For Consequence’s recent Vocalist Week, we determined that the best vocalists of all time are those who combined virtuosic ability with palpable soul, who could communicate intense emotion with ease and enchant listeners with a unique, recognizable vocal tone. I’ll be the first to admit that in retrospect, omitting Rosalía from our list was a mistake.
After witnessing the Spanish star’s outstanding “LUX Tour” at Madison Square Garden in New York on June 17th, I needed no more convincing: Rosalía is a generational vocalist, a singer with so much raw power that even if you kept your eyes shut the entire time, just to listen to her live would still be worth the price of admission.
With an orchestra in tow, a handful of mesmerizing dance sequences, and vocal performances that span across opera, traditional pop, and hip-hop, Rosalía has scaled up her live show since her Motomami era. Now, fitting with the similarly outsized stylings from LUX — our top album of 2025 — this new tour is fueled by classical imagery and Renaissance-era drama, both of which combine with Rosalía’s modern pop star proclivities.
The songs from LUX are appropriately grandiose on this run. Her orchestra plays loud; they’re not there as merely backing musicians but characters in and of themselves. The timpani bellowed in the arena, the string-heavy crescendos — like on “Porcelana” and the stunning “Mio Cristo piange diamanti” — escalated with theatricality. You can feel it on the record, especially a song like “Berghain.” But for this tour, these songs are being presented with more visceral immediacy.
Rosalía, photo by Rich Fury
It helped that her lyrics were translated in English on a screen that lined the stage, another reference to opera, and the drama of the words added plenty of weight to her impassioned deliveries. It was particularly evident when comparing the content of songs on Motomami and LUX; this new project finds Rosalía asking even more daring questions about faith, resilience, history, lineage. Across a dozen different languages, certain words kept appearing on the screen: blood, divinity, love, tears, Him.
There’s a lot of heartbreak depicted in LUX, even with shades of empowerment and transformation colored in. On the album, love and faith become intertwined; during last night’s show, that existential conflict was rendered with poignancy. The sense of love lost, set against the holiness of faith and belief, reached a peak early on with her performance of “Mio Cristo piange diamanti,” an Italian-sung aria that had all of Madison Square Garden enraptured. Rosalía surrendered to her devotion, so much so that she wept as she sang “My Christ cries diamonds,” retaining enough composure to soar right through the song’s final belts.
The dance-forward moments, which often arrived via the tracks from Motomami, were the closest the concert got to a more traditional pop star show; the best movement was during LUX‘s “La perla,” where dancers donned white gloves and black morph suits to create an ever-changing frame around her. But for the most part, the classically-fueled movements of LUX reimagined Rosalía in an older tradition, where her piercing voice serves as a conduit to awakening. She didn’t have to do much, whether that was precise ballet work or simply sitting on a piano with a glass of wine during “Sauvignon blanc.” Her voice was so emotionally resonant that restraint felt just as satisfying.
Still, credit to Rosalía and her creative directors for keeping the evening lively and entertaining. Many new pop tours boast some sort of gimmick with a different special guest each night; for her “LUX Tour,” she’s set up a confession booth as a precursor to her performance of current hit “La perla.” Last night’s confessional was courtesy of Saturday Night Live comedian Marcello Hernandez, who told a funny-yet-earnest tale of being stood up on a Valentine’s date and ended up “drinking a bottle of wine on Facetime” with his mom.
Rosalía, photo by Rich Fury
Another silly highlight was Rosalía’s “art cam” intermission, where a camera spotlighted attendees to ask them to replicate the pose of a famous painting (like Munch’s The Scream or Van Gogh’s At Eternity’s Gate). It was a much more enjoyable break than the first intermission, which had a rather odd skit featuring her backup singers and dancers as they, basically, made fun of her entire act. I appreciated the brightness of these interludes, though they only felt necessary in comparison to what other big pop shows are featuring in 2026. Rosalía could have just stood there and sang and it would’ve still felt like a spectacle.
With her first address to the audience, Rosalía talked at length about the difficulties of “nomadic life” and having to build — and destroy — her temporary home in each city she visits. But one detail she left out is the fact that every city features a place to worship, and last night, she created one. Madison Square Garden became her cathedral: the orchestra her choir, the confession booth its antechamber, the lyrics scrolling across the stage her scripture. Rosalía has always been a singer of tremendous technical ability, but what became undeniable over the course of two hours on Wednesday night is her capacity for transcendence. Whether you viewed it as a concert or a service, Rosalía is worth believing in.
