“I mean, things are pretty fucked up,” Rose Gray laughs, perfectly capturing why now is the ideal time for the East Londoner’s debut album, ‘Louder, Please’. Brash, dance-heavy pop has been thriving lately. When the world feels bleak, people seek solace on the dance floor. Rose’s debut is ready to make its grand entrance, emerging in a world that’s explored Brat summer and dance music’s poppiest heights thanks to the likes of Dua Lipa. The timing feels destined – after several delays to its release, she believes this is meant to be her moment: “I think it’s all happened for a reason; it was meant to come out at the beginning of next year.”
Now ‘Louder, Please’ is here, Rose is finally ready to embrace herself. Her story begins as a teenager raised in a creative household. After initially signing a record deal, she was thrust through the industry wringer. Though she wrote over 100 tracks, she lost them all in a dastardly move from the major label. It took time to reconcile with her creative side before Rose was ready to return. “I had to just find myself, explore, make loads of music,” she recalls, “but also make loads of mistakes, musically, life – everything.” And, here she is: an artist in full form. “I have worked for what feels like a very long time on this record, and it’s so much more rewarding than I imagined,” she beams. “I feel really proud of it.”
With a background in jazz and classical training from childhood, Rose’s journey to dance-drenched pop was tentative. “I always saw my voice as an instrument,” she says. “That made me quite confused when I started to make music because I had this thing where I wanted to prove that my voice was doing great things.” Discovering dance music’s collaborations with powerhouse vocalists sparked a revelation, particularly when she heard the angelic vocals of Opus III’s ‘It’s A Fine Day’.
From here, the pop landscape began to mould her. The 90s trio of Madonna, Kylie, and Bjork introduced Rose to wonderful and weird sounds that would coalesce with her taste for breakbeats and house music. While it took time to find her path, she eventually dove into this world creatively.
Her first mixtape, 2021’s ‘Dancing, Drinking, Talking, Thinking’, revealed what felt natural to her. “It was a bit of an a-ha moment,” she smiles today. “This is the world I want to be in, so I made that in the middle of lockdown, and everything sort of started to make sense.” She moved on from her major label experience, signing to an indie label – a pivotal shift in her development: “Being on an indie was where I was meant to be. I was given the space to explore music, and no one telling me what to do.”
Rose thrives when left to her own devices. Writing five to ten songs weekly, either in sessions or collaborating with peers, her journey to a debut was inevitable. Pleading her case to her label, with her sackful of songs in tow, “I was just like, ‘Guys, I have to put out an album. I’m literally bursting’,” she laughs.
‘Louder, Please’ brims with life. Having collaborated with Justin Tranter (Lady Gaga, Chappell Roan), Sega Bodega, and Zhone (Troye Sivan), it captures a dance-laden weekend with friends getting into mischief and love, emerging from a period of self-discovery. “A lot of people’s first albums are coming-of-age albums,” says Rose. “But this to me – because I have been making music for so long, and it’s taken a while to get my first album out – is the stage after that. Being in my mid-20s, dating, falling in and out of love, and moving houses feels like the stage above the coming-of-age record.” That’s not to say she’s moved past ‘Louder, Please”s chapter. “I’m definitely still in this era of my life,” she laughs. “But I do look back at it and feel a little tingle of nostalgia because it definitely has captured this little snippet of my life.”
The visuals and aesthetics for her debut stem from a trip to Barcelona with her friends. She wanted to inhabit the world of Louder, Please authentically. The album’s artwork shows Rose on the beach, taken by a friend, embodying the all-or-nothing spirit within. “With this, I was like, I just want it to just be real,” she professes. “I actually want us to be on the beach with my mates; let’s have music on. Let’s be drinking!”
While crafting ‘Louder, Please’, Rose immersed herself in research. With friends in the club scene, she’d venture out most weekends to experience clubbing firsthand. Shazaming tracks and witnessing people dance to Charli xcx’s brash pop bolstered her confidence in her own project: “It was really interesting because that album [‘BRAT’] came out, and my album was completely done, and I do see some similarities with pop writing over heavier beats. It was great to see how much people loved that because it made me think, well, they’re gonna love my record then!” She’s continued her clubland ventures since announcing ‘Louder, Please’ and its first singles ‘Free’ and ‘Angel Of Satisfaction’. “I’ve been playing lots of clubs, like a full-time job, actually,” she smiles. “Just once or twice a week, little slots at club nights, nothing huge. Sometimes, I don’t announce them. It’s very rewarding seeing people dance to music, especially stuff that’s not even released yet.”
For Rose, her debut album exceeds her expectations. After everything she’s weathered, this is her moment to savour. “I feel confident in the music and the world I’ve created. I love it,” she gushes. “And I almost feel a bit like whatever happens with it, however it’s reviewed, I know it’s the kind of music that I want to party to, that I want to listen to, that my friends want to listen to.” And that’s what matters. The world’s too dark to overthink everything. So head to the darkened dance floors, where Rose Gray likely lurks either physically or in spirit, having the time of her life – the outside world be damned. “I’m sure it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but they do say whenever you make something you should make sure that you’re in love with it, which I am.”
Taken from the February 2025 issue of Dork. Rose Gray’s debut album ‘Louder, Please’ is out 17th January.
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