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The album received universal critical acclaim for its experimental production— the use of flamenco elements mixed with pop and urbano music—, Rosalía's vocals, and accompanying visuals. It became a commercial success, reaching the top of the Spanish Charts and the US Billboard Latin Pop Albums chart. It also scored her second consecutive Premio Ruido win.[13] Since June 2021, El Mal Querer holds the record for the longest-charting album in Spanish history.[14]
The record cycle for Rosalía's sophomore album, El Mal Querer, began in late 2016 as her baccalaureate project at the Catalonia College of Music. She 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".[19] The album was almost completely recorded at El Guincho's apartment in Barcelona with a computer, a microphone and an audio interface.
At the end of April 2018, Rosalía published a short documentary video to her social networks where she talked about her new album. She said: "Everything I have I am leaving it here; I'm in the red, I'm risking a lot. This project is what I've always wanted to do, I've been thinking for a long time about making an album like the one I'm going to release. The flamenco inspiration is still there but, at the same time, it is something else." Three days after the international release of the song "Brillo", composed in collaboration with Colombian reggaeton singer J Balvin, Rosalía announced on her social networks that she was going to release a new single in the coming days. Finally, on 29 May 2018, "Malamente" was released. Rosalía confessed that El Mal Querer is actually her final bachelor's degree project, graduating from flamenco studies.[6]
El Mal Querer was widely acclaimed by music critics;[28] at Metacritic, the album received an average score of 89, based on five reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".[24] 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."[20]
Pitchfork ranked El Mal Querer the sixth best album of 2018, with Philip Sherburne complimenting its combination of traditional and modern styles, and praising Rosalía's voice, saying, "Whether breathy or belting, she's as commanding a presence as Spanish-language pop has encountered in ages—less an ambassador for flamenco than the inventor of her own fascinating hybrid."[29]
Conversely, Rosalía has been accused of cultural appropriation by some Spanish publications, due to her use of gitano symbology.[30][31] She is from Catalonia, which has underlying "cultural and political tensions" with Andalusia, the home of flamenco. Paula Ibieta of Phoenix New Times cited "the questionable nature of Rosalía's aesthetic and use of Andalusian slang".[32] Rosalía has responded that the controversy is positive, and that flamenco elements will always be present in her work.[31]
After the release of El Mal Querer, demand skyrocketed for Flamenca, the medieval novel that inspired the album. In September 2019, Roca Editorial reissued the novel, marking it as "a 13th-century classic feminist novel" and noting the inspiration the novel provided for Rosalía's project. Anton M. Espalader, who translated the book into Catalan, stated to Verne, "We have to congratulate Rosalía and thank her for this phenomenon that is not currently occurring in other countries. It is always good news that a medieval novel of these characteristics returns to bookstores."[55] The themes surrounding the narrative of the album, which revolves around the toxicity of a heterosexual relationship, became instruments for teachers and professionals to explain topics related to gender violence. It also became a narrative to analyze didactically in literature courses.[56] Parallelly, El Mal Querer spawned controversy in Spain as it mainly takes inspiration of flamenco and gypsy culture and symbolism. While some personalities and media outlets, like The New York Times, defended Rosalía by saying "the debate on the cultural appropriation of the Spanish singer is unfair: her music embodies, with height, the most eloquent artistic form of globalization: the remix",[57] many others criticized Rosalía's privilege as a white person within the music industry, stating that a Romani female would never have had the same amount of opportunities as her.[58] These topics were analyzed in many college theses. María Guadalupe Benzal Alía, a degree student in Translation and Interpretation and with a diploma in Intercultural Communication ratified by the Comillas Pontifical University of Madrid, wrote her thesis about the album, which she titled Análisis intercultural del álbum musical de Rosalía Vila, El Mal Querer y el consecuente rechazo de la comunidad gitana española.[59] Peter Manuel, ethnomusicology professor emeritus (CUNY Graduate Center), published the journal article The Rosalía Polemic: Defining Genre Boundaries and Legitimacy in Flamenco also based on the controversy.[60]
