Spanish avant-pop star Rosalía was just 8 years old when she rode her first motorcycle, her arms wrapped around her dad’s belly from the pillion seat as they blasted off into the hills, somewhere on the outskirts of her hometown of Barcelona. She says the trick to getting over the initial anxiety of riding a bike — and, more recently, of dropping her intrepid new album, “Motomami” — was keeping her focus fixed on the moment.
“What I love about riding a motorcycle is that you have to anchor yourself to the present,” she tells The Times, phoning in from a studio in Miami. “You can only think about what’s happening in the here and now. That way, you can move forward without looking back.”
In the three years and change since she released her Grammy-winning sophomore album, the 2018 flamenco-pop revelation titled “El Mal Querer,” Rosalía has come into her own as an international playgirl of sorts.
