SLOW BURN

MUSIC

Apr 13

DIGITAL COVER SEVEN
FEAT. ROSE GRAY

Never ask a woman her age, a man his salary, or a notorious party girl to jump on a 9am Zoom call. Luckily for me, Rose Gray obliges. The 28-year-old musician comes into focus coddled in a hoodie. Her siren-red hair is tucked to one side and a set of turquoise talons rest at her chin. In her sweet, tinkling voice she politely shares that for her, this is quite early.

Gray’s career trajectory has hit the beats of a familiar modern fairytale. One in which the club kid transforms into a glittering pop diva or a DJ could still save your life. She signed with a record label as a teenager, but soon after left that deal. Then came her wilderness years, a stretch defined by pleasure-seeking until finally, after a long gestation and a quiet return to music, Gray’s debut album Louder, Please entered the world on January 17. It took nearly two-and-a-half years to make. The 12-track release delivered a surge of serotonin in what would have otherwise been a bleak winter month. And it might just be the big breakthrough that Gray, who has wanted to be a pop star since she was 12, desires. Louder, Please has thrust her among the ranks of Charli XCX, Shygirl, and FKA Twigs. “I feel like the UK, maybe I'm biased, has always done dance music very well,” she says of the uptick in British club pop.

On the big day, Gray tells me she woke up at 6am—“which you know, I’m not a morning person so it’s very odd”—and went downstairs as if it were Christmas. “I don’t know what I was expecting to see,” she says. “I felt so emotional. I think I’ve just waited so long to put out a record.”

With the help of collaborators like Justin Tranter, Sega Bodega and Uffie, Gray moulded her debut to follow the narrative arc of a night out as a homage to the albums she grew up listening to with her friends. For getting dressed and pre-drinks, only the riotous and bratty Damn will do. Tectonic comes later as the energy crests and the high kicks in, queued for the emotional main character moment when you're wedged between your friends at the rave. Save your depleted phone battery for Everything Changes (But I Won’t) during the inevitable comedown in the taxi home. By this logic, the final title track serves as a sonic second wind, with its endearing sample of Gray’s single-digit cousin and “mini me” politely ordering the listener to turn it the hell up. But Louder, Please is equally delicious devoured as a bag of pick and mix candy. Take what you need. Your only obligation? Risk tinnitus and blast it.

The artist self-deprecatingly refers to herself as a studio rat. Gray spent a lot of time in the studio for this album—even when her team insisted it wasn’t necessary. What can she say? Gray just loves it. “I think I’m just my happiest when I’m there.” While the artist admits that she can’t listen to music while she writes (“it’s just a bit of sensory overload”) she was energised by long stints in New York and Paris, clubbing and meeting new people. A chunk of material for the album came out of a hedonistic two-year period living on Victoria Park. These uninhibited nights are memorialised in the album’s highlight Hackney Wick, where Gray recounts a summer evening in trembling spoken word. It reminds me a little of Caroline Polachek’s deadpan Brat remix of Everything is romantic. When I mention this to the Walthamstow-raised musician she insists that if given the choice, “that would’ve been my collaboration because I’m actually an East London girl”.

A large pleasure on Louder, Please is pinpointing each reference. Angel of Satisfaction? Gaga. Free? Robyn. And yes, the refrain of Just Two is an ecstatic homage to Eiffel 65. These Easter eggs are all the work of someone who is firm in what they like—and don’t. You can’t hone your taste without experience and Gray cut her teeth at every club kids’ training ground. After college, she had a brief stint manning the cloakroom at London’s hallowed Fabric night club. Her brother-in-law at the time managed the venue, so she occasionally covered for staff who called in sick. On a good night, Gray got to oversee the guestlist. She’d arrive for her shift dressed entirely in leather, ready to field punters vying for her attention. “People want to be your friend because you’re controlling their night. It’s a lot of power,” she adds through a grin.

Now Gray is signed with Belgian indie label PIAS Recordings, and so Louder, Please was made on a shoestring budget compared to her contemporaries. But this is all part and parcel of being a young artist, and she recognises that it’s made her more resourceful. Touring, in the past, has meant catching 10 trains in the pouring rain to play a record store with only a handful of people in attendance, she says. And all while wearing an outlandish outfit and stage makeup she’s scrambled together herself. During one of these logistic rigmaroles, Gray recalls her fiancé asking innocently if she ever sees herself getting a driver. Perhaps with Louder, Please she finally can.

