When I drove to a soundstage in Hollywood this past December to interview the Spanish megastar Rosalía, her astonishing orchestral-pop album, Lux, had been out for a month and a day.

I arrived just as the sun went down. Rosalía’s rep had been cryptic about what she would be shooting, and I had assumed it was a second music video at that point she had released only the video for “Berghain,” her brooding Berlin-techno-inspired single featuring Björk and Yves Tumor or maybe another underwear campaign for Calvin Klein, for which she is an ambassador. But as I walked onto the studio lot, past a line of trucks and trailers humming in the night, it became clear that this was a much bigger production.

“It’s Euphoria,” another rep said a few minutes later. We were in a small meeting room next to the soundstage, waiting for the shoot to wrap. The rep was referring to Sam Levinson’s hit HBO show, the one about contemporary teenage life in Southern Californian suburbia. Rosalía has a role in the long-awaited third season—it comes out in April, after a four-year hiatus. (Nobody would disclose details about her part, but a trailer released a few weeks later revealed Rosalía as a stripper with a bedazzled neck brace.)

Soon she appeared in the doorway, so quietly that at first I didn’t realize who it was. Then she turned her head and I caught a glimpse of the halo—that ethereal blond ring she bleached into her otherwise dark hair, a defining feature of her Lux era. Rosalía, who is 33, was wearing a long black skirt by Ganni, YSL stiletto pumps, and a long-sleeve shirt with horizontal stripes in alternating colors—a very Miró palette of red, yellow, blue, green, and black. The shirt was from Radio Noia, a culture podcast out of Barcelona hosted by the journalist Mar Vallverdú, and it had this printed on the front in Catalan: “I DIDN’T ASK TO BE BORN WITH UNBEARABLE GIRL SYNDROME, I JUST GOT LUCKY.”

If you happen to have music-video Rosalía fresh in your mind—say, the one who flamenco-danced in a flame-shaped corset for her 2019 reggaeton collaboration with J Balvin, “Con Altura” (2.2 billion views)—meeting the actual person can generate some momentary dissonance. This was the case for me, anyway, in the intimate setting of that little room. The Rosalía I encountered there was serene and bookish, exuding a casual erudition that bordered on scholarly.

Over the hour and 40 minutes I spent with her, she referenced the Bible, the Quran, the Vedas, and the Therigatha; cited Gravity and Grace by Simone Weil and Holy Feast and Holy Fast by Caroline Walker Bynum; paraphrased quotes by the Spanish writer Alana S. Portero, the Ukraine-born Brazilian novelist Clarice Lispector, and David Lynch; and praised Chris Kraus’s genre-bending novel-slash-memoir about erotic obsession, I Love Dick. “It’s so unexpected, the way she jumps from one place to another,” Rosalía said of Kraus’s book. “I love the freedom. How unapologetic she is.”

Although her singing voice is an instrument of raw power, Rosalía’s speaking voice can be smooth and mellifluous to the point of being hypnotic, more Sade than Édith Piaf. When she really gets going in English, and the words are pouring out, she imbues them with a distinct singsong intonation common in Castilian Spanish. If an English word escapes her, threatening to interrupt her flow, she will slip into Spanish long enough to finish the thought.

Rosalía speaks with her hands as well. Watching her gesticulate with the rise and fall of her speech, I thought of how she’s performed with inch-long talons, as in her flamenco cameo in the “WAP” video, and shared photos of intricate nail art, including one manicure inspired by Mexican lotería cards. Those ornate nails were gone now, clipped to librarian length and left nude.

There was so much about Lux to be knocked out by. The fact that Rosalía sings in 14 languages. The sweeping, cinematic strings, played by the London Symphony Orchestra and arranged on some of the songs by Caroline Shaw, the Pulitzer-winning composer who worked.