Rosalía on the Words Bono Invented for a Song About Her: “Feel Free to Invent Your Own Language”

Rosalía spent part of her Wednesday night on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon discussing a song she did not write and, by her account, only partly understands. U2’s forthcoming album Carnaval de Luz contains a track called “The Mirror Maker (Rosalía),” and Bono apparently wanted clearance on its vocabulary.

The two have never met, Rosalía said, but Bono texted her about the song, asking whether certain words made sense. One of them was “marmolé.” She had never heard it. Some research confirmed it does not exist in standard Spanish. “So I told him I don’t know, but feel free to invent your own language,” she recalled, repeating the word after Fallon misheard it.

Whether “marmolé” survived into the final recording is unclear. The track has been through a lot: producer Jacknife Lee has said this is the 196th version. A tribute song that has been revised nearly two hundred times, about a singer who has never met its author and was consulted mainly to rule on a nonexistent noun, is a strange kind of homage. It also says something about how U2 works now, treating the studio as an argument rather than a statement.

Rosalía had another story ready. She dressed up and lined up for church in Harlem, only to be turned away at the door when the building filled. “I got rejected by the church,” she said. She went and bought shoes instead. This weekend she is SNL‘s musical guest, with Shane Gillis hosting.