Rose Gray has always had a big voice. “I couldn’t control it when I was younger. I didn’t know what to do with it or where to put it,” she says over Zoom from her home in Walthamstow, London. She tried to find an outlet for it in school choirs, then through classical vocal training at a performing arts high school. She thought she’d finally figured it out when, as a teenager, she signed a record deal—but it was only her first taste of the music industry’s poisoned chalice, after she left the deal and then was unable to take any of the 100 or so songs she’d written with her. Following a period of losing herself in the hedonism of London nightlife—including a stint working the door at the legendary nightclub Fabric—she began quietly venturing back into music over the past few years, drip-releasing the odd single and writing for other artists.
Today, she’s finally announced her debut album, Louder, Please. It’s been a long time coming. “It feels really good,” she says, tugging at the sleeves of her Heaven by Marc Jacobs hoodie and smiling. By Gray’s count, the album took two years of writing, followed by six months of mixing, mastering, and figuring out the creative direction. “I’ve been making so much music that I am almost, like, exploding,” she says. “So, to put out an album is going to be…” she trails off. “It’s just nice not to be writing music every day without knowing what’s going to happen with it, or where it’s going to go.”