Rosalía Vila Tobella (born 25 September 1992), known mononymously as Rosalía, is a Catalan singer and songwriter from Sant Esteve Sesrovires, Barcelona.
After discovering Spanish folkloric music at an early age, Rosalía graduated from Superior School of Music of Catalonia (ESMUC) with honors by virtue of her collaborative cover record with Raül Refree, Los Ángeles (2017) and the baccalaureate project El Mal Querer (Sony, 2018), which was co-produced by El Guincho on a low budget and contained modern interpretations of flamenco mixed with pop and urban.
The album, which would later win the Latin Grammy Award for Album of the Year and be listed in Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2020, was released to critical acclaim and started the ascent of Rosalía into the international music scene.
Her first hit single came in 2019, when she collaborated with J Balvin on Con Altura, a reggaeton-inspired track that marked Rosalía's journey to urban music. Selling over seven million copies, it was named one of the best songs of the year by Billboard and Pitchfork and Best Urban Song by the Latin Recording Academy.
It also spawned her signature lyric and nickname La Rosalía. She later collaborated with other musicians such as Billie Eilish, Bad Bunny, Ozuna, Arca and Travis Scott, achieving multiple accolades and breaking many records.
Throughout her career, Rosalía has won a Grammy Award, eight Latin Grammy Awards, three MTV Video Music Awards, an MTV Europe Music Award, two UK Music Video Awards and two consecutive Premio Ruido for both of her studio albums, among others. In 2019, Billboard gave her the Rising Star Award for changing the sound of today's mainstream music with her fresh flamenco-influenced pop.
More information: Rosalía
Rosalía was born on 25 September 1993 at the General Hospital of Catalonia in Sant Cugat del Vallès, and was raised in Sant Esteve Sesrovires, a small town in northern Barcelona.
She is the youngest daughter of Pilar Tobella, a businesswoman who has been running the family company for decades, as well as managing Motomami S.L., her own artist representation agency since late 2018. The company was created specially to manage her daughter's image, management, financial state and patrimony. Rosalía's father is José Manuel Vila, who was born in Cudillero, Asturias. She has a big sister, Pilar Vila, who works with Rosalía as her stylist.
She began her professional musical education at the age of 16 at the Taller de Músics. She did a six-year course at the academy. She began attending class at the Raval school but due to her high grades and multiple recommendations she transferred to the Superior School of Music of Catalonia (ESMUC) in order to finish her studies.
In 2012 she became the vocalist of Kejaleo, a flamenco music group featuring Jordi Franco, Roger Blavia, Cristo Fontecilla, Diego Cortés and Xavi Turull.
They released an album, Alaire, in 2013. That same year, Rosalía worked as a duo with Juan Chicuelo Gómez at the 2013 Panama International Film Festival and at the Festival Grec de Barcelona for the contemporary dance work De Carmen.
In 2013, she participated in the Association of Performing Arts Professionals (APAP) Conference in New York, and was the lead voice in the culmination of the Any Espriu 2014 at the Palau de la Música.
In 2015 she collaborated with La Fura dels Baus on a show that premiered in Singapore. She was the opening act for Catalan flamenco artist Miguel Poveda, accompanied by Alfredo Lagos, at the International Music Festival of Cadaqués, and also at the 2016 Jerez Jazz Festival. She worked with Rocío Márquez on the presentation of her album El Niño, produced by Raül Refree, at Primavera Sound 2015. In 2015, she also worked with clothing brand Desigual and sang the single for their campaign jingle Last Night Was Eternal.
That same year, she released Un Millón de Veces. The song was part of the benefit album Tres Guitarras Para el Autismo. All proceeds benefited studies on autism. Through her teenage years and early twenties, she performed in musical bars and weddings. At 20, she worked as a flamenco teacher and vocal coach.
In 2016, she collaborated with Spanish rapper C. Tangana on Antes de Morirme. The song was a sleeper hit and entered the Spanish Singles Chart in 2018, after the success of Rosalía's other work. The collaboration received international attention when it was featured on the soundtrack of the first season of Spanish Netflix show Élite (2018).
In 2016, Rosalía performed to a crowd of a hundred people at the Tablao del Carmen, a flamenco specialized venue at the Poble Espanyol, in Barcelona. In the audience was Raül Refree, whom she invited to the show.
They began working on two albums together. Rosalía signed with Universal Music later in 2016, and she relocated to California. She went on to only release Los Ángeles. The album talks about death in a dark way with aggressive guitar chords by Refree. It presents reworks of flamenco classics receiving several accolades.
She was nominated for Best New
Artist at the 18th Latin Grammy Awards. The album was released on 10
February 2017 through Universal Music and spawned two singles, Catalina, released in October 2016, and De Plata, released in August
2017. The album was very well received by critics.
More information: Instagram-La Rosalía
Rosalía and Raül Refree embarked on a concert tour, Los Ángeles Tour, supporting their first studio album together. The tour began on 11 February 2017 in Granada and ended on 1 March 2018 at the Palau de la Música in Barcelona.
During the tour, in 2018, Spanish singer Bebe attended one of their concerts alongside Juanes, who became immediately obsessed with Rosalía and asked his manager Rebeca León to work with her. She agreed to manage her as she felt like she was a once in fifty years kind of artist.
