Rosalía's Butterflies: Self-Reflective Celebrity and the Confessional Text

Abstract:

In this essay, I examine Rosalía's Motomami (2022) as a confessional text in which the artist speaks openly about her feelings and reflects on being a celebrity and her relationship with audiences. Music critics immediately noted that it departs from the formula of her previous flamenco-based albums and praised its experimentation and combination of multiple genres. The symbol of the butterfly that appears on the album cover, in the lyrics of the first track ("Saoko"), and on Rosalía's dental grills represents this transformation. But perhaps the biggest change has to do with the intimate tone of the entire album, as Rosalía confesses her struggles, fears, and desires. As Foucault shows in the History of Sexuality, confession has been a central ritual in the discursive production of truth in Western societies. Prominent celebrity studies scholars such as Sean Redmond have noted that the confessional address has become pervasive in contemporary celebrity culture, since it is almost mandatory as a promotional strategy to brand the celebrity persona and do damage control in the case of waning stars. Rosalía's confession is striking because it is played out not only in the lyrics of Motomami but also through the musical features. Most songs have a minimalist composition, with few instrumentals that are filtered and devoid of high frequencies to allow for Rosalía's vocal delivery to stand out. And it is often a bare voice that appears in contrast to aggressive drums to convey the hostile environment Rosalía has faced in the last few years.