A former manager of Guns N’ Roses claims in a new lawsuit that the band has unfairly blocked the release of his autobiography by threatening to sue him and his publisher as he tries to “tell his story.”

Alan Niven, who managed the iconic rock band during its late 80s heyday, claims that GNR has wrongfully invoked a confidentiality clause in his 1991 termination contract and made “repeated threats” of legal action over the memoir, Sound N’ Fury: Rock N’ Roll Stories.

“Due to GNR’s threats, Sound N’ Fury languishes in a warehouse,” Niven’s attorneys write in the lawsuit, which was obtained by Billboard. “Thousands of copies of Sound N’ Fury have been printed and continue to incur storage expenses.”

Niven says his book “includes stories involving the members” of the band like Axl Rose and Slash, but that the contract is clearly unenforceable. He says that GNR members have also repeatedly discussed his role in the band’s history – meaning he’s allowed to speak about it too as a matter of free speech.

“These public disclosures by defendant’s members and agents have collectively placed the relevant facts of the band’s relationship with plaintiff into the public domain and made them matters of public interest,” Niven’s lawyers write. “Enforcement of the confidentiality provision would be illegal and in violation of the Constitutional protection of free expression.”

A rep for Guns N’ Roses did not immediately return a request for comment on Wednesday.

Niven started managing Guns N’ Roses in 1985, shortly after the band solidified its best-known lineup: Rose, Slash, Izzy Stradlin, Duff McKagan and Steven Adler. And he was there for GNR’s rise to stardom with the chart-topping Appetite for Destruction, which featured smash hit singles like “Welcome to the Jungle,” “Paradise City,” and “Sweet Child o’ Mine.” Niven was fired in 1991 by Rose, who reportedly refused to release the band’s next album until Niven was gone.

As Niven tells it in his lawsuit, he was instrumental in the band’s success: “Niven’s work with GNR is the stuff of legends, as he took them from nowhere to headlining Wembley Stadium in less than six years.”

After he was “betrayed” and fired by the band, Niven admits that he signed a “buy out” agreement covering the terms of his exit. He says it contained a “privacy/confidentiality” provision that required both sides to avoid sharing information about the other learned during their long partnership.

But Niven says that in the years since, GNR members have made “many references” to him, including “inflammatory or even defamatory” ones. He specifically cites several examples, including a 2008 magazine interview in which Rose suggested that Niven was “always tryin’ to convince someone they should fire me” and was seeking a “a personal pay day” from their record label.

“Members of GNR have mentioned Niven, sometimes in a derogatory [way], starting at least as far back 1991,” his lawyers write. “Niven’s comments about the band are thus justified by the agreement, which allows him to comment on matters raised by the band first.”

He also claims the agreement is void for an even simpler reason: That Hudson, McKagan and Stradlin signed the deal, but that Axl himself never did so: “It is unclear who is attempting to enforce the agreement now, and whether they have standing to do so,” his attorneys say. “Rose did not sign the agreement, and one signatory (Stradlin) has remained silent.”

In technical terms, Niven is seeking a “declaratory judgment” that the 1991 contract is unenforceable, or that he is not violating the terms of it by releasing his book. He is also suing the band for damages over accusations that it “intimidated” his publisher into delaying the books release.

“Defendants’ interference has resulted in damages to Niven from lost sales and lost reputation in the market for his book and life story, only a fraction of which has anything to do with Defendants’ rock group,” he says. “Individual advance orders have been cancelled. The books have incurred storage fees. Niven’s momentum in the press has been destroyed.”

Plenty of drag queens can sing, and plenty of drag queens who can’t sing have released songs anyway. So when an alumnus of RuPaul’s Drag Race makes a foray into the world of recorded music, you can be forgiven for greeting it with a shrug.

Which is part of the reason why season 16 breakout Plasma is making her debut a live album. She wants you to know that when she’s teasing out those melancholic money notes or whizzing through a difficult-to-untangle patter song, there’s no studio trickery and it isn’t the tenth take — it’s just her honest-to-goddess voice doing what it does best.

As Drag Race viewers know, Plasma is a Broadway baby through and through, a Gay White Way devotee whose humor and style draws on legends like Barbra Streisand and Bernadette Peters. While Plasma’s decision to make her debut LP a live record is an impressively risky one, the fact that it consists mainly of Broadway faves isn’t a shock — but smartly, the 26-year-old from Texas has peppered in a few surprises.