The recording cycle for Rosalía's second studio album, El Mal Querer, began in early 2017 as her baccalaureate project, graduating from the Superior School of Music of Catalonia (ESMUC). She personally chose to work alongside Spanish musician El Guincho and spawned its concept alongside friend Ferran Echegaray, who bet on the Romance of Flamenca to follow the album's storyline. Thus, every song on the album would be a chapter of the story narrated in the anonymous Occitan novel.
Despite having no budget to produce the record as she was an independent artist working on a university project, Rosalía invested a lot of her own money, to the point of almost going bankrupt. However, she continued working on it, stating that my goal was to find a way to explain this tradition that I'm obsessed with in the most personal way without fear and with risk. Before releasing the album I was in debt and had no guarantees that this would work but I had the hope that, since I was making it from my heart, whether it was a few or many, that those people that liked it, would like it for real.
The album was almost completely recorded at El Guincho's apartment in Barcelona with a computer, a microphone and a sound table. It would mix traditional flamenco with today's pop and urban music.
Later, she released the album's lead single, Malamente. Due to its intense promotion and novel sound, it caught the attention of international personalities and music critics, who all praised the track to the point that, in August, Rosalía was booked to perform at Madonna's 60th birthday bash but cancelled the gig after many logistic conflicts.
Personalities such as Kourtney Kardashian and Dua Lipa also showed their appreciation for Rosalía's new song, sharing it on social media. Malamente was promoted at several award shows like the 2018 MTV Europe Music Awards as well as the Latin Grammys. Its music video, directed by Canada, went viral on the Internet and was named Video of the Year by Pitchfork.
The song was nominated for five Latin Grammys, out of which Rosalía won two, for Best Alternative Song and for Best Urban Fusion/Performance. Malamente is certified five times platinum in Spain for selling over 200,000 copies and is also platinum in the US. The album's second single, Pienso en tu Mirá, was released on 24 July 2018 through Sony Music. Its music video also went viral on social media, with praise for its aesthetics and poetic symbolism.
El Mal Querer was released on 2 November 2018 and debuted at number two on the PROMUSICAE chart. It is presented as experimental and conceptual, revolving around a toxic heterosexual relationship, inspired by the anonymous 13th-century Occitan novel Flamenca.
Rosalía revealed that she had already presented the project and that she had finally earned her degree in music, with a mention in flamenco, with honors. The album also entered the charts in Belgium, Switzerland, Portugal, the Netherlands and the United States, where the album debuted at the top of the US Latin Pop Albums chart.
El Mal Querer was universally acclaimed by music critics. Writing for The Guardian, head critic Alexis Petridis highly commended the album, giving it the highest rating and describing it as the calling card of a unique new talent. He praised Rosalía's vocals for giving the album a head-turning freshness, noting that her singing style is audibly rooted in a different musical tradition to the usual styles in which pop vocalists perform.
It ended up winning all Latin Grammy awards it got nominated for: Album of the Year, Best Contemporary Pop Vocal Album, Best Engineered Album and Best Recording Package. Therefore, Rosalía became the first female recipient of the Latin Grammy Award for Album of the Year since Shakira in 2006.
Later, she released the single
Fucking Money Man, which includes two money-themed tracks: Milionària"(which she sang in Catalan) and Dios Nos Libre del Dinero. It was well
received by linguists, who praised Rosalía for singing in Catalan for showing the world her roots because, with her, the Catalan language
is able to cross borders.
More information: Twitter-Rosalía
On 26 January 2020 she performed at the 62nd Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, and she ended up winning the Grammy Award for Best Latin Rock, Urban or Alternative Album.
After Rosalía's increase in popularity with the release of Malamente in spring 2018, her music was described as a heavily exciting fusion of flamenco and modern arts. American magazine Pitchfork called the singer's voice a soft liquid velvet and wrote that Malamente consumes the listener with drums and soft synthesizers that drag you to their world completely. After releasing El Mal Querer in November 2018, The Guardian scored it with 5/5 stars and said: the Catalan singer's potent, smart second album is more complex than any Latin pop currently in the charts.
Rosalía has been accused of cultural appropriation by some Romani people because she adapts Romani customs into her style, and she draws from the flamenco music tradition, which is often thought to be from Romani people in Andalusia. However, the origin of flamenco music is not known precisely, and it probably fused musical practices from three sources: Moorish, Jewish and Romani cultures. Responding to this criticism, Rosalía said, flamenco does not belong to the Gypsies.
Rosalía has cited Camarón de la Isla, James Blake and La Niña de los Peines as her major musical influences.
When she was asked about her biggest fashion influence, she cited Lola Flores. In an interview with Billboard she said: I love her. I love the attitude and the strength she had. She also mentioned Carmen Amaya; she used to wear masculine clothes in a moment that any woman was dancing in typically-man clothing.
She is of paternal Asturian and maternal Catalan heritage. Her paternal grandparents were of Galician and Andalusian origin. Her great-grandfather was Cuban. She is fluent in Catalan, Spanish and English.
More information: Youtube-Rosalía
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