INTERVIEW: Lily Rose on ‘Stronger Than I Am’

Singer-songwriter Lily Rose is one of the fastest-rising talents in Nashville. Following the release of her single ‘Villain,’ Rose signed on with Big Loud Records. Now, she has released her new project – Stronger Than I Am. Here, we interview Lily about the project and what else is in the pipeline.

Hello! So good to talk to you today – you must be so excited to finally have this project out? 

I am definitely ready that’s for sure.

What do you hope people take away from this project? The last year your music has just got bigger with every release, it feels like you’ve really hit a groove with your music.

Yeah, wow, thank you, I appreciate that. It’s really cool to hear, you’re not the first person that said that. I’m so inside of it that I don’t really look at it that way. Especially, we play the songs every night and even the songs that are fresh ones come in on the project. We’ve been playing them live for five months, so yeah, I’m pumped. I feel really good about where we’re at with the music – that is credit to my record label and my A&R team at Republic and Big Loud, we’re just choosing the right songs as a team.

Everything blew up with ‘Villain’ and the success that got. Did you know when that song was released the success it would garner? Obviously you put out the video which blew up, but did you have a feeling when you wrote that song what would happen? 

Yeah, so we wrote it in 2019. Actually, my co-writer Kyle Clark is the one that sang the worktape because we were going to try to get a guy to sing it as a male pitch. I sat with the song more, I just really brought the title in and connected with the thought and the concept of the song. I think I picked it up one day and recorded a version and I was like, ‘I can’t stop singing this. This is awesome’. So, my producer Matt Morrissey just knocked it out of the park, I told him I wanted that cinematic ‘Batman-Gotham’ thing as the sound. I actually held on to it all of 2020 and had a couple people that I trust in town say, ‘Yo, I think this is bigger than the 2000 followers. You could just put it out, hold on to it’.  I downloaded TikTok in October and put up like 10 demos. I had the master of ‘Villain’ but thought ‘there’s no way,’ but  my girlfriend said that w.as the best one and I had to put it up. I’m very, very thankful I listened to her.

It must have been weird because obviously you have so much faith in the song, but there’s also that idea of having to wait for the right moment, where you’ve got a bit more momentum. It’s cool with TikTok because you can just release anything and it can blow up just because the song is so good.

Yeah, it kind of makes you wonder, since music was created how many songs could have been hits or were never heard because the right person never heard them or whatever it is. TikTok is pretty special, because we have market research immediately. You can’t can’t deny numbers, which is pretty cool. 

So, you wrote the song back in 2019 thinking you’d have a male vocal on it. How do you make that decision of which songs to keep for yourself and which to put feelers out for other artists to sing?

Yeah, well before I signed the the record deal, I get to answer this more accurately for ‘Villain’ – it was just walking out of the room and I couldn’t get it out of my head. It felt like not only something I would say, but the way it was said with the right amount of swag, vocal range, hitting everything perfectly. The obsession with the song is the main thing for me, because right now every writing room I walk into, I’m the artist, so we assume that we are writing for me that day. Either I can’t turn the demo off, or I can’t stop singing it – it translates to all of the things that you hope when you put it out that the fans do, in that they can’t get it out of their head or turn it off.

That’s what it should be like, you should be as obsessed with the song as fans are.

Yeah, and you know it’s funny. Once we cut the song with the demos and everything, I listened to them relentlessly compared to other artists, I think, just to make sure that I know and I love it, but once we cut it, I usually hate listening to my own music. With this project, I couldn’t turn my own project off for the last month, I get in the car and I turn it on. I can’t wait for everyone to have all of the songs because I can’t turn it off. They like my music way more than I do.

That must be so satisfying to be that obsessed with the tracks. Obviously, you’ve referenced your label Big Loud and Republic – what have they brought to your music? They’re known to be pushing the newest, freshest voices, but what has it meant to have their support?

Yeah, I mean, you just used a great word to describe both of those labels, which is ‘fresh’. I do think that everything both of those labels do in country and pop music is what everyone else is chasing. They’re chasing after Republic and Big Loud artists right now – Republic has Taylor, Ariana The Weeknd, Drake… And then, on our side, it’s Morgan, HARDY, Jake Owen, Chris Lane.. I’m happy to be included in that freshness which all translates back to storytelling, with the lyrics and also the sound that Joey Moi and I figured out. I think that we’ve got something that nobody’s done yet in country music – sonically, we’re bringing a lot of those hip hop elements that I love. I love Sam Hunt and everything that he did to create that lane, while also staying true to what country music sounds like. I’m a gay artist in Nashville and they let me just say my truth. We’re starting to see now in 2021, thankfully, that even people who might not connect with it on a very high level can still like the song. I have never dated boys but I can still listen to a track and love it regardless of the pronoun.

Well it’s all about the emotions that are universal. I feel like it is a bit of a hopeful time in Nashville right now in terms of representation. Obviously TJ Osborne came out this year and that was an incredible moment. Country music hasn’t always had that diversity of voices, so is it important to you now to be one of those voices hopefully opening up the genre further?

Yeah, it is something that I will gladly carry on my back. I just love knowing that there’s change happening and I’m proud to be part of it. It all starts with the songs in my opinion, for anybody, whether you’re trying to change people’s hearts, within a certain community or you’re just trying to have a career, it’s all about the songs, which make the biggest impact to write and cut the best songs that we can. My goal with the music is to lead with the music and hope people fall in love with the music. That’s what Big Loud is all about, that’s why they’ve always needed the freshness and the authenticity that they allow their artists to have. That is why I always was attracted to them. They were my number one label to sign with, but the reason why I’m so happy is because for them it’s all about song integrity and having the best songs.

I mean, at the end of the day,  the songs you want to be sung back to you in stadiums need to be the big songs. One of the songs that I kind of wanted to chat about, just because it’s one of the ones that jumped out to me when I listened through was ‘Whole Lotta Hometowns’ because I feel like it was one of those ones which lyrically had all these subtleties and clever turns. Can you talk about creating that one?

Yeah, that’s so fun. It’s the last song on the project, but everyone keeps bringing it up. I’m so thankful, I love that song, too. It’s absolutely electric live. I can’t wait for you to see a show because it’s absolutely insane. It’s really cool, because I think we just did a really good job of what great country songs depict about hometowns, but we made it super catered to me. It rode that fine line – we talked about my mechanic stopping by the shop to see Ron and say hi. In Atlanta, Georgia, you go to Waffle House when you’re drunk, and you get kicked out if you talk back and you go on the river in the summer. I think everyone in America, Australia, the UK everywhere, they all can connect and be like, ‘Oh, that’s my drunk place that I go to when I’m hungry. That’s our river’. Even though the words are super specific to me, it just caters to everyone who has that one person they get to see in their hometown, when they go home. I’m really proud of that song.

What do you hope fans take away from the project as a whole then?

All seven of these songs have one theme when I look at them. Sonically, they might seem all over the place when you listen to ‘Stronger Than I Am’ and then ‘I Don’t Smoke’ right after, but Joey Moi is a freak, he just made it all come together sonically, in my opinion. When I look at the seven songs, and the stories of all seven of these, it all comes back to what made ‘Villain’ relatable. I think each one of these seven songs we’ve found a really cool way to say, I need to get over you, I need to move on, I’m falling in love with you. I miss my hometown, you know, and country music, we found cool ways to say things that we’ve already said a zillion times. I’m really pumped about that and I hope that the fans just feel like they can connect with all of the songs the same way they did with ‘Villain’ and I hope they I think it’s just a banger after banger kind of project. 

I couldn’t agree more with that. Congratulations on the project, I’m so excited for you and to see where this all goes.