry arch of a single brow, the commendable control of her twerking. (Holes have been cut into the armpits of the leather jacket she is wearing to allow for maximum movement.) That command is made literal on the sultry pop-bachata “La Fama”. Dancers follow Rosalia like an adoring, amorphous blob. Sinking to their knees, they gaze up at her. When she moves, they move. “Candy”, a ballad about an old flame, is another of her slower songs, with a flickering dembow beat that is even more stirring performed live.
The energy never lets up. Songs are delivered like electric shocks, either in quick jolts to the brain or slow hums of energy. The 10,000-strong crowd perform their back-up duties happily. “Ta-ra-rá, ta-ra-rá, ta-tá,” they chant in turn with Rosalia’s warped vocals in “Bizcochito”. The opening chords summon a sea of phones as viewers hope to capture what has now become a viral TikTok moment for themselves. Rosalia stands, hand on hip, smacking an imaginary stick of gum and looking hugely, hilariously unimpressed.
The minimal set is brilliantly at odds with her maximalist music. A strip of white runs down an otherwise bare stage; the sparseness lends an artsy-fartsy air to proceedings. Occasionally, that strip projects a simple video that recalls computer screensavers from the Nineties. “Hentai”, for example, is performed against a backdrop of a sun setting against some green hills. Not that anyone is looking. All eyes are on Rosalia as she takes a seat at the piano. The instrument materialises on stage sometime during “Diablo”. It takes the place of the barber’s chair where a make-up artist has just finished doing touch-ups on the singer as she sits, slumped, like a boxer going into the ninth round. In earlier tour dates, Rosalia has cut her hair on stage (Marina Abramovic, who?) but tonight, the shears are untouched.
“Hentai” is perhaps the dirtiest song on the album, but it’s made saintly by Rosalia’s pristine soprano. Riding a man’s “pistola” has never sounded so demure. It’s hard to name a current singer with as interesting a voice as Rosalia’s, which can break into the sort of cascading melisma that is heard less and less nowadays. When she does this, such as on “Dolerme”, the crowd quietens and lets her do her thing. Maybe out of reverence. Maybe because no one else can hit that damn high note.
There is one moment when Rosalia descends from the stage to greet her fans. The footage that has played all night on the big screens becomes haphazard as the feed switches from that of the on-stage videographer to the mini-camera Rosalia is cradling in her arms. Suddenly, we have a first-person view as she graciously collects teddy bears and flowers from the front row. For one whole minute, the camera stares up past Rosalia’s chin and into her nose. For another minute, we’re just seeing the sleeve of her motorcycle jacket as she embraces a fan. It is intimate and familiar: two things you never expect from a world-tour show. When Rosalia invites one lucky fan on stage, he does the only thing left to do as he approaches her: bow.
Tickets for the Rosalia “Motomami World Tour” are on sale now. The show arrives at the O2 in London on 15 December
