Label: Polydor
Released: 25th July 2025
Alessi Rose doesn’t so much write songs as detonate little truth bombs in the middle of your emotional landscape. On ‘Voyeur’, her debut EP for Polydor, the 22-year-old Derby native turns every overshare, overthink and oversensitive spiral into slick, smart, sad-girl anthems with bite.
There’s a delicious boldness to the whole thing. It opens with ‘Same Mouth’ – a highlight – which pairs noughties teen movie guitars with lines like “It’s kinda masochistic / I’ll hurt myself so you fix it”. It’s not vulnerability for vulnerability’s sake, but something more assertive: self-destruction on her own terms. “Maybe I’m not the victim, maybe I’m actually in control,” she suggests, casually reframing the chaos with a knowing shrug.
Alessi’s lyrical voice is at once hyper-intimate and cinematic. There’s no holding back. ‘That Could Be Me’ sees her lean into obsession with the kind of hungry detail that’d make Lorde blush: “Rip out my heart / throw it out on the concrete, baby.” It’s big, blown-out alt-pop with jagged guitars, live drums and the sort of hooks you don’t walk away from easily.
‘Dumb Girl’ is equally exposing. Over slow-burning production, she sings: “Your tongue fits in my mouth like it’s by design” – a line so confident, so casually shocking, it deserves to be carved into the canon of great pop confessions. It’s that balance of self-deprecation and swagger, honesty and humour, that makes ‘Voyeur’ so compelling: there’s always a pinch of salt in the sugar.
At its heart, ‘Voyeur’ is a document of a young woman watching herself mess up in real time and making brilliant pop out of the wreckage. Brave, spiky and self-assured, it marks Alessi Rose not just as one to watch, but one who’s already arrived.
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