🔗 Share this article

On the surface, this album could seem closer to a difficult academic quiz than the latest pop project from a musician who just had a last hit featured an international K-pop icon. Split into four distinct sections and performed in thirteen languages, it is a head-spinning symphonic work exploring female mystique, religious ascent, and corporal transformation, frequently via the perspective of various saintly figures. The end of a love affair—a topic handled with raw openness elsewhere—is shot upwards on this record, supported by the lush presence of a major orchestra and contributions from an award-winning songwriter within an extensive list of collaborators. Its sheer daring alone makes the efforts of other pop stars look rather laughable.

Transcending Scholarly Exercise

The fact that Lux succeeds in transcend dry intellectual chin-stroking is almost a miracle, with complete praise belonging to the artist. While it's not the first time project to fuse historical sounds and the present, its scale feel far higher here, and the tightrope walk more pronounced. The element that really elevates her fourth album, outside of its multilayered melodies, dense arrangements, and engrained drama, is an essential sense of playfulness. Similar to the legendary artist during her height, there is a wondrous sense to the vocalist's voice that pulls you up in its whirlwind. When she is tearing your heart apart, you nevertheless want to stay alongside her through the ride.

A Prime Example of Joy

That playful spirit shines brightly on the stunning Italian song inspired by Saint Clare. It bathes in a string-drenched whirlpool over several moments. Then, everything drops away, and we hear a spontaneous laugh and a declaration prior to a hilariously exaggerated string surge thuds down like comedic force. The track immediately shifts to the wild track driven by racing orchestration, an imposing choir, and a cameo role from none other than herself.

"The charm of Lux lies in the listener never quite understand—or even want to know—where you is going next."

Nearly each song concludes in a completely different point than how it started. A track explores the fleeting nature of fame over a featherlight orchestration only to disintegrating into electronic chaos. Elsewhere, a song that recalls her earlier trap-infused style starts out dark and brooding, with prowling vocals, before fluttering flamenco handclaps and an angelic chorus arrive to soften the song's rough edges.

The Balance Between Experiment and Accessibility

Another crucial balancing act of the album involves straddling the gap of radical experimentation and mainstream accessibility. It is little coincidence that it has become the artist's first work to break into the upper reaches of key markets: at its core a suite of utterly undeniable hits. A song performed primarily in the English language swells around a refrain that seems to collect increasingly infectious melodies as it spins upward. This trick gets repeated on a different powerful ballad that grows and constricts, weaving multiple melodies like a complex weave.

• A waltz-like number seduces via its playful, Disney-adjacent drama and an anthemic hook.
• In its words, it shares the cultural honesty of contemporary breakup anthems, eviscerating a former partner described as an "psychological bully".
• Throughout the album, the singing carry a sharp edge, akin to a fairy-tale character concealing a knife: "Top prize in being a motherfucker / You have the podium of letdown."

A Maximalist Banquet for the Soul

This album is pop on a maximalist level, an ambitious grasp for high Art in an era of looming artificial blankness. It eschews self-absorption for sublime transcendence, creating a dramatic spectacle that skillfully manages its inherent excess. It is a deep well of hidden gems that requires patience to fully mine but doesn't feels like a chore. While other major releases of 2025 seemed like a meager meal, this record offers a lavish banquet where the guests at the table, some intoxicated on holy drink, flutter from conversations about historical saints, the galvanizing feeling of soul-shattering sadness, and shared gossip about hopeless men. In essence, it's a modern-day musical from pop's most restlessly inventive visionary.