When I attended the Joe’s Pub show where Is Miss Thing On? (Live from Joe’s Pub) was recorded on July 28, there were two tunes I didn’t recognize: “A Schloon for the Gumpert” and “80 or Above.” The former is a song Streisand trotted out at her famous A Happening in Central Park show in 1968 but wasn’t included on the live album’s track list; the latter, however, is neither a Broadway classic nor an obscurity — it’s a new tune written by Plasma herself. But damned if it doesn’t sound like it could be a long-lost gem from some old musical forgotten over the decades.

Ahead of its release on Friday (Nov. 7) via Joy Machine Records, Plasma hopped on a Zoom with Billboard to talk about the advice from her family (both biological and drag) that influenced this album, how she landed Tony and Grammy winner J. Harrison Ghee for a duet, and which post-Covid Broadway show gave us “one of the most pivotal performances in American theater history.”

Why did you decide to make your debut album a live album, as opposed to a studio LP where you can do multiple takes and fix mistakes?

The primary inspiration was from my dad, actually. He raised me listening to Michael Bublé Meets Madison Square Garden and Adele’s Live From SoHo sessions, and all the greats who recorded live in the mid-century up until now.

When it came up that I wanted to record a debut album, my dad said, “Well, you could do it in the studio and feel perfect about it — but as we’ve always taught you, perfect is the enemy of great, and you are great in front of a live audience, because you are always better when you are performing, instead of sitting in a silent room worrying about the way you sound. So do it, don’t leave anything out. Don’t leave any stone unturned. Do it live, do it bold. Do it bravely, and don’t look back.” My dad’s very wise.

That’s great advice. Another marvelous live album you mentioned during your Joe’s Pub show is Barbra Streisand’s Live at the Bon Soir, which she recorded in 1962 but didn’t release until 2022. It’s so good, I can’t believe she didn’t release that back in the day.

I can’t either. And I found out very recently that the day after she recorded her last session at the Bon Soir, she did a cabaret series at the bar in the West Village called the Duplex in their upstairs cabaret space. That is genuinely, literally, the first bar in New York City that gave me a weekly show and it was in the upstairs space. So the Barbra connection deepens and deepens. That is the album that truly inspired this live album.

How did you pick the songs? Obviously there are Broadway faves, but there’s also some random, obscure stuff, even one I wasn’t familiar with.

Good! That is the goal. I’m actually wearing a t-shirt from an off-Broadway show called The Big Gay Jamboree, which is a very niche hit. I realized in my adult homosexual life that an obscure, niche reference gets me a lot of street cred with a tiny group of people that I respect, so the niche reference really guides my hand a lot in my work. I had a live show last year, right on the heels of my run on Drag Race, called All That Plazz. It was a diaristic approach of my life as it stood a year and a half-ish ago. I took that as a blueprint, and I whittled out the kinks or the things that didn’t really feel relevant anymore, or the things I didn’t identify with as personally, and I filled them in with things that felt really personal.

“Cry Me a River” [ed. note: the Arthur Hamilton song from the ‘50s, not the Justin Timberlake single] has always been one of my favorite songs. I’m also a Scorpio, so “Cry Me a River” is a bit of a vengeance anthem, which I love. “More” from Dick Tracy — I never sung that live until Joe’s Pub, but that was one of the first songs I lip synced to when I started doing drag in New York. I like to lure people in with songs that they will know, and then keep them sat with niche references that they’ve either forgotten about or they’ve never known existed. Uncovering that is how I fell in love with mid-century music, as well as people introducing me to music that no one hears anymore.

I love that you did “More.” It’s a fantastic song that kind of disappeared, because it’s on a Madonna album, I’m Breathless, that most people don’t return to.

I actually didn’t even know what it was from, or that Madonna had done it, for years — because I was obsessed with Ruthie Henshall’s version from Putting It Together, the Sondheim review on Broadway with Carol Burnett. That’s the one I lip synced to, and she’s just a powerhouse. Then when I learned that it was a Madonna song, I was like, “Well, I’ve already heard it sung correctly, so I don’t need to go back now.”

Look, I love Madonna, and her version is great, but I get that it’s certainly not like doing a Barbra song where you’re thinking, “How am I ever gonna match that range?”

