IT'S HOURS AFTER a sudden rainstorm one afternoon in September, and Rosalía is standing with her eyes trained on the placid shore of Puerto Rico's Bahia Beach. She's still for just a few seconds, but her mind is stuck on the pure chaos of the previous night.
"Dios mio, it was crazy," she says, with an edge of gleeful disbelief.
First off, let's not call it a concert. For almost two hours straight, she played for a sold-out crowd at the historic Coliseo de Puerto Rico José Miguel Agrelot. Aside from waves of screaming fans, the spectacle Rosalía put on is more akin to performance art than a traditional stadium show, and it's taken over cities and social media pages with equal force for the past few months. There's no opener, no costume changes. Rosalía is at the centre, her face often slicked with sweat and tears, doing everything all at once strumming a jet-black guitar, smacking her gum, pounding an ornate piano, ripping her heart wide open. And as her Motomami World Tour has crossed the globe, this has been her life for the past year.
Her show in Puerto Rico was an all-out rager. Assigned seats were meaningless as security guards roamed the floor, trying - and failing - to stop people from spilling into the aisles. The arena seemed like it was going to collapse in on itself when Rosalía shouted to the crowd, "The love of my life is here!" referring to her boyfriend, the Puerto Rican star Rauw Alejandro. After it was all over, she still found the energy to hit an afterparty at a San Juan nightclub with Rauw. A tangle of iPhone cameras captured them dancing to different hits, including Rosalía's own 'Despechá', late into the night.
This story is from the February/March 2023 edition of Rolling Stone UK.
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This story is from the February/March 2023 edition of Rolling Stone UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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