ROSIE Releases What Doesn’t Serve Her and Relearns Self-Love in “Startover”
Growing up, singer and songwriter ROSIE was told if you love something or someone, let it go because it will come back to you. Throughout her healing journey, she fell more in love with the concept and the lesson resonated with letting certain parts of herself go in order to unlock a new healed era for her – both artistically and emotionally. ROSIE channels her healing journey and the lessons she learned while exploring her relationship with herself and her mental health in her newest single “Startover.”
Veering away from the more melancholic themes and sounds of her first EP, 20mg of Happiness, “Startover” sees ROSIE heading in a more uptempo, uplifting direction – both sonically and lyrically. The song builds with a delicate piano melody and ROSIE’s delicate vocals before exploding into an irresistibly catchy yet heartfelt chorus: “So can we start over / Maybe letting go is how we get closer / And if ending us is how we get closure / Let’s say goodbye and then we’ll start over / Can we start over.”
“I had to relearn how to love myself and love music and love everything in my life, in order to do that, I had to let certain parts of me go that no longer serve me,” ROSIE says. “On the surface it may seem like a breakup song, but below that it's about mental health and healing.”
During ROSIE’s debut EP release, she felt like she was in a constant fight with herself. “Startover” is the songstress realizing she needed to release certain parts of herself in order to rebuild her foundation and self-love moving forward.
“Startover” is accompanied by a music video that feels as raw and unfiltered as the song. Directed by Neta Ben Ezra, the video follows ROSIE in a vulnerable state. What you see is what you get with ROSIE, no filters, no Facetune, no makeup, no bullshit. The introspective video shows ROSIE with delicate linework tattoos adorning her body. Throughout the video, the tattoos disappear. The tattoos act as a metaphor for healing and visualizing scars, as ROSIE explores how to physically show someone’s healing journey throughout the artwork on her body. By embracing both the beauty and the pain, the dark and the light, the tattoos slowly fade off ROSIE’s body as her healing journey comes to a close.
“I feel like my relationship with tattoos is that for each tattoo I get, it symbolizes a goal that I've reached, either in my personal life or my professional life. I've always had a positive relationship with tattoos, and so I thought about how to incorporate them in a way where you see scars as beautiful or you see scars as art,” ROSIE says. “You see that you're turning them into something beautiful until you no longer need them anymore … I am embracing my pain and embracing my scars and so on.”
[UNPUBLISHED]: Welcome back and thank you for talking to Unpublished Magazine again. Last time we talked about your single “Good For Me” and we talked about heartbreak and personal reflections. Your latest release “Startover” goes in a very uplifting direction. What was the inspiration behind the single?
[ROSIE]: So when I wrote “Startover,” on the surface, it was about letting someone go and it sounds a little bit like a breakup, but what means so much to me about this song is that underneath it was actually about my relationship with my mental health and my work and my music and I was feeling really burnt out and I was feeling exhausted. That's how the whole concept of “Startover” came into mind. I had to relearn how to love myself and love music and love everything in my life, in order to do that, I had to let certain parts of me go that no longer serve me. That's how I got into the concept of ‘Can we start over, maybe letting go is how we get closer.’ On the surface it may seem like a breakup song, but below that it's about mental health and healing.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Did you take any risks creating this song, whether it's creatively or emotionally?
[ROSIE]: Sonically, I definitely took some risks. It's a lot more upbeat, and that is also thanks to Johnny Simpson and STOLAR who created this record with me, and when I went into the session, my team could tell that I was a little bit down, a little bit off, they're like, ‘let's talk about it and let's dig into what's going on.’ I knew from the beginning of the session that what I was gonna write was gonna be pretty raw that day, and like most of what I write is raw, but the difference is, instead of talking about a relationship, I was talking about my health and my career and it was a whole other story I had unlocked. Usually I write about those things by myself and on my own, so I wrote those with two really amazing people. I think that was why it felt like a risk for me, but worth taking.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What is your favorite lyric that stands out to you the most? Is there a specific message or part of the song that draws you in the most?
[ROSIE]: I really feel like ‘Can we start over, maybe letting go is how we get closer,’ resonates with me to this day because growing up, I was told if you love something or you love someone, let it go. It'll come back to you. I think it's just another way of saying that which is like, if we let go – whether it's a person or part of yourself – maybe that's actually what's going to bring us back together. I like that concept.
