If Olivia Dean is the girl next door, Rosalia is the girl next planet. Their shows in successive weeks at the O2 – Dean had six nights, Rosalia two – were object lessons in presentation. Dean’s gig looked like some high-end light entertainment from the 1970s, Rosalia’s like something the National Theatre might dream up for a new revival of Murder in the Cathedral.
Rosalia emerged in 2017 as the apparent saviour of flamenco – though flamenco traditionalists disagreed: she was Catalan, not Andalusian, and she wasn’t even a gypsy. Then across four albums, she travelled so far that it’s hard to categorise her extraordinary latest one, Lux: a heavily orchestrated, intensely dramatic reverie about the lives of assorted recondite saints. It is not the material from which arena pop stars are conventionally forged.
To be a Rosalia fan must be exciting, because every record is so different – her last won a bunch of Grammys in the Latin categories reserved for Latin American pop – and lots of the young women at the O2 knew every word even though most of them were in Spanish. Not all were in Spanish, though: if you read anything about the release you will come across the breathless claim that Lux features – count ’em – 13 languages.
Rosalia is plainly operating on a plane several levels above anyone else. It helps that she looks like a model, of course, and that she drips poise. But what really sticks is her extraordinary voice. No matter that I didn’t understand the words (they were translated on a screen above the stage, but I could only see the first half of each line), the delivery was astounding. During the operatic ballad ‘Mio Cristo piage Diamanti’, she appeared to be tearing up and it didn’t look like stagecraft.
One can only imagine the ruthless self-discipline and preparation the show must have involved: it began with dancers lowering a large cube, revealing Rosalia inside as a ballerina in a music box. Which would have simply been a nice visual had she not then performed the first three songs en pointe. I doubt anyone at the back of the room could have even seen but imagine learning to dance en pointe just for the first three songs of your show.
It was dramatic even with the stage props consisting only of a few movable stairways and blocks, shuffled around by the dancers – oh, and the giant censer that swung over the orchestra in the middle of the arena during ‘CUUUUuuuuuute’. There was discomfort too: a strange cover of ‘Can’t Keep My Eyes Off Of You’ was presented with Rosalia inside a gilt frame, the dancers gathered in front of her, gawping – a song about obsession sung by the object of obsession, which became tense and paranoid.
Truly, this felt like a landmark concert – a new possibility for pop. It must be how people felt when they saw Kate Bush all those decades ago.
Olivia Dean wasn’t in the business of challenging anyone: there are no songs about reliquaries in her catalogue, just lots of very nicely done retro pop-soul that felt everyday and comforting. It was nonetheless quite unusual. Pop doesn’t commonly thrive on sentiments such as ‘We could be nice to each other/ Nice to each other’. But she has the charm and the voice – and the relatability – to woo anyone.
Dean’s show was low-budget and high impact. She and her band stood on white platforms, a vast white curtain behind them serving as the screen – far more attractive than an LED display. A camera moved across the front of the stage, which must have annoyed the front rows but meant that the curtain was often offering grand sweeps across the stage that were the meat and drink of light entertainment directors in the 1970s. With the band in suits and Dean in a gown, it could have been the musical interlude from The Mike Yarwood 1975 Christmas Show.
I left Dean’s show pleased for her success but Rosalia’s astounded at seeing something truly new.
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