All sociology and musicology behind El Mal Querer was compiled in the 2021 essay book Ensayos Sobre el Buen Querer, written by thirteen authors.[61]
Spanish-Croatian artist Filip Ćustić is responsible for the visual aspect of the album. The visuals of El Mal Querer are mainly inspired in contemporary paintings, including The Two Fridas, Ángeles y Fuensanta, Ophelia, Naranjas y Limones, and La Maja Vestida. Upon its release, Ćustić started to be cited by the international press as "one of the present day's most sensational young artists".[62] In 2019, he won the Latin Grammy for Best Recording Package. Ćustić later worked with Lil Nas X on the cover art for his hit single "Montero (Call Me by Your Name)", which resembled The Creation of Adam.[63] Again, the visual art of El Mal Querer became the subject of many college theses, including Raquel Baixauli and Esther González Gea's (both ethnomusicology students) Rosalía y el discurso visual de El Mal Querer. Arte y folclore para un empoderamiento femenino ("Rosalía and the visual discourse of El Mal Querer. Art and folklore for female empowerment") as well as Silvia Vaquero Tramoyeres' essay El Mal Querer de Rosalía: análisis estético, audiovisual e interpretativo. Vaquero is an audiovisual communication student at Technical University of Valencia.[64] Welsh singer Marina explained that Ćustić's artwork for the album inspired the cover art for her fifth studio album, Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land (2021).[65] The iconicity of this musical era was brought to television in 2021, with the contestants of Drag Race España recreating the looks of it in a special episode called "the night of the thousand Rosalías".[66]
The marketing strategies used to promote the album were often discussed in the Spanish media.[67] They highlighted a very American way to promote the album especially through appearances in MTV and pointed out a big fight to internationalize the singer and turn her into a superstar, yet an underground artist.[68] They also distinguished all the digital marketing around the album. In 2018, Rosalía became one of the first Spanish artists to promote a musical project on a billboard in Times Square.[69] Rosalía was noted for the constant use of long personalized acrylic nails and for the mix of an urban and elegant fashion, which would often receive mixed reviews.[70] She also "took the color red and made it her own" while mixing it with traditional Spanish and Catholic symbolism.[71] She has often made visual references to industrial plants, trucks, suburban culture, bullfighting and Holy Week.[72]
Many critics have seen an increase of popular interest in flamenco music after the release of El Mal Querer, highlighting that Rosalía "has made the harrowing music of Andalusia into a global phenomenon".[73] In 2021, Stereogum noted the cultural influence of Rosalía in Kacey Musgraves' interpretation of Violeta Parra's signature song "Gracias a la Vida", included on her fifth studio album Star-Crossed, as well as in Christina Aguilera's La Fuerza (2022).[74] Various media outlets also saw a resemblance to the intention of El Mal Querer in C. Tangana's 2021 studio album El Madrileño, claiming "it is a kind of continuation of the path El Mal Querer started".[75]
^ abSherburne, Philip (11 December 2018). "The 50 Best Albums of 2018". Pitchfork. Archived from the original on 14 December 2018. Retrieved 12 December 2018.
^Fuentes, Nicolás (3 December 2018). "The 50 best albums of 2018: the full list" [The 50 best albums of 2018: the full list]. The Guardian. Archived from the original on 21 December 2018. Retrieved 1 January 2021.
^"Rosalía es una Racista". Rebelión Feminista (in European Spanish). 16 July 2019. Archived from the original on 30 October 2020. Retrieved 1 August 2020.
^Benzal Alía, María Guadalupe (2019). Análisis intercultural del álbum musical de Rosalía Vila, El Mal Querer y el consecuente rechazo de la comunidad gitana española. Madrid: Universidad Pontificia Comillas. pp. 7–81.
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