Alessi Rose is crafting pop anthems that don’t hold back

On a hazy Saturday evening in late June, as a heatwave descends on London, a burgeoning pop star is tiptoeing across a particularly important stage and delivering an introduction most will only ever rehearse into their hairbrush: “Hey Wembley, it’s Alessi Rose.” The weight of the sentiment, at first uttered so casually, seems to catch her off guard, because she immediately laughs and follows it up with: “That’s a crazy sentence.”

To perform at one of the country’s most iconic venues would be an impressive feat for any 22-year-old. But it is especially unbelievable knowing that, just over a year ago, Alessi Rose had yet to even release her debut EP. At the time, she’d just received the news that she had sold out her first headline show and, rather than immediately celebrating, headed to an English literature lecture.

To call the year since a whirlwind is perhaps an understatement. She’s released two EPs – the spiky, indie-rock inspired ‘Rumination As Ritual’ and this year’s sad girl pop-infused ‘For Your Validation’ – and supported Noah Kahan and Dua Lipa on tour, the latter slot being the one that gave her two consecutive performances at Wembley Stadium. In the meantime, her own headline European and UK tour sold out in 10 minutes, and this year she performed on Glastonbury’s Other Stage, a moment she says she “didn’t want to end”. As for the degree, it’s been deferred – “for now”, Rose grins, sipping a Diet Coke in a North London pub post-NME Cover shoot.

Rose’s meteoric rise thus far is a testament to her deeply confessional brand of songwriting – one that’s allowed her to build a deep connection to her fanbase, who’ve dubbed themselves the “delulu girls”. Her appeal lies in a fortuitous combination of skills: Rose is both a storyteller letting you in on her most intimate thoughts (and occasionally most humiliating experiences) and an architect of endlessly catchy pop hooks – the kind you find yourself humming on your commute after hearing once on the radio. Alongside that, she has the stage presence of a born pop star, unfazed by intimidating, iconic stages.

Since NME last met Rose, she has also begun carving out a distinct aesthetic identity around her music. At Glastonbury, a thread of golden rosary beads dangled from her neck as she twirled around a stage with a backdrop image of an altar complete with flickering candles, as if newly lit in prayer.

“Art gave me the capacity to romanticise my life”

Referencing Roman Catholic iconography is, in part, an homage to Rose’s experiences as a teenager when Saturday nights were spent singing in a church choir. It’s also a visual representation of her struggles with obsessive-compulsive disorder – a topic she has addressed in her music, on the aforementioned ‘Rumination as Ritual’ EP, and is keen to write more about. “Confession is this key part of catholicism, but it’s also a part of OCD when you’re trying to get rid of these weighty thoughts,” she explains.

Mostly, though, it’s an homage to the theme of romantic devotion that serves as her most consistent muse. “I have always been inspired by the relationship between worship and unrequited love,” she explains, tapping into the hivemind of a generation afraid to commit: a 2024 poll from YouGov found that 50 per cent of 18-to-30-year-olds had been in a situationship, a statistic often attributed to their coming of age in a turbulent political period and unstable economic climate.

This penchant for grasping for shreds of attention from situationships feels akin to seeking cosmic signs from a divine force, Rose thinks. “When you are so devoted to a god, you’re giving so much energy, and maybe sometimes you’re not getting the energy back. When I am going through the process of crushing on someone, there is so much energy invested into this thing, and who knows if it even exists.”

Perhaps it’s why Rose is blunt when addressing sex in her music, presenting a stark contrast to the way pop has traditionally skirted around the topic through irony and innuendo. Though infinitely more poetic, the tone of Rose’s lyrics often resembles a particularly candid voice note to a best friend, brimming with horniness, desperation and regret. On ‘Everything Anything’, from her upcoming EP ‘Voyeur’, she’s left confused over someone she “used to have sex” with who now won’t pick up the phone, while on ‘Oh My’, she laments a love interest who “gives me head while I’ve been losin’ mine.”

“It just feels nice to be completely honest,” she says. “I love metaphorical lyrics. I love cheeky, sexy pop songs, but for me, I like to revel in the discomfort and the provocative side of it.”

In some ways, her desire to be upfront comes from a sense of responsibility to her predominantly female and queer fanbase, whom she’s keen to demystify and destigmatise sex for. “I didn’t really get much of a sex education in my school. I knew nothing, and that was quite scary,” she says. “We should talk about sex more. I mean, there’s nothing unnatural about it.”

