Rosalía – “Chicken Teriyaki”

Is there a more seductive artist out there at the moment? Rosalia burst onto the scene in Spain back in 2018 with her debut “El Mal Querer”, and has charted a meteoric rise since then, becoming a household name in the US and appearing on all the late-night TV shows with her stilted English. This dance hall hit, Chicken Teriyaki, off her latest album, Motomami, was released alongside a video primed for TikTok dances – fitting, as the single was initially teased on Rosalía’s personal account. With this cultural earworm, Rosalia is now officially a megastar with high-production videos and red carpet appearances. But it is the music that fascinates. In a radio interview, Rosalia explains that she builds the tracks by sampling beats and chopping them up into segments, like Lego building blocks. Underneath her vocals is barely any music, just a single sample or a distant chord that repeats, becoming part of the rhythm. It is a fascinating exercise in minimalism, but Rosalia pulls it off. It almost becomes a question of how far can she go? Is she looking for the electronic equivalent of a hand clap and a voice, the essence of her roots when she graduated with honors from the Catalonia College of Music? Only she knows, but the 29-year-old Catalan is proving herself to be not just a global superstar, but also one of the most innovative music producers working today.