Her fiancé is something of a Bright Young Thing in Hollywood. Look him up. By some miracle, both of their stars have soared at the same time, though they’re protective of their relationship and prefer to keep things low key. The pair met in high school and have been going steady ever since. It was around this time, when Gray was 17, that she signed her first yet ill-fated record deal (which ended in her having to abandon the 100 or so songs she’d written). Sure, it’s taken nearly a decade for the artist, who is a songwriter before all else, to launch her debut. But Gray has drip fed her audience singles since 2019, as well as the 2021 mixtape Dancing, Drinking, Talking, Thinking. Her tenacity is impressive.

Gray reckons it has “something to do with being a Capricorn”. “Very loyal, determined…like a goat”, she quips. She even has a goat tattoo—so you know the metaphor is more than just skin-deep. “I have felt for a very long time that I’m just climbing up a mountain and I fall all the time but I get back up,” she shares, a little serious now. “I’ve been very lucky to find my person and best friend really young. I’ve got my eyes on the prize.” Perhaps it’s no surprise then that Gray used to be a long-distance runner. “You know at school when you choose a celebrity to talk about or someone that you love? I chose Paula Radcliffe.” While an ankle injury has dashed any hidden ambitions to become a high-performance athlete, rest assured Gray has kept her stamina and drive and is pouring it into her music.

Instead of finding herself overwhelmed with the pressure to deliver a fully formed statement of intent with Louder, Please, Gray feels at peace. “As much as it hurts me to say, I don’t think I was ready two-three years ago.” When compared with her old singles, it’s evident Gray’s sound has undergone not so much an identity crisis, but rather, a coming of age. “I needed to do the rounds, do lots of collaborations, play lots of shows. Even to work out visually how I wanted things to look.”

The result is a knowing tug-of-war between glamour and gauche. Greased-up Martin Parr meets Kylie Minogue’s Slow. And like the latter, the visuals for Louder, Please were shot in Barcelona, opting instead for the beach over the sweeping vistas at Piscina Municipal de Montjuïc. Gray has always had a soft spot for the Princess of Pop. Her mother loves her too, and she remembers reading Kylie’s biography really young, “definitely too young”.

“The thing about Kylie is a lot of her stuff is actually house music but she has a really sweet, beautiful voice,” Gray notes. Impossible Princess is her favourite album and fans of Fever will enjoy Gray’s salute to it in the sexxed-up music video for Switch.

“I’ve said this a few times now,” Gray begins, “one thing I really like about Kylie is that I get the vibe that she is down to earth. I enjoy watching her and knowing that.” To stress the point, when Madonna came to London for her Celebration tour, Gray crossed paths with her at the party held afterwards. “She was amazing, everything I could imagine,” Gray recalls with reverence. “But I was petrified,” she continues. “I literally felt like I couldn’t speak. Her energy was mad.” Whereas with Kylie, “I would love to have a cup of tea with her. I just want to meet her and talk to her.”

Like Kylie, Gray too gives off the impression of being capable of entertaining a sweaty crowd but also sitting in the garden nursing a Yorkshire Gold. It’s this dialled down version I meet during our interview. She was born on the final day of the year, so the artist has even greater cause for celebration. It also seems like a neat way to compartmentalise each age. Does a New Year’s Eve baby portend the arrival of a dyed-in-the-wool party girl? With Donna Summer and Hunter Schafer as company, it’s certainly a possibility. But rather than raging against the dying of the light, each birthday Gray makes a point of removing herself from the noise in order to venture inward. “I find that a little easier.” She always jots down New Year’s resolutions—and tries her very best to keep them. Gray also journals like mad. This year was the first in five that she’s stayed rooted in London. “It was hard to get my manifestations happening because I was incredibly hungover.” Launching Louder, Please was one of them. Glastonbury might be another. As for the rest? Gray plays coy. With summer on the horizon and Louder, Please primed to erupt, rest assured this is only the beginning.