Inevitably, having a young following introduces pressure to become a role model – something Rose has been grappling with recently. Now, she says she’s keen to take on the title, but as a big sister, hoping you’ll learn from her own excruciating mistakes, rather than a saintlike figure who won’t make any at all. “I don’t think any 16-year-old wants to be spoken to like a 16-year-old, anyway,” she affirms. “When I was a teenager, I would look to movies and books and art when I wanted to feel older and more mature.”

For Alessi, these glimpses at adulthood came from Madonna (her “favourite artist ever”), Miley Cyrus’s ‘Bangerz’ era (“Everyone was like, ‘Oh my God, she’s gone off the rails’, and I remember thinking it was so cool”) and Thirteen, the Catherine Hardwicke-directed drama allowed her to dream of a world more interesting than Derby, where she grew up. “I was in a small town in England, in the Midlands, which is probably the least sexy place that you can think of, but art like that gave me the capacity to romanticise my life,” she says. “That’s the really beautiful thing about art. You’re able to romanticise everything if you live in your head enough.”

“Fans want people who are fresh and truthful, when everything around us is so falsified with AI, TikTok and influencers”

Despite said “unsexy” origins, far from the spotlight of the music industry, Rose’s drastic rise has beckoned accusations of being an “industry plant”. The term has almost become a twisted rite-of-passage for female artists who, as Rose puts it, are often derided for their success and told they’re “undeserving, not talented, trying to be someone else, or there’s someone behind them pulling the strings”. She rolls her eyes. “It can never just be that there is someone talented and working hard. I would love for that to change at some point, but I think it’s just something that I am learning to be OK with running its course.”

And, as she points out, young pop fans seem able to sniff out inauthenticity, anyway – meaning she likely wouldn’t have gotten this far if there actually was some Wizard of Oz-esque figure orchestrating her career in the background. “[The fans] want people who are fresh and truthful, when everything around us is so falsified with AI, TikTok and influencers,” she theorises. “We’re served so many things that aren’t real, so people are craving a sense of realness.”

Rose, then, delivers said realness via a collection of deeply introspective anthems, where clean, spiky alt-rock riffs meet euphoric pop melodies. Songs like ‘Same Mouth’, all pensive acoustic guitar and unapologetically catchy choruses, seem lifted from noughties teen movie montages – the ones where the protagonist turns her life around post-heartbreak. Elsewhere, the ballad ‘Stella’ unpacks the thorny subject of jealousy and friendship breakups, while the pulsating ‘That Could Be Me’ is a ‘Teenage Dirtbag’ for the Gen-Z girls.

In all, Rose’s music soundtracks those first real steps into adulthood, how the allure of newfound independence meets the dread of being wholly responsible for your own life and mistakes. Yet, in dealing with these everyday traumas head-on, there’s an undeniable sense of catharsis. Rose’s often severe honesty transforms bruises into badges of honour that simply prove you’re a person existing in a world that is equally broken and brilliant.

When Rose finished ‘Voyeur’, which is out this Friday (July 25), she went for a run over the Williamsburg Bridge in New York City (despite being “scared of heights, scared of bridges”). High over the freezing waves of the East River, she pressed play on a project that arrives at a period of upheaval in her life and career. Listening to her most concise and impressive work yet, worlds away from the Derby bedroom where she first began songwriting, she couldn’t help but be emotional. “I felt so deeply empowered, even by the sad songs,” she recalls.

“I just feel like I’m finally comfortable with my position as an artist now, and I’m no longer just seeing myself as a girl who writes songs or a girl who sings or a girl who performs on stage. I am an artist, and this is an artist’s project,” she smiles.

At this moment, it seems that Rose is on the cusp of pop stardom – the ripples of attention from her Glastonbury set and support slots building into bigger waves. Her dedicated fandom has enlisted new members, growing from the handful of “delulu girls” she once invited to intimate listening parties to a fully fledged global community.

While supporting Lipa, Rose set up events for fans in the cities she was visiting – playing acoustic versions of tracks from ‘Voyeur’ and taking selfies with hundreds of teen girls wearing copycat versions of her outfits. In Dublin, the crowd was so big that the police shut it down. “They were like, ‘If you get out of the car, we will arrest you’,” she recalls now. “I was like, ‘You can’t arrest me. I’m performing with Dua Lipa later’,” she laughs. “But I did say to my manager, ‘A mug shot would go off’.”

Alessi Rose’s ‘Voyeur’ EP is released on July 25 via Capitol Records.

Listen to Alessi Rose’s exclusive playlist to accompany The Cover below on Spotify or on Apple Music here.

Words: Laura Molloy
Photography: Bella Howard
Hair: Chrissy Hutton
Makeup: Callie Foulsham
Label: Capitol Records

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