Oh, my God, yeah. She has a cup of hot tea on the stage because she wants one. I have a cup of hot tea on stage because I have to do it. I have to treat my voice correctly if I’m gonna sing Barbra’s stuff.

That leads to one of the things I wanted to ask. Of the songs in that setlist, what’s the easiest one to sing for you, and what is the most challenging one?

God, that night, “More” was my biggest challenge. I went into it new, and I love the song, and I’ve known the song, but it is literally a key change minefield. Thank you, Stephen Sondheim. It’s also fast and it’s patter-y and it has some particular vocabulary that you have to really enunciate because it’s theatrical, so you want to make sure everyone is hearing the words. Whereas on something like “Misty” or “Cry Me a River,” you’re gooey, floaty, lovely.

“Cry Me a River” is one of those songs that I could sing if I had just gotten vocal fold surgery. For some reason, the older I get, the more I can put that song on vocal autopilot and listen to the words again and find new meaning in them. It just falls out of my mouth, and then by the end, I’m screaming, and I realize, “Oh, sorry that was really loud.” That one is the easiest, just because it comes naturally. I’m having an organic artistic response. [Laughs.] God, how pretentious.

You open with “Let Me Entertain You” from Gypsy. Did you see the latest Broadway staging of it with Audra McDonald, and what did you think of it?

I adored it. In the album, I talk about how jazz and mid-century music is largely accredited to, or it should be more accredited to, people of color. Because jazz, of course, has its roots in New Orleans and in the Black community. I think we think of jazz and we think of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, but we don’t think about Eartha Kitt and we don’t think about Carmen McRae or Sarah Vaughan or this plethora of Black artists who gave us the gift that, in my world, keeps on giving.

Seeing a production like Gypsy, which is written in a time of oppression but always talking about the white plight of show business, and then having it come under new direction and new vision from George C. Wolfe about Black people fighting even just for minimal visibility, and then still being robbed of it. And then, of course, the spiritual connection of Audra losing the Tony after one of the most pivotal performances in American theater history on the Tonys. Seriously, it feels like we’ve seen one of the first post-Covid truly monumental theater-making attempts with Audra’s Gypsy. And, of course, Joy Woods is a sensation.

Speaking of Tonys, you had J. Harrison Ghee come up for a duet during the show, which was beautiful. How did that come about?

Like all great queer connections, we met at a bar. I met J. a couple times, but the one that really stuck was we met at my friend Blacc Cherry’s Drag Race viewing party at Dive 106 earlier this spring. After that, we ran into each other at the Smash Broadway opening night red carpet. I grew up idolizing Tony Award winners and the Broadway theater excellence that implies. And when I met J., I still felt very much at home and very friendly and very communicative and also sisterly. There’s a lot of kiki energy, there’s a lot of “yes and” energy that you couldn’t quantify in a theater improv class. You could only quantify it by being human adults who have lived a little bit of the queer experience in New York City.

I asked them out of the blue. I was like, “How can I, as a white cisgender man, a twink, celebrate Black artistry through a jazz medium and also not invite a true, gifted informant of Black artistry–Black queer, non-binary artistry—into the room with me?” J. is also so generous. They have their Tony and their Grammy, and then cut to them gluing down my lace on the back of my neck that I didn’t know was there.

That’s a pro.

That’s a pro, that’s an empath. That’s generous. That’s someone who you want in the room with you.

During the show, you performed one song you had written, “80 or Above.” I don’t mean to sound backhanded, but it was surprisingly good. Usually when someone is singing a bunch of classics and then is like, “Here’s one I wrote myself,” you’re thinking, “OK, here we go,” but I was impressed. I could even imagine other singers singing it. What’s your songwriting process like?

Thank you so much. First of all, that’s very flattering. I will also tell you that I had reservations about writing music, because I’ve also sat in rooms where people will say, “You guys, the next song is a song that I wrote,” and it’s just like, oh my god, clench your napkin in your fist — because you’re gonna have to get through three minutes of someone’s passion project. And I will not name names.