[UNPUBLISHED]: “Startover” is also accompanied by a music video and the energy from it feels really raw and unfiltered. I love the disappearing tattoo idea. I just thought it brought a lot of life into not only the video, but the song itself. What was the inspiration behind the video and how your experience was filming?
[ROSIE]: I had an absolutely wonderful experience shooting it. It was directed by Neta Ben Ezra and we shot in one day in LA and I came up with a concept because I was trying to figure out a way to visualize scars. I was trying to figure out a way how you show someone healing and I was thinking about the idea of like, okay, you have scars and slowly the scars go away or you have cuts and then they turn into scars and then over time they go away. I was trying to find a metaphor. I feel like my relationship with tattoos is that for each tattoo I get, it symbolizes a goal that I've reached, either in my personal life or my professional life. I've always had a positive relationship with tattoos, and so I thought about how to incorporate them in a way where you see scars as beautiful or you see scars as art right? You see that you're turning them into something beautiful until you no longer need them anymore. The concept where the video starts, and I have a bunch of tattoos and through that, I am embracing my pain and embracing my scars and so on. In the video, they go away as my trauma heals and my pain. By the end, I’m clear.
[UNPUBLISHED]: I love hearing tattoo stories. Which one is your favorite and why?
[ROSIE]: That's a tough question. On my right shoulder, I have the Wonder Woman logo, and you'll see that in the music video that the real tattoos all made it in. But a lot of my tattoos are associated with professional goals that I've reached, but this one is more a personal goal and it is a family goal. It was when my mom beat cancer for the first time, we agreed that we would get a tattoo together. That was just a huge goal for our whole family and anyone who knows and loves her and so that one's definitely probably the most most special. I have a bunch of special ones I have with my best friend as well.
[UNPUBLISHED]: “Startover” is the first song off your upcoming second EP that's about to be released. What can listeners expect from you in this new era of yours?
[ROSIE]: If you're a listener of 20mg of Happiness, it talks about heartbreak and it's about going through the five stages of grief. In my opinion, once you reach that acceptance right at the end is really when the deep healing begins. Going off of that, this next project is about looking inward and it's about healing and it's about finding myself. Much of the 20mg of Happiness was you-oriented. You ruined all my favorite songs. I’m screaming underwater without you. Now, we go into more of a me-oriented era. There’s more confidence, and you’re going to hear that sonically. Things are looking up a little bit, and even though it’s still raw, it’s still honest. It’s all about mental health and love. I’m trying to come from a new perspective about growing and healing and I was really living in my pain in the last project. Now, we’re working through the pain.
[UNPUBLISHED]: You inspire many people not only with your passion for your work, but also with your raw lyricism, messages of empowerment and healing. What is something you hope to bring to the listener's lives?
[ROSIE]: I really hope that I can bring a sense of understanding to anyone who listens to my music. I want anyone who hears my music to think ‘I'm not the only one experiencing that,’ or ‘I'm not the only one going through it.’ I think that so much suffering is suffering in silence. Such a scary part of suffering is when you suffer in silence and I want my music to really speak to people and be loud in that way, so if they hear it, they go, ‘oh, not just me.’ It's the feeling of never being alone. That's what I hope to provide.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What do you need in your space when you're feeling a creative spark hitting you and you need to write?
[ROSIE]: This is something I've been navigating recently because aside from an instrument, like a guitar or a piano, like I always need that. Lately, I've had to have my journal near me because I'm into journaling a lot more and I find that writing it down by hand, not necessarily all the songs, but just parts of it, it acts as access to a different part of my brain. I'm sure there's some neurological explanation, but lately when I'm writing, and I go to sit down, I have to have my journal. I have to have a beverage everywhere I go.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How are you feeling in this current era of your career? What does the rest of the year look like for you that you'd like to share with Unpublished?
[ROSIE]: I'm feeling really excited about this next era, because I feel like I finally found myself sonically and that's not to say that I didn't love who I was during previous eras and what I sounded like in previous eras, but it was such a growing time and now I feel like the growth is paying off. When you hear this next project, whether it's “Startover” or the following releases, I think listeners are going to really hear the competence in my sound, the competence in my lyrics. So I would say in one word, I'm feeling excited. Very, very excited.
