Rosalía covers the September 2025 issue of ELLE, on newsstands August 26. In an exclusive interview with Suzy Exposito, Rosalía teases the process behind her mysterious 4th album, her season 3 EUPHORIA role, and discusses how the pressure to answer to industry demands is increasingly at odds with her freedom-seeking spirit: “The rhythm [of the music industry] is so fast,” Rosalía says. “And the sacrifice, the price to pay, is so high.” The only way she can continue without burning out is if her motives feel true. “The driving force that leads you to continue making music, to continue creating, has to come from a place of purity,” she says. “Motives like money, pleasure, power…I don’t feel that they are fertile. Nothing will come out of there that I’m really interested in. Those are subjects that don’t inspire me.”
On how her forthcoming album, the follow-up to 2022’s Grammy-winning Motomami, is yet to be completed: “The rhythm of everything is so fast, so frenetic,” says Rosalía, who turns 33 in September. “And I think, ‘My God, it’s been eight years since I released my first work.’ That’s insane to me. What is time?” she says, laughing. “That’s so relative! So there’s always a deadline and, well, the deadline can always change.”
Although she won’t divulge what her new record sounds like just yet—she’s quite elusive about the whole thing, really—she’s shared videos of herself writing and producing tracks as part of a creative campaign for Instagram, as if to prove to fans that she is, indeed, at work. In fact, she’s scheduled time at a local studio immediately after our chat to fine-tune her new material. “I’m in the process,” she says. “I spend many hours in the studio. I’m in seclusion.”
On how the pressure to answer to industry demands, she says, is increasingly at odds with her freedom-seeking spirit: “The rhythm [of the music industry] is so fast,” Rosalía tells me. “And the sacrifice, the price to pay, is so high.” The only way she can continue without burning out is if her motives feel true. “The driving force that leads you to continue making music, to continue creating, has to come from a place of purity,” she says. “Motives like money, pleasure, power…I don’t feel that they are fertile. Nothing will come out of there that I’m really interested in. Those are subjects that don’t inspire me.”
“Many times, the more masculine way of making music is about the hero: the me, what I’ve accomplished, what I have…blah blah blah,” she says. “A more feminine way of writing, in my opinion, is like foraging. I’m aware of the stories that have come before me, the stories that are happening around me. I pick it up, I’m able to share it; I don’t put myself at the center, right?”
“In a cubist painting, which part do you choose?” says Rosalía of her concept. “Everything is happening at the same time, right? So you just choose what makes sense for you, where you want to put the eye and where you want to focus your energy.”
On the decision to go mostly offline since her last project: “Björk says that in order to create, you need periods of privacy—for a seed [to] grow, it needs darkness,” she says. She has also shed some previous collaborators, including Canary Islander El Guincho, the edgy artist-producer who was her main creative copilot in El Mal Querer and Motomami. She says there is no bad blood, though “we haven’t seen each other [in] years. I honestly love working with people long-term. But sometimes people grow apart. He’s on a journey now, he’s done his [own] projects all these years. And yes, sometimes that can happen where people, you know, they grow to do whatever their journey is. Right now, I’m working by myself.”
On her past relationship with Euphoria star Hunter Schafer and if she feels pressure to publicly define her sexuality, queer or otherwise: “No, I do not pressure myself,” she says. “I think of freedom. That’s what guides me.”
On shooting scenes for the long-awaited third season of Euphoria: Rosalía, who first developed her acting chops through the immensely theatrical art of flamenco, says that she likes to put herself “in service of the emotion, in service of an idea, in service of something that is much grander than me.” Although she can’t share much about her role while the season is in production, she says she’s enjoyed running into Schafer on set, and developing rapport with costars Zendaya and Alexa Demie. “I have good friends there. It feels really nice to be able to find each other.”
Penélope Cruz on becoming close friends with Rosalía after filming Pain and Glory, the 2019 film by the great Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar: “I was terrified to have to sing with her,” Cruz recalls. “She was nervous about acting, and I was nervous about singing—and it was funny to be sharing that nervousness.”
Cruz and Rosalia would become great friends—two Spanish icons who have brought their country’s culture to a global audience. But between the two divas, there existed no air of gravitas—only genuine, hours-long talks and banter built on mutual admiration. “I’ve always been mesmerized by her voice,” Cruz says, “and her talent also as a composer, as a writer, as an interpreter. The way she performs and what she can transmit is something really special.” She notes that Rosalía’s artistry has had a ripple effect in Spain, sparking a wave of experimentation.
On how she stresses that—whether she releases one more album in her life, or 20—music will be the compass that orients her for the rest of her days: “It’s funny when people say I quit music,” Rosalía says. “That’s impossible! If you are a musician, you can’t quit. Music is not something you can abandon.
“Sometimes it takes a second for you to be able to process what you’ve done,” she adds. “It’s a blessing in an artistic career to process things, or rewrite how it should have been done before—in your life or in anything. The immediacy of today’s rhythms is not the rhythm of the soul. And to create in an honest way, you have to know what rhythm you’re going with.”
On gifting Charli XCX a bouquet of black calla lilies filled with cigarettes: (“If my friend likes Parliaments, I’ll bring her a bouquet with Parliaments,” Rosalía says. “You can do a bouquet of anything that you know that person loves!”)
On newsstands August 26
[Photo Credit: Inez & Vinoodh/ELLE Magazine – Video Credit: ELLE/YouTube]
Previous post:
Aubrey Plaza and Margaret Qualley at the HONEY DON’T! New York Special Screening Next Post:
Aubrey Plaza and Margaret Qualley at the HONEY DON’T! New York Special Screening Next Post:
-
VARIETY Magazine: SEVERANCE Star Tramell Tillman on His First Emmy Nomination, His Coming Out Story,...
-
ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER Star Leonardo DiCaprio Covers ESQUIRE Magazine
-
COSMOPOLITAN Centerfold: FREAKIER FRIDAY Star Manny Jacinto on Love, Marriage, and More!
Please review our Community Guidelines before posting a comment. Thank you!
