How Rosalía lived up to the themes in her album, Lux, with extraordinary SNL performance

Dear Gossips,

In addition to the unfunny, lazy, and offensively bad jokes that the audience had to endure on Saturday Night Live this weekend, delivered by a host who Lorne Michaels obstinately insists on inviting back (because he’s the ultimate instigating troll), one of the other downsides is that the host controversy overshadows the performance of the musical guest. I’ve been watching SNL for a long, LONG time – and in my opinion, what Rosalía gave us is, for me, top five of all time.

I am biased, though, no doubt. Because I am so obsessed with, Lux, and as I’ve said before, “Reliquia” is my favourite song on the album. Which, by the way, is in contention for multiple Grammys, including Album of the Year. First round voting for Grammy nominations began yesterday with nominations to be announced on November 16 and while the conversation about AOTY lately has been about the Olivias, Dean and Rodrigo, Rosalía’s Lux is not an underdog. It is one of the most critically acclaimed albums of the decade, a f-cking masterpiece. So her appearance on SNL, for sure, was campaign strategy, just like Olivia Rodrigo’s Hollywood Reporter cover story was strategic, intended to make sure that Recording Academy voters who haven’t seen her on tour can appreciate how these songs from Lux are performed live.

If they were watching, they would have seen an artist operating on the highest frequency – literally on pointe, without missing a single note. “Reliquia” on its own, simply through your headphones, is already every stage of bliss… but when Rosalía is doing it on stage, it’s the purest expression of what music is supposed to be. I’m not being dramatic when I say I cried, from the 15 second mark all the way to the end. And you can tell it was even more affecting in the room because the crowd starts roaring with about 20 seconds to go before the end, a much more emotional reaction than we typically hear at Studio 8H. They knew in that moment that what they just saw was one of the greatest.

But that doesn’t mean the performance for her second song, “Magnolia”, wasn’t just as extraordinary – and fitting. It’s a track about mortality, legacy, a celebration of life when you have truly lived. Much of the album was inspired by the divine feminine, saints and spirits, mystics and witches and healers who’ve left behind stories, relics; their experiences, painful, traumatic, and exhilarating, immortalised in art and memory. And now here she is, living up to the theme. This is what’s worth keeping from Saturday Night Live.