I don’t even know what my songwriting process is. I read a lot of poetry in high school. I started back when I had a more regular journaling practice. I find myself writing in rhyme structure — maybe it’s just because I’m dramatic as hell and I’m a secret Shakespearean-hearted dramatic goon. I was feeling silly one day and started writing things out. And I was like, “what if I wrote this little song, and what if I came up with a melody that sounds like it came out of the Anita O’Day songbook?” And did something funny and kitschy and campy, but also poignant? As long as I came up with a melody that wasn’t irritating or TikTok, AI-generated, then I could be comfortable putting it out there, as long as it didn’t interrupt the flow of my grander show.

The fact that you can hear other people sing it means a great deal to me. I really am proud of it, and I’d like to write more. I ever were to record more music, I’d want to do a studio album, because I’ve done the live album, toss, toss [fake tosses hair]. I’d like to do something that’s half-original, half-niche covers, so that the line between things you know I wrote and things you don’t know at all is blurred.

What are your hopes for this album when it comes out? What do you want to do next?

I’d love for every Broadway producer in town to listen to it. It’s a great, big audition for something else. In the theater world, we say every audition is an audition for something else, or every interaction is an audition. At the same time, I am trying to identify myself post-reality TV as a real human with autonomous thoughts and control over my own narrative. I’m trying to position myself for opportunities that come beyond reality TV, for people who are equipped to take on narrative roles and theatrical roles and musical roles.

I would love to collaborate with other jazz artists. I’d love to be on Broadway. I’d love to sing live more. I’d love to blur the line between Plasma and Taylor, which is my legal name. I want to have the full breadth of what is possible for a queer person in 2025 available to me. The whole reason why you listen to a live album is because it doesn’t sound like the studio album, because someone is trying something in real time that is dangerous. If you mess up, everyone will see it, and that’s vulnerable, and it’s scary.

One of my dear friends is Privilege, a drag artist in Brooklyn. The night before I left for Drag Race, they gave me a little totem to take with me and they said, “I just want to encourage you to feel whatever fear you feel, and then do it scared.”

More great advice!

I don’t know a single queer person who’s not scared right now. I’d rather do something scared than rest on technological improvement or the gloss of legitimacy helping me out. I am who I am, and I rest on the laurels that I can present to you in real time and nothing else. And so that’s my priority, to live as authentically and unashamedly as possible.

Anything else you want to add, about the album or your life?

[Jokingly] Well, I’m still single and I’m still drinking too much, so that original song has never hit harder. No, I would encourage Drag Race fans to broaden the scope of what they perceive as possible from a Drag Race alumnus. I would also encourage music fans and theater fans to broaden their perspectives beyond Kinky Boots and La Cage aux Folles into what queer artists are capable of telling.

Ed Sheeran has celebrated a major victory for his music education campaign as the U.K. government confirmed on Wednesday (Nov. 5) that music lessons will be taught more widely in schools. 

Earlier today a major review of the National Curriculum – which dictates what subjects and topics are taught in non-fee-paying state schools – was published by the Labour government. The changes are the first in over a decade, and will see a number of modern topics (such as artificial intelligence) enter the classroom.

The report says that arts subjects will also be “revitalised” and will see the scrapping of the English baccalaureate (EBacc), which critics – including Sheeran – said limited subject choice for students at a GCSE level (ages 14-16). Under the program, introduced in 2010 by then-education secretary Micahel Gove, pupils were required to study a minimum of seven GCSEs, including maths and a language, but the options did not include any arts subjects.

In March, Sheeran called on U.K. prime minister Sir Keir Starmer to scrap the Ebacc, deliver £250 million in spending towards music in a classroom environment and enlist more teachers for music subjects. His letter was backed by over 600 signatories, including Sir Elton John, Harry Styles, Coldplay and more. He also launched the Ed Sheeran Foundation in January to help support careers in music.

“We are at a critical point: a future of no music in state schools, no music teachers to teach, broken instruments and no grassroots venues,” he wrote in his letter. “As a young music student and aspiring artist, I benefited from opportunities in and out of school to learn and grow. Unfortunately, after decades of defunding and de-prioritising, music is no longer a right for all children – it’s a luxury for only a few.”

Sheeran’s efforts have now been recognized both by Starmer and Bridget Phillippson, secretary for education. The former sent a direct response to Sheeran saying that his “voice had been heard”. During her speech in parliament on Wednesday, Philippson credited Sheeran for speaking “so powerfully” on the subject. The final curriculum will be published in spring 2027, and schools will begin teaching it from September 2028.

