Alessi Rose feels everything all the time

To an outsider, the world of Alessi Rose looks pretty-in-pink — there are frills, bows, lace. To Rose, though, there’s an unsettling undercurrent — a dark side to femininity that orbits around the scary, raw parts of growing up. This is the space, she says, where her music exists.

It’s the week of the release of her second EP, for your validation, a six-track collection of songs she wrote between the months of January and June of last year, and the 22-year old artist seems to be vibrating on another level. She began 2025 surprise releasing the track “start all over,” a song on the EP that sees Rose half-heartedly gives into talking to someone new and terrified of the impending doom that comes with falling in love. “Still, I like to think of a lot of things as fresh starts,” she admits. “It feels more hopeful.”

Rose knows that, at 22, she doesn’t have anything figured out at all. Writing songs — specifically storytelling — is what helps her make sense of the craziness that she feels and experiences. “When I was younger and going through therapy, I struggled with things like keeping a diary. They’d tell you to write about your day or your feelings in this very straightforward way, and I hated it. I was like, “No, I don’t want to write about what I think.” But I did write poetry and, of course, songs. The more abstract I could be — less specific to the actual matter itself — the more comfortable I felt.”

Growing up in Derby meant there wasn’t exactly space for her pop dreams to thrive (“People from the town I’m from think if you haven’t been on The X Factor, you're not in the music industry”). Her parents and family, albeit supportive, had no ties to the industry or even played instruments. It meant that Rose had to be persistent — sending demos to producers, uploading her songs to BBC Introducing, and seeing results from being “consistent and pushy.”

When lurking online, the quote “If people don’t want me to write bad songs about them, they shouldn’t do bad things” appears in her bio on Spotify and X/Twitter. It’s become a guiding light for Rose, a quote pulled from a clip Taylor Swift would play before performing “Forever and Always” on her Fearless tour in 2009. Rose, at that time, would’ve been seven — at that point, her dreams of being a pop star weren’t even a thought. “I love Taylor as much as the next girl, and she really knows how to construct a bridge,” she laughs. “Having grown up on artists who love bridges and lengthy, lyrical songs, translating that into my kind of pop has been something I’m very focused on in the studio.”

Her first EP, rumination as ritual, dove into her experience with OCD, covering a more lengthy period of her life. “I really was ruminating,”she reflects. “I’d cycle over things again and again and again. A lot of those songs were about things I clung to and struggled to let go of. I have this tendency to hold onto things, hold grudges, and analyse why someone would do something to me or why I did something embarrassing. Releasing that EP was like saying, “Okay, you can finally let those things go.”

With for your validation, the writing and recording experience was more concentrated — a six-month span of her life, reflecting on multiple situations, good and bad, that either filled her with joy or “messed her up a bit.” It’s also the first time in her career where she’s felt pressure on herself, reckoning with trying to be a good artist, role model, daughter, friend, and beyond. “That period [of writing] was when I was thinking about myself as an artist and not just a guy releasing music. My mental space had changed a bit. I want to be the best role model for all the young people who listen to me and connect with my lyrics. I want to be a good representation for them. I want to make my parents proud, who are living in a town where people are like, “Why is she not on The Voice yet?” I want to make myself proud, the version of me who had dreams of being a pop star but thought, “Yeah, right, go be a lawyer or whatever.”

Rose writes for the self-declared “delulu” girls — the ones Rose says “feel everything all the time.” She released her debut “say ur mine” in 2023 when she was still living at home in Derby, written and self-produced by her, in her bedroom. “During lockdown, I got into producing, and that’s how I started being a bit pushier,” she says. “The fact that it was my first release felt very true to me because it came from such a pure environment — just me in my room. At that point, I hadn’t worked with a producer in a studio. When I produced that song, I knew what I wanted my music to sound like but was limited. ‘say ur mine’ is still very special to me because it feels so authentically me, and that’s helped keep my sound on the right path.”

Her mighty fanbase are passionate, dissecting clues and Easter eggs with fervour in an attempt to guess forthcoming release dates and song titles. At her gigs, she leaves disposable cameras for fans to snap photos of themselves in Alessi Rose-inspired outfits, a way for Rose to both share the fan-made content and connect with them online. Earlier this week, a small group of fans and fan accounts were randomly invited to an EP release party as a thank you for their support. It’s a burgeoning relationship that Rose has tended to since the start thanks to the one-on-one attention she gives to them. It’s akin to when, at the start of her career, she invited her listeners to come to the studio and hear unreleased tracks.

“I think a lot of how my music initially got out there was through word of mouth in a really natural and authentic way,” she says. “The kind of pop I make is about people deeply connecting with the lyrics and the meaning behind the songs. For me, growing up, if I’d had the chance to be in a room with an artist I loved — like, if 14-year-old me could sit with Taylor Swift and ask her about her albums — it would’ve been a dream come true. So coming from a place where I didn’t even know any of this was possible, why wouldn’t I want to meet the people who connect with my lyrics and make all of this real?”

“don’t ask questions” is a standout on for your validation, sitting as a cathartic stream-of-consciousness retelling between the peppier “start all over” and “pretty world,” a song that doubles as a call-to-arms. “My OCD doesn’t work well with spaces of doubt or things that aren’t completely outlined, which is obviously a huge part of casual relationships these days but not for me. It’s the most true-to-life song I’ve ever released, so it feels a little crazy to put out, but it’s also cathartic. If it’s happened to me, it’s going to happen to someone else. As a 22-year-old girl who likes to see the best in situations when they clearly aren’t going to be good, I know there are a million other girls who feel that too. If it helps someone else, then that’s cathartic for all of us.”

After the EP release, Rose will begin preparing for her forthcoming tour — a handful of dates across Europe and the U.K. that sold out in 10 minutes. “That was a mental day,” she smiles. What exactly can fans expect from the for your validation tour? “I love artists who put on a show. That’s always the type of artist I’ve wanted to be. When I was a kid, one of the only things I did was be on stage, dancing, and doing musical theater. So now that I’m in bigger rooms, it’s like, "Okay, how do we channel more of that into a bigger show?" Some of these songs were written in my room, but this is not a bedroom pop show. This is a pop show, and I’m excited for it to be bigger and better.”

It does feel like Rose is on the precipice — teetering on the edge, stepping closer and closer to something heftier with every release. Later this year she’ll perform on the main stage at Reading Leeds Festival. She even had her first industry plant accusation recently, something she admits she knew was coming (“It came like clockwork”). But with the release of for your validation it’s clear a chapter is closing for Rose, which inevitably means something else is coming. What exactly? Rose isn’t so sure, but she knows the work speaks for itself. “This is just a start. There are so many places I could go, so many things that could happen. It also comes from being in a position I never thought I’d be in, so I want to take every opportunity that comes. When you’re in a position that’s un-promised, you just get more hungry. The constant seeking is somewhat exhausting, but also — why not? We’ve just got started. Why wouldn’t I want everything and more?”