ACL Day 3: Rosalía

All the way from Barcelona, Spain, Rosalía brought all the culture and vibrancy with her to ACL. The artist I was the most impressed by and genuinely fell in love with more after seeing live, Rosalía blew me away with a phenomenal set on Sunday at the Honda stage. The singer blew up this year after features with James Blake and J Balvin, as fans from a wide range of genres were captured by her beautiful voice.

With a background and training in traditional Spanish music and flamenco, she does an incredible job of combining her traditional roots with a modern and youthful twist of her own. With many interludes between songs, Rosalía also performed fantastic choreography with her dancers, which made her set stand out even more.

Starting off the set with a few slower songs and some moments of her just singing with no music, the setlist highlighted her raw and powerful voice perfectly. She transitioned to some more of her upbeat songs like “Con Altura” and “Aute Cuture” as the crowd danced with her. Rosalía’s set was perfect from start to finish, and similar to Billie Eilish right now, I think she’s barely dipped her toes into her potential as an artist and one of my favorite things about ACL is that they bring up-and-coming artists like these.

Seeing Spain and other Hispanic country’s flags in the audience, it was also great to experience such diverse artists on this year’s lineup. Rosalía’s set also made me think about the important role music plays in cultural connection and understanding, and ACL is such a great celebration of music serving as a way to bring all different types of people together.

Rosalía is playing again at weekend 2 of Austin City Limits – get your tickets to go check her out along with the rest of the stellar lineup!