And the Winner of the Festival Year Is: Rosalía

Urban Klancnik

Nov 8, 2019

Rosalía’s climb to the top actually started in November 2018, when she released her second album "El mal querer", which is considered to be one of the best experimental pop albums of the last decade. After the release, her monthly views on YouTube jumped to almost 27M in November.

Rosalía’s music originates in Flamenco. She coined it into something fresh, new, something a young generation can relate to, through the influences of Pop, Reggaeton, Hip Hop, Trap and R&B – without insulting the traditions of the genre.

The song that got her high in the charts

After the release of the album, Rosalía won two Latin Grammys, performed at the 2018 MTV European Music Awards, and got some international attention, but that was just the calm before the storm. End of March 2019, she released the video for "Con Altura" ("Up High") on YouTube with J Balvin and El Guincho. The video got over 1B views since the release, and her monthly YouTube views rocketed from 16M in March 2019 to 105M in April 2019. With the track she won “Best Collaboration” at the 2019 MTV EMAs, where she also staged a fiery performance with a Flamenco twist.

The most booked artist of the festival year

In a matter of months, Rosalía became one of the most sought-after artists in the world. Consequently, she performed at all the big ones: Coachella, Primavera Sound Barcelona, Mawazine Festival, Glastonbury Festival, Roskilde Festival, Osheaga, Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits Music Festival, and was, by the way, the most booked artist of the music festival season of 2019. She's followed by Charlotte de Witte, Janelle Monáe, Martin Garrix and CamelPhat, who each performed at seven festivals, according to our analysis of the 24 most popular mixed-genre festivals of 2019.

The fans follow

Rosalía used the success of "Con Altura" to tour heavily during the summer, gathering new followers on all social media channels. Her Instagram followers went from 2.9M to 4.7M from June to September 2019, and she almost doubled her followers on Spotify and Twitter.

Yearly highlights:

• • 9 times (4M) more Instagram followers 
• • 10 times (0.5M) more Twitter followers 
• • Monthly YouTube engagement rocketed to 206M in a year

In the middle of August 2019, she released another video – "Yo x Ti, Tu x Mi" ("Me for You, You for Me"), a collaboration with Reggaeton singer Ozuna. The video got 120M views in just over a month, which is good, but it will be hard to beat the success of "Con Altura". Still, Rosalía has great support and more than a few aces up her sleeve. Superstars such as Ariana Grande, Katy Perry, Marshmello, Shawn Mendes, David Guetta, Billie Eilish and Nicky Jam follow her on social media. Any post or share from artists of their caliber will raise her popularity considerably. She’s definitely one of the hottest artists today and a force to be reckoned with.

Cover photo: Greg Noire/Lollapalooza 2019

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