With concert ticket prices skyrocketing, artists must work overtime to put on a show worth a visit for their many fans. The way an artist does it varies, but Rosalía has a foolproof tactic – giving one of the best live performances of the last few years.
Inglewood’s Kia Forum was set up to look like audience members were going to a ballet instead of a pop concert. It’s fitting because when the Spanish singer-songwriter took the stage at the Kia Forum in Inglewood on Wednesday (July 1) around 9 p.m., she was the ballerina the venue called for.
Rosalía emerged from a box brought downstage by “stagehands,” stand-in artists, to stand center stage as if she were in the middle of a music box. She started the show with the song “Sexo, violencia y llantas” from her latest album and namesake of the tour. Lux.
Widely considered the singer’s best work to date, the album features more than a dozen different languages and was recorded in the studio with the London Symphony Orchestra. Wednesday’s show also included a live orchestra that played from the orchestra pit in the middle of the floor. Rosalía joined the musicians on the floor during one of the show’s later segments.
Not surprisingly, the show had no shortage of celebrity inclusions or call-outs. Rosalia, who played the title role in trance In Season 3, she invited her co-star and best friend, Alexa Demie, and dedicated her song “Mio Cristo Piange Diamanti” to the actress after an intimate speech.
At each tour stop, there is a confessional skit, where the singer calls on someone to confess – the duet is shown on separate screens to give the full effect. She called Rosalia out Marty Supreme Actress Odessa Azion confesses. The actress chose to confess on behalf of a friend. She spins the story of her friend’s boyfriend, whom she was warned about, and heads to Europe to find him, only to be on a romantic holiday with another woman.
The confession session wasn’t the only special moment of the night. Before that moment, Rosalía took the stage, which had been transformed to resemble a museum, and sat in front of a golden frame. A flock of fans, with whom she later interacts up close and personal, look at her like she’s a work of art as she belts out a cover of Frankie Valli’s “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You.”
The show wasn’t all slow songs and big moments, although they were standouts. There were also plenty of moments that got the audience on their feet and moving. “LA, I know you didn’t come to this show just to cry, okay?” the singer asked the crowd after she finished performing her lead single, “Berghain.” The crowd responded with thunderous cheers.
“I’m sure you came to shake some people too,” she continued, before imploring them to “turn this shit around” and leading into her 2022 song “Saoko.”
One of the most impressive and innovative designs on the entire tour can be found above the stage. The LED screen was controversially filtered through the English lyrics of each song, flashing the language in which it was performed before the song began.
Between Rosalía’s undeniably chic costumes, her stunning live vocals and the show’s immersive production design, the Lux Tour is an unmissable event.
Rosalía heads to San Diego on Friday (July 3) and Auckland on July 6 before the South American leg of the tour begins in Bogotá, Colombia. The tour will conclude in September with two nights at the Cassia Center in Miami.
