ALESSI ROSE

In the organizer's words:

rumination as ritual, the debut EP by Alessi Rose, arrives like a shot of adrenaline straight to pop’s heart. The London-based, East Midlands-born musician makes genre-mash songs that crackle with the torturous thrill of heartbreak, self-discovery and new romance, Alessi’s disparate musical and lyrical ideas fused together by the sheer power of her self-taught songwriting ability. Wise beyond her years but writing with the in-the-moment recklessness of any self-respecting 21-year-old, Alessi is a sly, acerbic new voice in pop, a self-made star with plenty of talent to burn. Born in Derby, East Midlands, Alessi was drawn to the stage from a young age, enrolling in singing lessons as a child and taking an instant shine to musical theatre. Raised by a mum who loved ‘80s new wave and a dad who loved country music – “My dad put me on to Taylor Swift, which is funny,” she quips – she remembers feeling creative from a young age, entering poetry competitions in school and eventually combining her fondness for that form with the skills she was learning in singing and piano lessons. It was a strike of youthful ingenuity that led to her actually sharing her talent with the world: after seeing Gracie Abrams posting 30-second clips of herself performing to camera, and seeing some flicker of resemblance in Gracie’s conversational, casual style, Alessi decided to start posting videos of herself performing in her bedroom, too. Posting performance videos emboldened Alessi to pursue music for real. Towards the end of lockdown, a friend of her parents had found out that she was interested in music, helped her download music production software and gave her a pair of speakers to use as monitors in her makeshift bedroom studio; slowly, she began to self-produce demos and upload them to BBC Introducing. Dean Jackson started playing Alessi’s bedroom productions, which weren’t even mixed or mastered, every Saturday, an early boost that signalled to Alessi that maybe her dreams of stardom weren’t so far-fetched; she ended 2022 being one of their most played artists of the year, without ever officially releasing any songs. Alessi’s hustler instincts kicked in, and she began trawling the credits of her favourite songs on Spotify and cold-emailing producers she particularly liked, sending hundreds of emails asking if anyone wanted to work with her. All the while, she was performing covers on TikTok Live – “TikTok is a strange place” – and found that her generosity on the platform, and willingness to learn the covers that people were requesting, had led to hundreds of viewers tuning into her broadcasts every night. Unlike so many musicians who blow through the pop industry, Alessi grew up with no connections and no family members who even worked in a creative field; her success is testament to the sheer power of drive and determination. She didn’t realise it at the time, but her TikTok Live sessions were building a fanbase that’s still with her to this day — and, most importantly, exposing her to the wider world. One day, after one of her lives, she received an email from a publisher asking for a meeting, and was so shocked that she thought it was a scam. It was two weeks before someone told her that it was a real email, from someone genuinely interested in signing her. “Up until that point, it was more than a hobby because it was genuinely all I cared about, but because of where I was from, I just never thought it was feasible,” she says. “I was ready to go study law, and then it was suddenly like – ‘Oh my god, I actually want to go be a pop star.’” Slowly, Alessi started connecting with producers, honing the music that would eventually become rumination as ritual. The six songs contained in Alessi’s debut EP are funny and painfully honest, anchored by her powerhouse voice and remarkable songwriting ability. Tapping into the sardonic humour of classic ‘90s artists like Liz Phair as well as the sharply-observed detail of Gen Z contemporaries like Olivia Rodrigo and Chappell Roan, rumination as ritual is the work of someone who’s been locked into their craft from the very beginning. At the same time, rumination as ritual serves a higher function for Alessi. When she was 13, she was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), a frequently misunderstood mental health condition that, in her case, manifests in intense rumination on past thoughts and experiences that eventually becomes a harmful cycle of self-flagellation and obsession. Writing the songs on rumination as ritual, for Alessi, feels like a positive, physical way of dealing with her OCD: “The EP release is me letting go of things because I’m actually putting it into a format,” she says. “Before, it was like ‘I like writing songs’, but now sometimes if a thought pops into my head, I physically have to write, otherwise it’s gonna sit in the forefront of my brain and I can’t do anything else to get it out.” The resulting EP turns the messy emotions that Alessi might otherwise fixate on into resplendent, high-shine pop songs, all of which were entirely self-written. Opener “eat me alive” sets the tone: over dazed pop-rock production, Alessi sings about the totalising feeling of unrequited love, fantasising about stalking her crush and destroying his property just to get closer to him. “That’s definitely one of my most intense emotions – crushing on people. That, to me, is the worst and best feeling ever,” she says. This intensity and songwriting prowess endeared Alessi’s music to listeners early on, to the point that her fanbase – self-christened the “delulu girlies” because of the delusion inherent to Alessi’s debut single “say ur mine” – established itself before even her first project was released. Alessi’s debut headline show sold out within hours (which she herself says is the main highlight of her career thusfar) and was packed with fans dressed in the kinds of clothes Alessi wears on Instagram and in videos; a subsequent tour sold out within 30 minutes. There is something inherent about Alessi’s songwriting that fans just connect to; BBC Radio 1’s Mollie King described the delulu girlies as “one of the most dedicated fanbases out there I have ever seen,” and a WhatsApp group for Alessi to send fan updates gained 600 members within hours. You can understand why the fans, as well as outlets like NME and Popjustice, have cottoned on so strongly to Alessi’s style. Songs like “situationship,” are fan-favourite tracks that Alessi initially posted on TikTok and finished at the behest of her superfans; “Lucy” digs into female friendships, and the surreal feeling of hating someone that everyone else likes. “I feel like people don’t want to admit stuff like that,” she says. “break me” captures the messy, youthful thrill of self-sabotage, “and knowing that something’s not going the right way but letting it happen anyway,” she says. These songs capture Alessi Rose as she is right now – messy and flawed, but self-possessed and in-tune with her emotions all the same. rumination as ritual captures her brilliant songwriting ability in its nascent stage, raw and oh-so-real and addictively listenable. As for Alessi, she’s already onto the next thing. “My next body of work, I just want it to be bigger,” she says. “I want to be outrageously myself.” - For Your Validation Tour 2025

Price information:

23,00 € zzgl. Gebühren