El Mal Querer

El Mal Querer standard album cover

***El Mal Querer*** (stylized all in caps, transl. '**The Bad Loving**') is the second studio album by Spanish singer-songwriter Rosalía, released on 2 November 2018 through Sony Music. The album was written by Rosalía and co-produced with El Guincho on an initial low budget as an independent artist. Presented as experimental and conceptual, revolving around a toxic relationship, the album was inspired by the anonymous 13th-century Occitan novel *Flamenca*. Therefore, every song on the album is conceived as a chapter of the book. It served as the singer's baccalaureate project, graduating from Catalonia College of Music with honors.

After Rosalía was introduced to American talent manager Rebeca León, she signed a single-album distribution deal with Sony, which opened the doors to bigger promotional strategies. Thus, promotion prior to the album release encompassed the release of three singles: "Malamente", "Pienso en tu mirá"—both accompanied by music videos that went viral on social media— and "Di Mi Nombre". Two other singles, "Bagdad" and "De Aquí No Sales", were released after the album. Other promotional initiatives included the display of a billboard in Times Square, as well as live performances at several Spanish festivals, a sold-out concert at Plaza de Colón, the 2018 MTV Europe Music Awards and the Latin Grammy Awards. To promote the album, Rosalía embarked on the El Mal Querer Tour, which commenced in March 2019 and visited both festivals and arenas.

## Background and release

The record cycle for Rosalía's sophomore album, *El Mal Querer*, began in late 2016 as her baccalaureate project, graduating from 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". 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 by her in collaboration with Colombian reggaeton singer J Balvin, the Barcelona-native singer 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.

## Music

*El Mal Querer* is a flamenco pop, experimental pop and Latin R&B record that mixes flamenco music with contemporary urban sounds drawn from pop and reggaeton. Critics noted the experimental tendencies in the production.

## Visuals

Spanish-Croatian artist Filip Ćustić is responsible for the visual aspect of the album. Upon its release, Ćustić started to be cited by the international press as "one of the present day's most sensational young artists". 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.* 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. 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). 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".

## Critical reception

*El Mal Querer* was widely acclaimed by music critics; at Metacritic, the album received an average score of 89, based on five reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". 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."

*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."

Conversely, Rosalía has been accused of cultural appropriation by some Spanish publications, due to her use of *gitano* symbology. 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". Rosalía has responded that the controversy is positive, and that flamenco elements will always be present in her work.

The album received critical acclaim for its experimental production, the use of flamenco elements, which were mixed with pop and urbano music, and Rosalía's vocals. 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. Following the release of the album, the first four singles were in the top ten of the Spanish Singles Chart at the same time, with "Di Mi Nombre" becoming her first number-one single. Since June 2021, *El Mal Querer* holds the record for the longest-charting album in Spanish history.

All aspects of *El mal querer,* including visuals, engineering, composition and vocals, scored a huge victory in the Grammy field. At the 2018 Latin Grammy Awards, "Malamente" was nominated for five awards including Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Short Form Music Video, Best Urban Fusion Performance and Best Alternative Song, winning the latter two, and at the next year's ceremony, the album won for Album of the Year, Best Contemporary Pop Vocal Album, Best Engineered Album and Best Recording Package, while the song "Pienso En Tu Mirá" was nominated for Best Pop Song. With six awards, it became the most awarded album by a female artist and the only female artist to win Album of the Year after Shakira. The album also won the Grammy Award for Best Latin Rock, Urban or Alternative Album at the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards. In the 2020 update of *Rolling Stone*'s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, *El Mal Querer* was named the greatest Spanish-language album of all time and the 315th best overall. The same magazine placed it in the 50 Best Concept Albums of All Time of 2022, also being the best in Spanish-language and the 10th best overall.