Sheeran has responded to the news and the success of his letter, writing “With the help of the letter and everyone who signed it, I’m happy to say that some of the key points we raised have been recognized by the government today, marking the first change to the music curriculum in over 10 years. This involves diversifying the music genres taught in schools and removing outdated systems that stop kids from studying music and the arts as part of their school day. These changes give young people hope and the opportunity to study music.” See his full statement below.

The topic of music education was raised by a number of British artists at the BRIT Awards 2025, when winners Myles Smith and Ezra Collective called on action to help foster creativity among young people in education.

Ed Sheeran’s full statement

I set up the Ed Sheeran Foundation because every child deserves to have access to a meaningful music education, and the chance to experience the joy and confidence that musical expression can bring.

Shortly after setting up my foundation, I wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister about the critical state of music education in the UK and the fact it was slipping through the cracks. The letter was backed by so many incredible people across the music industry and education who all said the same thing: music education matters. The Prime Minister replied, recognising the challenges and expressing his commitment to change. 

With the help of the letter and everyone who signed it, I’m happy to say that some of the key points we raised have been recognised by the government today, marking the first change to the music curriculum in over 10 years. This involves diversifying the music genres taught in schools and removing outdated systems that stop kids from studying music and the arts as part of their school day. These changes give young people hope and the opportunity to study music.

Without the encouragement I received in school, especially from my music teacher, I wouldn’t be a musician today, and I know so many of my peers feel the same. My music education went beyond learning and playing. It helped me find confidence in myself, and music itself was – and still is – so important for my mental health.

There’s a lot more to do to support music education, especially our music teachers, but this is a step in the right direction.

Thank you so much to everyone who signed and supported the letter.

Today is a good day.

Ed x

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Rosalía offers an exasperated laugh as she sits down, having tried on a variety of equally stunning outfits only to end up in the casual clothes she arrived in: black pants and a camo jacket lined with fur. It’s the same jacket she was spotted wearing at a Parisian cafe in early October, seated alone with a cup of tea while poring over the sheet music of a song from the 1900 Puccini opera Tosca.

The Barcelona-born singer’s candid moment with the canonical tragedy was significant — one of many subtle nods that she was pursuing something outside the typical parameters of modern mainstream music. Rosalía studied musicology in college, and over the last eight years has often meshed a wide variety of genres and influences in her songs. But for someone who rose to global fame on the cutting edge of culture, studying the musical notation of a century-old opera communicated a pointed message.

Weeks later, fans began to understand why. On the evening of Oct. 20, she took to Madrid’s Callao Square with giant projector screens, where a countdown unveiled the release date for her fourth album, Lux (Nov. 7 on Columbia Records), as well as its cover art, which features Rosalía dressed in all white, wearing a nun’s habit and hugging herself under her clothing.

Every move Rosalía has made over the past three years while crafting Lux has been considered, intentional and entirely in her own world. Having risen to fame with the flamenco-inspired pop of her Columbia debut, 2018’s El Mal Querer, she flipped the script with her eclectic, energetic 2022 album, Motomami, which spanned pop, reggaetón, hip-hop, electronic and more and became her first album to chart on the Billboard 200, peaking at No. 33. But Lux is something different: an orchestral, operatic opus recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra that blends history and spirituality and experiments with form, language (she sings in 13 different ones throughout the album’s 18 tracks) and the very idea of what is possible for a major recording artist in 2025, for a project that’s more Puccini than pop — not that it doesn’t have its moments of catchy relatability.

“It’s like an album she wrote to God — whatever each person feels God is to them,” says Afo Verde, chairman/CEO of Sony Latin Iberia, which works with Rosalía alongside Columbia. “This is an artist who said, ‘I want to walk down a path where few walk.’ And when you navigate inside the album, you completely understand the genius behind it.”

Rosalía spent the better part of three years crafting Lux’s lyrics and instrumentation, drawing from classical music, native speakers and instrumentation, and the giants of the past — women including Saint Rosalia of Palermo; the Chinese Taoist master/poet Sun Bu’er; the biblical figure of Miriam, sister of Moses; and even Patti Smith all figure into its cosmology — to create something that feels both worldly and otherworldly, a distinct take on navigating life’s chaos. It was also a period where she experienced personal and professional changes: She broke off her engagement to Puerto Rican reggaetón star Rauw Alejandro, switched management and landed her first big acting role in the forthcoming third season of hit HBO series Euphoria, all while immersed in making the album.

