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.”
Clearly, that time in the pop wilderness worked some serious magic: Louder, Please, which will be released on January 17, is about as self-assured as a debut album can get, and is sure to be one of next year’s breakout pop records. There’s the exhilarating lead single “Free,” a sonic blast of briny Balearic air that erupts halfway through into a genuinely anthemic chorus, as Gray belts with abandon: “Cos the good shit in life is always free!” Or the latest single “Switch,” released yesterday, which offers a deliriously raunchy ode to switching up roles in a relationship—or positions in the bedroom—over a swirling cacophony of synths and four-to-the-floor beats.
What lends it some bite, however, is Gray’s self-deprecating humor. (She is a born-and-bred East London girl, after all.) The second single, “Angel of Satisfaction,” is an absurdist pop delight that echoes Lady Gaga at her most free-wheeling, as she sings of an angel visiting her in a dream with a Faustian warning of the true cost of achieving great fame and success—or, as Gray puts it, the risks of “whoring for the glory.” And if you needed further evidence of that sly wit, just look at the album’s title—imploring the DJ to turn up the volume, but with the best possible manners, of course. “I am painfully polite,” Gray says, laughing. “It’s something I’m working on, because I actually don’t want to be polite all the time. And some people don’t deserve my politeness.” That title may also be a protective measure. “I have quite an unhealthy relationship with how loud I listen to music,” she admits. “Maybe it’s time to turn it down a little, to protect my ears.” Sounds sensible.
Yet while Gray today is more about self-preservation than the wild nights of years past, Louder, Please is also, at points, a bracingly candid record, offering a diaristic account of the past few years of her life. “Lots of parties, lots of tears, a bit of heartbreak, a bit of heart-fixing,” she says. “I feel like there’s a few tracks on the record that sound a bit like falling back in love.” (Gray is in a long-term relationship with actor Harris Dickinson, making them something of a British bright-young-thing power couple.) On the standout track “Hackney Wick”—think Burial meets Lily Allen—she offers a blow-by-blow account of a night out in east London through a kind of hushed spoken word. “Breaking into Victoria Park, having a snog under the stars, going to another party where my mate was DJing,” she says. “I can t play that to anyone who knows me because I hate hearing myself speak, though.” Elsewhere, the record is peppered with the sort of snippets and whispers you’d hear in club bathrooms. “I think as a songwriter, I’m a bit of a sponge,” she adds. “Which is quite exhausting, really.”
The moment Gray realized the puzzle pieces of her first album were coming together was when she began working with Justin Tranter, the songwriter behind some of Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber’s biggest hits. After the two jumped on a Zoom in the early months of lockdown and found themselves waxing lyrical about Madonna, Tranter led Gray through something of a masterclass in songwriting, encouraging her to home in on her tangle of ideas and feelings. “I’ve never experienced writing like what I’ve experienced with Justin,” she says. “It’s quite magic.” Elsewhere, her collaborators on the record include the white-hot electronic producer Sega Bodega, electroclash queen Uffie, and house DJ Alex Metric—but even with all these cooks in the kitchen, the outcome feels distinctly Gray. “I feel like I’m pretty headstrong in sessions,” she notes. “I know what I do and don’t like.”
Just as unequivocal is the visual world Gray has constructed around the album: a wonderland of seedy glamour and fun in the sun that harks back to the glory days of ’90s Ibiza, and the work of photographers like Martin Parr and Elaine Constantine, who captured the electric energy of those underground nightlife scenes with striking, saturated color. “When I spoke to the photographer, I wanted it to be like a ’90s Prada campaign, but starring Dido,” Gray says, with a cheeky grin. (She also describes the look as Kylie Minogue’s iconic “Slow” music video mixed with Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast—you can see the vision.) On the album cover, Gray stands on a beach in Barcelona while lovers canoodle in the sand and seagulls squawk above her head; with a Walkman attached to her bikini bottoms and headphones in her ears, she lets out a scream. “It’s a little bit tacky, but also quite glamorous,” Gray adds. “I think British dance music has always had that element, which I love, and now people like Charli XCX and Shygirl are making it cool again.”
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Like Charli and Shygirl (the latter of whom Gray has collaborated with and supported onstage), Gray has also been hitting the club to spread the gospel of her upcoming music. Last month, she kicked off a series of DJ nights titled Gray Selects which she hopes can both invite new listeners into her world and spotlight the work of up-and-coming musicians she admires. “I just want to start getting us all together and playing out each other’s music,” she says. It’s a warm, communal spirit that courses through the record, too, which sounds like the sort of thing you’d listen to on your friend’s portable speaker while getting ready for a night out, sipping a lukewarm vodka Red Bull while the smell of straightener-fried hair and Impulse body spray hangs in the air.
“I hope I’ve made the kind of record that me and my best mates would absolutely play until we’re all sick of it,” she says. “Getting ready, going out, getting dolled up for a festival. But I also hope it’s something that people can listen to when they’re traveling to work. I don’t think it’s just a party or a club record. Everyone I’ve played the record to has a different favorite song, which I think is a good thing.” It’s true: while the album does feel like a statement of intent, it’s in the more ambiguous moments—where the sweary meets the seductive, or where heartbreak meets the euphoric highs of the dancefloor—that Gray truly shines. With Louder, Please, she’s ready for the big leagues.
