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Motomami is the third studio album by Spanish singer Rosalía. It was released on 18 March 2022 through Columbia Records. Rosalía enlisted producers Noah Goldstein, Michael Uzowuru, Dylan Wiggins and Pharrell Williams as well as longtime colleague El Guincho to create a concept album about her feelings during the past three years, including troubled times with fame, homesickness and isolation in the form of a collage of the singer's musical influences, especially in Latin music. Separated in two parts, it features guest vocals from the Weeknd, who sings in Spanish, and Tokischa, and is presented as Rosalía's "most personal and confessional album so far."
The album's release was preceded by three singles along with "Hentai" as a promotional single. "La Fama" was released on 11 November 2021 as the album's lead single, attaining both critical and commercial success. The song peaked at number two on the US Hot Latin Songs chart and reached the top ten in France, Monitor Latino, Spain and Monitor Latino. "Saoko" and "Chicken Teriyaki" were released as the second and third singles, respectively, both reaching the top twenty in Spain. Other promotional initiatives included a Grand Theft Auto Online radio station and a performance on Saturday Night Live, becoming the first Spanish solo act to serve as the show's musical guest. Rosalía embarked on the Motomami World Tour from July to December 2022, traveling around Europe and the Americas. A Deluxe Edition of the album, titled Motomami +, was released on 9 September featuring five additional tracks, including the hit single "Despechá".
Upon its release, Motomami received universal acclaim from Music journalism, many of whom praised the experimentation and genre-bending sounds. It later became the best reviewed and most discussed album of 2022 on Metacritic. Commercially, the album entered twenty-two charts in nineteen countries and reached the top ten in seven of them. Motomami entered major market charts, reaching the top forty in both on the UK Albums Chart and the Billboard 200. In Spain, it peaked atop the PROMUSICAE chart for six consecutive weeks. It also became the second most-streamed female album of the year worldwide.
At the 23rd Annual Latin Grammy Awards, Motomami won Album of the Year, Best Alternative Music Album, Best Engineered Album and Best Recording Package, making Rosalía the first woman to win Album of the Year twice, whilst "La Fama" was nominated for Record of the Year and "Hentai" for Song of the Year and Best Alternative Song. It also won Best Latin Rock or Alternative Album at the 65th Annual Grammy Awards, while its lack of nominations in the general field categories was widely considered a "snub" by the Recording Academy.
Recording sessions for the singer's next project began in Los Angeles as early as 2019. While on tour that year, Rosalía released a collection of singles. In March, the first of eight, "Con Altura", featuring J Balvin and el Guincho, was released on digital platforms. It topped the charts in Argentina, Venezuela, Spain and Colombia among others and was the second most-watched music video released in 2019 on YouTube as well as the most-watched female music video that year. 2019 also saw the release of "Yo x Ti, Tu x Mi", featuring Ozuna, "Aute Cuture", "A Palé" and "Milionària", whilst "Juro Que" and "TKN", featuring Travis Scott, were released the following year. The latter of which became her first entry on the Billboard Hot 100.
When Dutch radio station 3voor12 asked the singer through a Zoom press conference about a possible single compilation or box set, Rosalía expressed total rejection to the idea explaining that "I don't really enjoy records that are just a collection of singles. I usually enjoy records that tell a story and that are alive and involve a lot of thinking." She continued by stating that "as a musician I feel the responsibility to release a cohesive album, one that makes sense; one in where the songs are linked and share an essence". Rosalía was later seen in the recording studio with Michael Uzowuru, Mike Dean and the Neptunes among others.
During 2021, Rosalía released the standalone singles "Lo Vas a Olvidar" and "Linda" alongside Billie Eilish and Tokischa, respectively. In May, talent manager Rebecca León confirmed that Rosalía wouldn't release an album in 2021. In August, the singer revealed to Santiago Matías that the album "was already taking shape". In October, the singer teased on TikTok that the project would be released "soon" and premiered 30 seconds of the album's lead single. During a fan meet and greet in Mexico organized by Exa FM, Rosalía revealed that her new album would be "very different" from its predecessor and that the lead single would be released in November.
Motomami was officially announced on 2 November 2021, the third anniversary of El Mal Querer, along with a 15-second trailer directed by Daniel Sannwald, containing a snippet of the title track as well as a tentative '2022' release date. Sannwald also pictured the album cover, which was revealed on social media on 31 January 2022. On 8 November 2021, Rosalía announced the album's lead single, "La Fama" featuring the Weeknd. It was released on 11 November.