“In general, just to be in this world is a lot; sometimes it’s overwhelming,” she says on a fall day in Los Angeles. “In the best-case scenario, the idea would be that whoever hears it feels light and feels hope. Because that was how it was made and where it was made from.”

“This record takes you on a complete journey; the singing on it is just astounding,” says Jonathan Dickins, who runs September Management, home to Adele, and who began representing Rosalía in June. “I think she’s a generational artist. I’m lucky enough to have worked with one, and now I’m lucky enough to work with another. She is an original.”

To make Lux, Rosalía relied on several of her longtime collaborators — producers Noah Goldstein and Dylan Wiggins and engineer David Rodriguez among them — and tasked them with taking a new approach. “The whole process helped me grow as a musician, as a producer, as a sound engineer,” says Goldstein, who has also worked with Frank Ocean, Jay-Z and FKA twigs. “That’s one of my favorite things about working with Rosalía: I’m always learning things from her.”

She also tapped new collaborators such as OneRepublic singer and decorated songwriter Ryan Tedder (who spent three years DM’ing Rosalía, hoping to eventually work together) and urged them to push their boundaries. “For an artist to give me the freedom to just express myself in that way, God, that is the most fun I’ve ever had,” says Tedder, who has worked on mammoth albums by Adele, Beyoncé and more throughout his career. “I’ve been asked by everybody, ‘What does the new Rosalía stuff sound like?’ And I literally say to everybody, ‘Nothing that you possibly would imagine.’ ”

Fans got their first taste of Lux when Rosalía dropped the single “Berghain,” which features Björk and Yves Tumor, in late October. The song kicks off with a string orchestra introduction followed by a Carmina Burana-like chorus and then Rosalía singing in an operatic soprano voice — in three languages.

For Rosalía, challenging preconceptions about the type of music she, or anyone, can make is part of the point — thinking outside the box, following her inspiration and constantly learning, finding and creating from a place of curiosity and openness to new experiences and ideas. “I think that in order to fully enjoy music, you have to have a tolerant, open way of understanding it,” she says. “Because music is the ‘4’33” ’ of John Cage, as much as the birds in the trees for the Kaluli of New Guinea, as much as the fugues of Bach, as much as the songs of Chencho Corleone. All of it is music. And if you understand that, then you can enjoy in a much fuller, profound way, what music is.”

When did you start working on this album?

I don’t think that it’s easy to measure when something like this happens or starts. The album is heavily inspired by the world of mysticism and spirituality. Since I was a kid, I’ve always had a very personal relationship with spirituality. That’s the seed of this project, and I don’t remember when that started.

How did you approach Lux differently?

This album has a completely different sound than any of the projects that I’ve done before. It was a challenge for me to do a more orchestral project and learn how to use an orchestra, understand all the instruments, all the possibilities, and learn and study from amazing composers in history and say, “OK, that’s what’s been done. What can I do that feels personal and honest for me?” And also the challenge of having that inspiration in classical music and trying to do something that I haven’t done before, trying to write songs from another place. Because the instrumentation is different from all the other projects I have done. But also the writing, the structures, it’s very different.

After Motomami, your success and fame hit a new level. How did that help you make this album?

All the albums I’ve done helped me be able to be the musician I am today and make this album now. Lux wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t taken the previous steps. Each album helped me release something, to free myself as much as possible. Every time I go to the studio, it’s from wanting to play around, try something different, to find different styles of making songs. I always try to stay open.

You’ve said Motomami was inspired by the energy of L.A., New York, Miami. What was your mission in making Lux?

It’s made from love and curiosity. I’ve always wanted to understand other languages, learn other music, learn from others about what I don’t know. It comes from curiosity, from wanting to understand others better, and through that I can understand who I am better. I love explaining stories. I like to be the narrator. I think as much as I love music itself, music is just a medium to explain stories, to put ideas on the table. So that’s what this project is for me. I’m just a channel to explain stories, and there’s inspiration in different saints from all across the world. So you could say it feels like a global thing, but at the same time, it’s so personal for me. Those stories are exceptional. They are remarkable stories about women who lived their lives in a very unconventional way, of women who were writers in very special ways. And so I’m like, “Let’s throw some light there.”

