Music

The Story Behind the Arabic and Islamic Influences in Rosalía’s ‘LUX’

BYMille Team

November 10, 2025

Rosalía’s LUX, her fourth studio album, released on November 7, is already being hailed as one of her most daring works. Within 48 hours of release, it surpassed 42 million streams on Spotify, an impressive feat for a record with no obvious singles or mainstream TikTok hooks. It’s an album that asks for time, patience, and openness. The payoff is a body of work that feels vast and deeply intentional, where the boundaries between language, sound, and spirituality dissolve into one continuous experience.

Described by Pitchfork as “a heartfelt offering of avant-garde classical pop that roars through genre, romance, and religion,” and by The Guardian as “a distinctive clash of classical and chaos that couldn’t be by anyone else,” LUX sees the 33-year-old Catalonia-born artist at her most ambitious. The record unfolds across thirteen languages and features the London Symphony Orchestra under Icelandic conductor Daníel Bjarnason. Each track feels like a movement in a larger symphony, one that questions how music can carry both personal and divine meaning.

Part of what makes LUX so striking is its Arabic and Islamic influences. In interviews, Rosalía has spoken openly about how these ideas shaped her songwriting. “The idea of we’re all one soul was the inspiration for La Yugular,” she explained. “That’s studying from Islam and being like, okay, so that’s the foundation of it. How can I explain these on a song? I’m going to put these ideas, so beautiful, on a song.” Her fascination with this notion of unity—the belief that all life is connected by a single divine essence—runs through the album like an invisible thread. In Islamic mysticism, particularly in Sufism, the self is understood as a reflection of that unity, and the separation between human and divine as a kind of illusion. Rosalía channels that energy into sound, creating a composition that feels less like storytelling and more like surrender.

En La Yugular Rosalía habla sobre el Islam y se inspira en Rabia al Adawiyya, una santa musulmana y mística Sufí que habló sobre querer a Dios por si mismo y no por sus recompensas o por miedo. “El outro es ser mi parte favorita, lo grande y lo pequeño la yuxtaposicion de ello” pic.twitter.com/mIXcGsaMjN

— ︎ ︎sin altura (@motocarl_2) November 7, 2025

Before singing in Arabic on La Yugular, she references a verse from Surah Qaf (50:16): “We created man and We know what his soul whispers to him, and We are closer to him than his jugular vein.” The title, which translates to “The Jugular,” becomes a metaphor for intimacy—the closeness of the divine to human consciousness.

The two-time-Grammy-Award winner also spoke about the role of breath in her creative process. “In Arabic, I find it’s so interesting how much the air [is] important,” she said. “At the end of the day, the breath, that’s where it all starts. That’s why in the beginning of the album, after that piano intro, the beginning is a breath. That’s the first human sound on the album.” That opening exhale, almost imperceptible, is deliberate. In Islamic thought, nafas—breath—symbolizes the divine spark that animates all living beings. By beginning LUX with breath rather than melody, the singer repositions the human voice as something elemental, an act of creation rather than performance.

Her decision to sing in Arabic wasn’t just aesthetic curiosity; it was an attempt at devotion. “I was struggling with recording in Arabic because I’m not used to [using] my throat like this, to make this space, and I don’t even think that I got it right but I tried,” she admitted. “That was my love letter to Arabic.”

She also cited Râbi’a al-Adawiyya, an eighth-century Sufi mystic from Basra, as one of her guiding inspirations. “When you see me singing in Arabic, it’s inspired by this powerful figure,” she said. “Râbi’a al-Adawiya was a Sufi woman, from the most mystical branch of Islam. So, for me, she was the inspiration. And the style, the ideas she proposes.”

Râbi’a’s teachings centered on pure, selfless love for God—a form of devotion not driven by fear of punishment or desire for reward, but by the beauty of love itself. Rosalía channels that same ethos into LUX, crafting music that reaches for transcendence without demanding understanding.

What makes LUX remarkable is the way it ties these threads together: Islamic mysticism, Andalusian history, orchestral grandeur, and electronic experimentation. Spain’s musical DNA has long carried traces of Arab influence, from the scales of flamenco to the ornamentation of its vocals. Rosalía doesn’t simply nod to that heritage, but she engages with it, allowing centuries of intertwined culture to surface through her voice.

The Story Behind the Arabic and Islamic Influences in Rosalía’s ‘LUX’

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The Story Behind the Arabic and Islamic Influences in Rosalía’s ‘LUX’

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