The majority of the album was recorded between 2020 and 2021. The process was registered on the singer's private Instagram account 'holamotomami', which she made public in December 2021. During tour season in 2019, Rosalía suffered from writer's block as she was constantly releasing new material and performing live, with isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic and partly moving with Frank Ocean to New York City helping the process flow despite being Homesickness. Rosalía didn't leave the United States until June 2021 due to travel restrictions during the pandemic. During her time in the States, she had "twelve-to-sixteen hour long" studio sessions almost every day, whether at her rented home in Miami (dubbed as Motomami House) or at recording studios in Hollywood and Manhattan, where she recorded upwards of nearly 30 songs for the album. Rosalía had troubled time with deadlines, pushing the album's release a couple times. The mixing and mastering process of Motomami took nine months, being completed on 15 April 2021. "Saoko" was the last song Rosalía wrote for the album and "La Combi Versace" the most modified as she "changed the arrangement completely right before she was going to turn in the album" as well as the featured artist, which was originally Tego Calderón.
Critics compared "the degree of lyrical, rhythmic and sonic experimentation" to Beastie Boys' Ill Communication (1994) and Moby's Play (1999), and found similarities in Lorde's Pure Heroine (2013) and Nine Inch Nails' The Downward Spiral (1994) and in the works of Frank Ocean and Kanye West. Some media outlets later found resemblances of Motomami in Charli XCX's Brat (2024) and in Tini's Un Mechón de Pelo (2024).
The fifth track "Chicken Teriyaki" has been described as a "TikTok dance-ready" reggaeton track where Rosalía Rapping about a trip to New York City. The song is highlighted for its use of "ironic" and humorous lyricism. The sixth track "Hentai" is a "delicate" piano ballad with pulsing Electronic music beats that explores the pleasures of sexual intercourse and female sexuality. The seventh track "Bizcochito" is a chiptune track that's "so playful it sounds like an ice cream truck rolling through the neighborhood." Rosalía sings about isolation and homesickness during her time in the United States within the pandemic in "G3 N15" as she also delivers a pessimist point of view of Los Angeles in between piano melodies. It features a voice message of her maternal grandmother in Catalan language. Followed up by the title track, "Motomami" serves as an interlude. The tenth track, "Diablo", lays Rosalía's pitch-shifted vocals over ominous electronica and an off-kilter reggaeton beat. It features uncredited guest vocals by Leyvan and James Blake.
The eleventh track "Delirio de Grandeza" reimagines Justo Betancourt's 1968 track of the same name, adding a sample from Soulja Boy's remix of "Delirious" by Vistoso Bosses. The twelfth track "Cuuuuuuuuuute" is a clattering cyberpunk and deconstructed club song that suddenly switches to piano balladry and back again. It draws inspiration from Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights". The thirteenth "Como Un G" is a piano ballad about an unrequited, ephemeral love. The following track "Abcdefg" serves as an interlude. It features a voicenote in which Rosalía recites an acrostic poem based on the alphabet. Rosalía and featured artist Tokischa describe having fun dressed in Versace in "La Combi Versace", a Minimalist music dembow/neoperreo track. The sixteenth track "Sakura" is an "emotionally authoritative" closing track that sounds like it was recorded live in an arena as it features audience cheers recorded during the El Mal Querer Tour. In "Sakura", Rosalía compares her time as a pop star to the brief life of a cherry blossom.
About the title, Rosalía has stated that she chose to name it Motomami in honor of her mother, Pilar Tobella, who used to take Rosalía around town on a motorcycle. The singer also told Brut that the 'Motomami' noun was indeed by her friend Maite back in high school, who used it in her Hotmail address. It also references the company her mother runs, Motomami S.L., which she created in 2018 to administer activities around artist representation. Rosalía shared that she chose the name Motomami because it's "structured in binaries, two types of contrasting energy." The album is separated into two parts; Moto is the divine, experimental, frictional and the strongest part of the album, while Mami is the genuine, personal, confessional and vulnerable one. Rosalía also stated that "feminism is implicit in the intention. It is very much present in some songs, and maybe not some much in some others, because in the end, it's all the emotional journey of the ups and downs an artist can take. There's a lot of my day-to-day life that's why this vindication of women and femininity are implicit." Rosalía hopes Motomami "provides a feminist counterbalance to misogyny in music".