What I know is that I am ready, and this is what I needed to do. What I know is that this is what I was supposed to write about. This is my truth. This is where I am now.

What contributes to the fact that the album feels so global is you sing in 13 languages on it.

It took a lot of writing and scratching it and sending it to someone who would help me translate and be like, “This is how you would say this in Japanese. This is how it sounds.” There were so many things that I had to play with and take under consideration. Because it’s not just writing. It’s not just on paper. It has to sound good. There’s a big difference for me when I write, for example, a letter for somebody that I love than if I write a song. It has to have a certain sound, a certain intention of musicality.

It was a big challenge, but it was worth it. It made me grow so much. And I feel like every word on this album, I fought for it, I really wanted it, and then I waited for it, and then it came. It took me a year to write just the lyrics for this album, and then another year of arranging music and going back to the lyrics and retouching. It took a lot of effort searching for the right words: “How is this not just going to be heard, but also, if you read it, how does it feel?”

The lyrics read like a novel.

There’s a whole intentional structure throughout the album. I was clear that I wanted four movements. I wanted one where it would be more a departure from purity. The second movement, I wanted it to feel more like being in gravity, being friends with the world. The third would be more about grace and hopefully being friends with God. And at the end, the farewell, the return. All of that helped me be very strategic and concise and precise about what songs would go where, how I wanted it to start, how I wanted the journey to go, what lyrics would make sense.

Each story, each song is inspired by the story of a saint. I read a lot of hagiographies — the lives of the saints — and it helped me expand my understanding of sainthood. Because my background is Catholic from my family, so you understand it through this one [lens]. But then you realize that in other cultures and other religious contexts, it’s another thing. But what surprised me a lot was that there’s a main theme, which is not fearing, which you can find shared across many religions. And I think that’s so powerful because probably the fears that I have, somebody on the other side of the world has the same ones. And for me, there’s beauty in that, in understanding that we might think that we’re different, but we’re not.

All of these songs are very personal, but “Focu ’ranni” feels especially so. What was the experience of writing that one?

I found out that there’s this saying by Santa Rosalia de Palermo — she was supposed to get married and then she decided not to; she decided to dedicate her life to God. I thought that something in that was very powerful. I researched her story, and that’s why there’s some Sicilian thrown in that song. It was a challenge to sing in that language. That was a challenging song to do and to sing, but I feel grateful that it exists.

You create a world, and a sisterhood almost, on this album. How does a more playful song like “Novia Robot” fit in?

There was this woman who was very inspiring named Sun Bu’er; she dedicated her life to becoming a teacher of the Tao. And the way she lived her life was unconventional at that time. I thought there was something powerful about her story. Apparently, in order to make a journey, she destroyed her face to be able to travel safely. And she had a partner, she had a family, but she decided she wanted to dedicate her life to spirituality. It was so bold and courageous. And at the end of that song, you hear another voice, which is in [Hebrew], that’s inspired by Miriam, this figure who led an entire people and was a rebellious woman and considered close to the idea of ​​sainthood in Judaism. So I thought that it was cool to have those two voices, the same way how in opera there are so many voices co-existing. So I thought in that song that could happen with that playfulness, yes, and playing with the sound of how Chinese Mandarin would sound.

The album is so operatic and orchestral. How did you begin to immerse yourself in those styles and find the people that you worked with to deliver that?

They’re the people I feel comfortable with, so I love sharing time with them in the studio. For example, I worked on [Lux song] “Mio Cristo” for months by myself in Miami and L.A., and I delayed the moment when I would share it. I wanted to make a song that was like my version of what an aria could be. So I remember just going to the studio after so much work, after so much back and forth with an Italian translator, and I [had been] improvising on the piano, trying to find melodies, to find the right chords and notes. I went to the studio and I shared it with Dylan [Wiggins], with Noah [Goldstein], with David [Rodriguez], and I remember they were like, “Yes. That’s the song. There it is.” So it’s been a lot of isolation on one side — a lot of writing — and then on the other side a lot of collective effort in the studio.

It’s such a vivid album. How are you plotting out how it will look visually?

