In this special column for Atwood Magazine, I explore the impact of one artist and album across the range of my experience in one city or across several cities. The aspiration is that you will resonate with my experiences and how they might intersect with your own life in deepening our understanding and reflection on a particular artist and album in our contemporary world.

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From the dying dusk of the scintillating nightlife ambience of Ruzafa in València, Spain, Aitana’s majestic album ‘CUARTO AZUL’ enables one to find more resilient ways of inhabiting this world through her intimate, ethereal voice. Her music can make us feel much more human – all too human – captivating our souls through the challenges we face in our own lives.

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Stream: ‘CUARTO AZUL’ – Aitana

On November 6, 2025, I arrived in València, Spain, where I would stay for a life-altering three weeks in Ruzafa – one of the most vibrant and enthralling areas of the city.

From there, one could also easily walk to the principal tree-lined avenue of the beautiful Gran Via, which was seething with shoppers, and on to the hidden streets that surrounded the magnificent Plaza del Ayuntamiento city square. As I became immersed in this dynamic city and its nightlife, which went on into the breaking dawn most every night, I began to recognize and hear the unmistakable sound of Aitana’s CUARTO AZUL everywhere. In València, the people were remarkable. We began to make friends with every server and Uber driver in a heartbeat, as if we had almost already been a part of their lives forever. Within days, we already had the makings of our own intimate and irreplaceable community.

I became endlessly mesmerized by the pop universe and private world that Aitana was sharing in this beguiling and so very highly addictive album. When I wasn’t hearing it publicly, it was the only LP that I would listen to from dawn to dusk in my apartment in Ruzafa. Of course, I was not really in the apartment all that often, but it became the soundtrack of my life in València – an album that carries me to this very day.

When I was in the apartment, it was so highly enjoyable to turn up the sound on this LP as I stood on my balcony on Calle de Cadis and watched the bars build incredible momentum, filling to vibrant capacity and inevitably overflowing into the streets of Ruzafa, where every night was an incredible celebration of life. Many a night, we would start off the evening at Vermutería L’Aperitiu, a delightful corner bar downstairs from my apartment, with probably the best sardine on toast in the world along with a marvelous local Spanish red wine.

As we sauntered through the streets and inhabited bar after bar, Aitana’s voice was always our companion amidst the brilliant atmosphere that was made so very enveloping by the people who desired to live forever.

In many ways, Ruzafa is the heartbeat of this city, with its bohemian ambience and the relentless intensity of nightlife.

It is always sharing the gift of being alive through date nights and girlfriends basking together in the glow of cocktails, cañas, flowing red wine, and rings of smoke from 5 p.m. to 5 a.m. Those are the contours of a life lived, and these realms are at hand in the spheres of storytelling that Aitana inhabits in this sensational album. On my balcony on Calle de Cadis, I stood and watched the beautiful people congregate on the corner roundabouts of multiple bars, where they shared their most intimate secrets while Aitana sang about those exact tensions in modern relationships.

Aitana’s fourth studio LP, CUARTO AZUL, released on May 30, 2025, is a dazzling artistic work that is firmly grounded in the textures of the modern world. It also indelibly captures the sorely missing pop sound of the ’80s and ’90s in such a highly seductive and intimate manner that it is really unlike any other album in today’s musical landscape. This album has become Aitana’s masterwork, creating a vibrant cultural imprint that is dramatically shifting popular music in Spain, Europe, and on a global basis.

The album’s opening track, “6 De Febrero,” captures a stunning portrait of love and loss as Aitana paints the contours of her blue room. She then immediately follows it up with “Duele Un Montón Despedirme De ti,” which echoes a similar trajectory of dealing with heartbreak and self-recuperation. This is one of those few LPs where one deeply resides within its dynamic fabric from the outset as Aitana unfolds the trajectory in the entrancing, intimate storybook of her blue room. Where my heart really felt its overwhelming pop appeal was in the songs “Conexión Psíquica” and “Superestrella,” yet I remain delightfully languishing within the sounds and sentiments of every track on this album as they forge such captivating forms of awareness in being human.

In “Conexión Psíquica,” Aitana explores intense forms of connection, as she sings:

No sabíamos que esto era algo más que química
Y escribiendo las canciones conexión psíquica
Cómo me encanta cuando me dices
“Gracias por existir”

Y es que si esto está mal, que me lleven presa
Baby, es natural que bajo la mesa
Se convierta en un accidente
Y si alguien se entera, pues buena suerte
Si está mal, que se jodan
Si fuera por mi ex, me quedo sola
Esto es mucho más que un accidente
Y si él se entera, pues buena suerte

In “Superestrella,” she reflects on the pressures of fame and the struggles to maintain one’s emotional life. What makes this album a masterwork is Aitana’s ability to weave a beguiling emotional trajectory of a life lived, which flows throughout the entire album via the entrancing musical registry and her intimate soprano voice.

As most of the world knows, Aitana is Aitana Ocaña Morales, who became globally known mononymously as the artist Aitana, positioning herself as the princess of Spanish pop. As I walk around the streets of València, it is so very evident that she is indeed the reigning princess.

From the dying dusk of the scintillating nightlife ambience of Ruzafa in València, Spain, Aitana’s majestic album CUARTO AZUL enables one to find more resilient ways of inhabiting this world through her intimate, ethereal voice. Her music can make us feel much more human – all too human – captivating our souls through the challenges we face in our own lives.

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:: stream/purchase CUARTO AZUL here ::

:: connect with Aitana here ::

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 © Pablo Alzaga

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