Rosalía Gives Inspirational Speech to Future Female Hitmakers at 2023 Billboard Women in Music!
Rosalía arrived at the 2023 Billboard Women in Music Awards in knee-high boots and a two-piece ensemble at the YouTube Theater in Los Angeles. She was honoured with the Women in Music Producer of the Year award by Bose! This is the first ever award presented in this category. After having received the award, Rosalía delivered a heartfelt speech to express her gratitude to God, her family and her team.
“This is the first time I get a chain as an award,” she said. “When I started in music, I had no idea what producing was. It was with time that I learned, and now I cannot imagine another way to make my music that’s not producing. A producer’s job is a job in the shadow, it’s not very fun … it’s 15 hours a day working on a sound. It comes from love and obsession and that’s why you stay in that small room with no windows while everyone else is living life and doing regular human s–t.”
She added, “To me, it feels special tonight because this is not usual. I make my own music, I produce my own songs, and I write my own songs. I want to dedicate this award to all the women who are going to be producers.” She also gave a shout-out to one of her fellow singers saying, “Lana Del Rey, te amo!”
Rosalía draws inspiration from female artist-producers such as Björk and Missy Elliott. The artist tries “to not have a specific idea of how a song must sound,” she previously said to Billboard. “Instead, I go in with concepts, or ilusiones, of how I would like it to sound. But never a rigid idea. That’s not organic, nor is it productive. Producing also requires humility because you’re constantly testing out ideas. I remember Pharrell Williams once told me that we’re just testing ideas from the universe because no one really owns an idea. I love that concept.”
On her latest set MOTOMAMI, which won best Latin rock or alternative album at the 2023 Grammys and album of the year at the 2022 Latin Grammys, Rosalía genre-hopped from dembow to bachata to reggaeton to bolero. She produced tracks including ‘Saoko,’ boldly fusing jazz and reggaetón, and in ‘Delirio de Grandeza,’ she sampled Soulja Boy in an otherwise traditional bolero.
“My homework as a producer is to follow my intuition. It’s to make decisions and take risks,” she stated.
Her 16-track LP turned up at No. 3 on Billboard’s Top Latin Albums chart! She was also previously honoured with the Rising Star Award at the Billboard Women in Music Awards in 2019. She subsequently became the first Spanish artist to receive that honour.
– Riya Sohini
