Rosalia Artistfacts

September 25, 1992
Rosalía is from a small town outside of Barcelona called Sant Esteve Sesrovires. She sings mostly in Spanish but has a huge following among non-Spanish speakers as well.
There's a school of thought that studying music can inhibit your creativity. Rosalía doesn't buy it. She feels that learning about music only adds colors to her sonic palette, making her a better artist. She studied at the Catalonia College of Music in Barcelona, and before that trained with the renowned flamenco instructor Jose Miguel Vizcaya.
Her second album, El Mal Querer (2018), is a concept album inspired by a novel called The Story Of Flamenca that dates back to the 13th century. Every song is titled after a chapter in the novel. Rosalía wrote about the book for her college thesis.
During the pandemic she stayed in America to record her third album, Motomami, which was released in 2022. This was a tough time for her because she couldn't return to Spain to see her family.
She appears in the video for "WAP" by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion. Cardi is a big fan.
On her tour for Motomami, she would cut off a piece of her hair at every show and toss it into the crowd, a symbol of how she gives part of herself at every performance. The hair she cut was braided extensions, but at one show she got a little too aggressive and cut of some of her real hair by mistake.
The Motomami title is a nod to motorcycle culture, which is big in her hometown. Her mother used to ride.
When she was 16, Rosalia developed pseudocysts on her vocal cords after years of singing without proper technique, which necessitated vocal cord surgery. "I couldn't speak for a month – that was very strange, like this fasting of speaking, and then a year of vocal rehabilitation," she told The Guardian. "It took me so many years to really feel like I could actually use my instrument."

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