Triple podium for Rosalía. Motomami has been chosen by three music critics from The New York Times among the three best albums of the year. Two give her number 2 and the other 3. Ahead of the Catalan artist are Beyoncé (with her album Renaissance) and Zach Bryan (with American Heartbreak) and in the third case the artist from Sant Esteve Sesrovires is also behind by Beyoncé and Grace Ives (for Janky Star).
For the specialist Jon Pareles, Rosalía achieves the stylistic break in a “playful and impulsive” way, jumping “through the Americas and back to Spain” and presenting herself as “fragile one moment and invincible the next”, describes the critic. .
Between positions 11 and 25, but without order of importance or quality, Pareles places Saturno by Rauw Alejandro and Un verano sin ti, by Bad Bunny, as well as Tinta y tiempo, by Jorge Drexler.
In the same second position, Jon Caramanica places Rosalía’s Motomami, highlighting that his dilemma between tradition and modernity has been overcome by a “deeper” dissonance. Rosalía cultivates today a “futuristic aesthetic that spans multiple genres, eras and philosophies, creating an album as radical and syncretic as any released by a global superstar in recent years.” Caramanica places Bad Bunny at number 11 for 2022.
Critic Lindsay Zoladz, who drops the album to third in the world in 2022, describes the author as “one of the greatest pop stars on the planet, mixing myriad genres and cultural influences to create her own sonic world. Rosalía combines the swagger of her favorite rapper with the emotional intensity of flamenco legend Carmen Amaya, pivoting effortlessly between stylistic extremes.” Zoladz also celebrates A Summer Without You as one of the 25 most revealing works of the year that is close to closing.
In addition to Rosalía’s, the best albums of 2022 are for Pareles Beth Orton’s Weather Alive; Natural Brown Prom Queen, from Sudan Archives; Nacarile, from Ile; No Rules, Sandy, by Sylvan Esso; Hellfire, by Black Midi; Fossora, by Björk; Aethiopes, by Billy Woods; and Porridge Radio’s Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder to the Sky.
Jon Caramanica bets -behind Zach Bryan and Rosalía- for Drake (Honestly, Nevermind), Priscilla Block (Welcome to the block party songs), Beyoncé (Renaissance), Bartees Strange (Farm to table), the final show of the Sound and Fury Festival of the Gulch, held on July 31, 2022 in San Jose (California), 42 Dugg
Lindsay Zoladz has some overlap with her peers. Behind Grace Ives, Beyoncé and Rosalía come Alex G (God save the animals), Florence
A few weeks ago, in another of the major American newspapers, The Washington Post, the critic Chris Richards said that the concert offered there by Rosalía was the “future of pop.” “It was hard to imagine a more impressive, more visceral, more scrupulous, more dazzling pop concert than this, and perhaps that was exactly the goal of Rosalía’s music,” he said at the end of September. Richards said that the Despechá singer is a “polyglot with a stunning voice” and “virtuous”, that she “produces her music with great vitality and tremendous care, something she demonstrated with sweat and tears”.
The Catalan would have delighted pop artist Andy Warhol. “Somewhere in this unknowable cosmos, Andy Warhol smiled,” the journalist wrote.
