Rosalía Won Her Third Latin Grammy Album of the Year With Lux. The Category Is Hers Now
Lux beat the field in Las Vegas on Thursday, making Rosalía three-for-three in Latin music's top category. She also took Song of the Year. Everyone else is playing for silver.
By the Heckle Desk · · 2 min read
On Thursday night at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Rosalía won Album of the Year at the Latin Grammys for Lux. That makes three: El Mal Querer won in 2019, Motomami in 2022, and now Lux, her orchestral, many-languages album with the London Symphony Orchestra. She also won Song of the Year for 'La Perla' and a pile of others, including Best Alternative Music Album. Milo J took Record of the Year, and Daddy Yankee was Person of the Year.
Three for three is not a winning streak. It's a lease. Every other artist nominated in that category now knows what the Buffalo Bills felt like in the early '90s: you showed up, you looked great, and the trophy had already been engraved in Catalan.
There's an old argument, too, that Rosalía, being from Spain, shouldn't be in the Latin Grammys at all. That debate has been going on since her first win, and every year she answers it the same way, by winning again. It's hard to argue someone out of a building they keep buying.
Lux itself is the strangest blockbuster of the decade: classical strings, operatic swings, songs in more languages than a U.N. cafeteria, and somehow a hit. Most pop stars get bigger by getting simpler. Rosalía got bigger by getting harder to sing along to, which is like a restaurant getting famous by removing the menu. It shouldn't work. It keeps working.
The rest of the night spread the furniture around. Daddy Yankee was honored as Person of the Year, the first Latin urbano artist to get it, which is the Academy formally admitting that the genre it spent years keeping at the kids' table now owns the house. Alejandro Sanz won Best Contemporary Pop Album, and Milo J, the young Argentine, walked off with Record of the Year. Good nights, all of them. But a good night at Rosalía's party is still a night at Rosalía's party, and you can tell by who gets to leave last.
The lesson isn't that she's unbeatable. It's that the rest of the industry spent five years chasing what she did last time, while she was off doing the next thing in Latin. Following the leader is a fine plan, right up until the leader walks into the orchestra pit.