2025 will be remembered as the year the pop girls got weird. To be clear, this isn’t a complaint. After years of whisper-soft vocals, relatable lyrics, and lo-fi production, it’s refreshing to see some of today’s biggest pop stars get loud, theatrical, and creepy.
Case in point: Charli xcx and John Cale released the “abrasive” single “House” last month (check out the horror edits it inspired here). Sabrina Carpenter channeled The Rocky Horror Picture Show in the music video for “Tears.” And Rosalía released her avant-garde fourth album, Lux. “Wait,” you might be thinking. “Lux doesn’t sound that weird at all.” And to that, I ask: have you listened to “Berghain” or watched the music video? Exactly.
If you’re a Rosalía fan like me, then you already know that she’s into some freaky stuff, including the controversial Argentine filmmaker Gaspar Noé. She’s even referenced him in the song “TKN” (“Zoom in on the face / Gaspar Noé”). And according to some fans (and this now-deleted article in Young magazine), her favorite Noé movie is Enter the Void, now streaming on Philo, Mubi, and Prime Video.
What fans are saying online:
The film follows Oscar (Nathaniel Brown), a young American drug dealer who is killed in Japan. As his soul floats above Tokyo, he watches over his sister Linda (Paz de la Huerta) and reflects on his life before he is eventually reincarnated.
What I love most about Enter the Void is that it’s told almost entirely from Oscar’s floating first-person perspective, which makes the horror and violence he experiences/witnesses feel even more confrontational. This isn’t an easy watch, but then again, none of Noé’s films are (except for Climax, and even that is pushing it for most audiences).
Watch the trailer below:
I appreciate how both Rosalía and Noé tackle big existential questions fearlessly. Lux may not look anything like Enter the Void on the surface (Rosalía is literally wearing a nun’s habit on the album’s cover), but both projects share a desire to explore the body/self and what might lie beyond it.
If you haven’t seen Enter the Void or listened to Lux, I would encourage you to do both. And if you love pop music and controversial movies, or if you think I should cover another weirdo pop girl, let me know: @ashjenexi on Instagram and X.
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