The deluxe edition of the album, Motomami +, was released on streaming platforms on 9 September 2022. It contains five additional tracks, a remix of "Candy" featuring Chencho Corleone, a thank you voice message and a live version of "La Fama" recorded at Palau Sant Jordi, in Barcelona on 24 July 2022 during the Motomami World Tour.
Two days ahead of Motomami
During Art Basel week in December 2021, various promotional graffitis of Motomami started to appear in the streets of Miami Beach. This kind of banners were later exported to other cities including Barcelona, Buenos Aires, New York City, Madrid, Mexico City, Milan, Seoul and Tokyo. These ones included unreleased lyrics of upcoming songs. Light in the dark Spotify-sponsored billboards were placed in central public spaces in Madrid, Mexico City and Milan upon the album's release. Starting 27 February, Rosalía posted daily on Twitter about the characteristics of the 'motomami', the fictional concept she adopted for the album, transforming it into an identity. The twenty-tweet series was completed on release day. The technique was popularized within her fanbase and the general public. Several brands and associations (mainly in Spain), such as AliExpress and FC Barcelona, referenced it. In March 2023, due to their partnership with Spotify and to celebrate one year since the album's release, FC Barcelona release a limited edition 'Motomami' shirt, which players wore during two matches against Real Madrid. Rosalía embraced the mixed reviews and backlash she received for her "kitsch" lyrics after teasing "Hentai" and "Chicken Teriyaki" on TikTok, reversing the initial negative idea through self-referential and Self-deprecation.
As for radio and television, Rosalía gave interviews to Zane Lowe for Apple Music, Leila Cobo for VP Latin, Amelia Dimoldenberg for Chicken Shop Date, Los 40, RTVE, Cadena SER, RAC 1, Catalunya Ràdio and Exa TV among others. The singer made her US late night debut on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on 10 March, performed "Chicken Teriyaki" and "La Fama" on Saturday Night Live two days later, and was interviewed on El Hormiguero on 17 March. An album-signing party organized by Fnac was held in Madrid on 18 March. Rosalía later appeared in various shows in France such as Quotidien and NRJ Group. On 7 April, Spanish musician and YouTuber Jaime Altozano analyzed Motomami the same way he did in 2018 with El Mal Querer, this time featuring direct notes from the singer.
In a five-star review, Diego Ortiz of Rolling Stone wrote that Motomami "redefines the concept of the mainstream with its Absolute music sound exploration, where borders and genres are completely blurred. Undoubtedly, it is one of the boldest and most daring productions of recent years and which in turn paves a new path of almost infinite possibilities." Brittany Spanos of the same outlet's American edition characterized its sounds as "innovative" and "daring". Mark Richardson of The Wall Street Journal agrees, writing, "...for Rosalía, this future-forward strain of pop is swirled together with rap, the Caribbean music style reggaetón, Dance music, and, of course, flamenco—here, folk guitars collide with otherworldly digital processing. She's a visionary in the mode of M.I.A. or Madonna, one who uses her mainstream perch to push music in new directions." Thom Jurek of AllMusic described the record as "provocative and risky as it is creative. It showcases Rosalía as a master, twisting together the contradictory strands of Latin pop and Anglo pop with traditional and vanguard forms and fresh sounds into a gloriously articulated radical approach that makes for obsessive listening." Nathan Evans of The Quietus wrote that Motomami "darts away from the angelic image of Rosalía's previous work, stirring the cauldron to create an outlandish, genre-hopping revision of herself."
Pitchfork crowned Motomami with its "Best New Music" honor, with Julianne Escobedo Shepherd writing, "It feels rare to hear an album that's so experimental, that aspires to stretch itself out across genres and play with form, and that attains exactly what it sets out to achieve. Rosalía was already a formidable singer, but here she also sounds like she learned that with global superstardom comes the freedom to set her own agenda."
| +Select critical rankings for Motomami ! Publication ! class="unsortable" | List ! Rank ! class="unsortable" | |
| Jon Pareles' Best Albums of 2022 | 2 | |
| The 100 Best Albums of the 2020s So Far (2024) | 8 | |
| Rob Sheffield's Top 20 Albums of 2022 | 6 | |
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| 18 October 2024 | LP |
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