My sister and I work together a lot. I’m very lucky that I get to just keep playing around and having fun like how we used to when we were kids. Her and I love recommending things to each other, we send books to each other. Having a project together is something I feel so grateful about, the fact that my family is involved — my mother, my sister, they’re very important people in my life, and I feel like I can share everything with them. And on the visual side, it was just playing around with references and imagination, just trying to think, “What can we do with this?” Just playfulness. That’s how I think the best things happen — out of joy.

Have you given any thought yet to what a live performance of this album would look like?

Thoughts are never lacking, but we’ll see. I don’t want to think too much how that would look until that really is happening, if that makes sense. But there’s definitely a lot of creativity with how this could be translated to the stage.

At the same time you were working on this, you were filming the third season of Euphoria, your first major acting role. Was that difficult?

It was very challenging to do both. I was recording the album and producing and checking mixes, everything, while I was shooting Euphoria. I had to divide my mind between both and it was also the first time that I was doing something like this — preparing a character, studying lines. These are new things for me and I’m not used to it. It’s very different from making an album and making music. For some reason, I didn’t completely go crazy, and we’re still here.

Did any of that experience seep into the album?

[Euphoria creator] Sam [Levinson] and I are both very sensitive people. For some reason, whatever he’s creating for me resonates for this moment. When we were shooting, when we spoke about the [show’s] story, I didn’t know him that well. I really admired his work, but I didn’t know how his mind worked, how he is as an artist. I realized he has so much sensibility and I connected so much with that, not just with his work, but also him as a person.

How did that role come about?

I shared that I really wanted to start acting, that it was something that I would love to do. The only thing I had done was [the Pedro] Almodóvar [film Pain and Glory in 2019], and when I was 16 I studied theater for a year. I feel like being a musician and being onstage is being a performer, but I had never experienced it as being filmed, learning lines; it’s a very different job. I had done it with Almodóvar, but I was like, “I would love to do it with somebody like Sam, somebody that has a vision as strong as him. Or someone like Sofia Coppola.” So then I heard the third season was happening and I was like, “I would love to audition.”

You had to audition?

Of course! Because I’m not an actress, and that was really scary. But at the same time, something told me that I was supposed to do it. So I did an audition tape, then met an audition person and then something else, and then it happened.

At the end of your album, you address the concept of death. Are there things in your life that you worry about not having enough time to do?

No. Whenever God decides it’s time to go, it’s time to go. Whatever I have come here to do, I feel like I’m doing; whenever I have to leave, I will leave. That’s how I try to live. I would love to know how it feels to be 100 years old, but that’s not on me to decide. But I would love to keep writing, I would love to keep making music, I would love to keep learning how to cook better, I would love to keep studying — one day I would love to go to college again and study philosophy or theology — and I would love to keep traveling. There are so many times that I travel and feel like I haven’t seen enough or haven’t had enough time to just experience places.

But for now, I’m dedicating myself to my mission, which is making albums and performing. And for me, performing is an act for others. I don’t like touring. I like to be onstage and I love my fans, so I do it. But I love being in my home, calm, reading, cooking, going to the gym, lifting weights and going to sleep. Literally, that makes me so happy; I don’t need a lot. (Laughs.) When you travel, it’s much harder; psychologically it’s a challenge, always. But I also know that there are other jobs that have so much complexity and challenges, and I feel so grateful that I can be a musician.

What’s the biggest challenge that you feel like comes with this career?

The price you pay, the sacrifice, the amount of moments that you lose with your family, with your loved ones. My grandpa died when I was at the Latin Grammys in 2019, and I was about to perform when I found out. I couldn’t even be at the burial. Those things, I’ll have to live with the sadness and the regret of not being there. Those are things that are not the good side of being a musician: always struggling, always being committed to whatever you’re doing, to the people who are there in the audience that night who paid for their ticket to see your performance. Maybe that’s the thing they’re looking forward to the most that week. The price is really high, but this is what I chose, and I’m fully conscious that this is the decision I’ve made.

In releasing this album, what would success look like for you?

Success, for me, is freedom. And I felt all the freedom that I could imagine or hope for throughout this process. That’s all I wanted. I wanted to be able to pour what was inside, outside. And those inspirations, those ideas, make them into songs. I was able to do that, and I will not ask for more.

This story will appear in the Nov. 15, 2025, issue of Billboard.