INTERVIEW: Lily Rose on Hit Song Villain on Apple Music

Yeah, I had [Villain] since before the pandemic even started fully mixed, mastered, ready to go. It was the only one I had mastered in the tank that we weren’t going to release. Got some really good advice from people in town. Just like, “Yeah, this song is bigger than just putting it out independently, just hold onto it.” So I didn’t get on TikTok until October of this past year, like less than six months ago. And I was just putting up demos and stuff like that. And I’m really lucky that I put up ‘Villain’ and it was fully mastered. So when [a label] gave me the call saying, “Yo, I want to do a single deal with you, let’s put it out,” we were able to put it out in 10 days…So we did it in 10 days and got it out there before Christmas. It hung out, number one all genre, eight out of the 10 days leading up to Christmas, we said, “Sorry, Mariah, move over.” It was super humbling too, Taylor Swift had just put out an album that week before, four days before. So to have one of my biggest idols – we were sitting above her now – that all led to Republic and Big Loud, and [I] signed a deal with them at the top of the year. And now I’m label mates with Taylor, so that feels pretty cool.

I think we’re all still trying to navigate how to connect with fans. Even with the pandemic, hopefully coming to a close, it’s still just like, how do we use tools to connect with them? So I was very reluctant for a long time through the pandemic, but when I downloaded [TikTok] in October, I remember the first video I posted on Instagram about it. I was like, “Yo, if you guys give me 50 followers today, I’ll release a demo” kind of thing. And I was really chipping away at an iceberg with a soup spoon with it. And over the course of three weeks, I got up to 18,000 followers. And then we made ‘Villain’ go viral four times inside of 10 days. And I’m approaching 700,000 followers right now. So it’s stupid. It’s wild. People are incredible.

That’s what country music is, is telling the truth and the most clever and best songwriting in the world. I grew up not listening to country music, but we’re diehard Bruce Springsteen fans. You want to talk about cross-country, listen to that dude’s solo Broadway show. It’s just all country songs coming out of it. Another thing that makes country music what it is is the community that we have here on MusicRow in the writing rooms and the kindness. We’ve got a lot of things to still work on when it comes to the city and everything, but I think that what separates us from London, New York, LA – all these incredible entertainment cities – is there’s a lot of stuff done with love and kindness here; that talent is not the number one.

I am really, really excited to hopefully be able to go out on tour with one of my favourite artists this year. If the world opens back up, that’s something I want to do. And you know, it’s the obvious one, but we need it in country music to really get our careers going: I really want a radio number one. I’m speaking it into existence. I want to cross over. I want a pop number one. Hopefully, we can get like a Blackbear or a [Post Malone] or somebody on a pop remix. That’s something I really want…[And] my third manifest is that [BRELAND] and I are going to do a song together. No doubt.