Singer/songwriter Rosie uses her music to help others
NEW YORK -- The singer/songwriter known as Rosie is the pride of Nyack, New York, where she grew up and the toast of Manhattan where she recently ended her first headlining tour at The Bowery Ballroom.
Her EP "5 Songs for Healing" has just been released, but she already has a wide following on social media.
Her hit song "Never the 1" has been viewed more than 18 million times on TikTok. Her songs have been streamed more than 80 million times on Spotify alone.
She is just 23 years old but has already co-written a song for Celine Dion to be used in a new movie. In fact, "Love Again" was so compelling, the title of the movie was changed to match the song.
Rosie has found success on her own terms without compromising her core beliefs: beliefs so strong they may as well be made of titanium. But, what makes her so interesting are the mental struggles she endured before finding success: insomnia, self-doubt, loss, and trauma.
Her songs are born of pain that began when she was just 12 years old.
"That's when I started struggling with anxiety and depression, and that's when I started writing songs," she said at Bunker Studios in Williamsburg.
One of her new songs is called "Potential," which is fitting because Rosie's prospects have never seemed brighter than right now.
"I feel like I'm creating a sense of community, and I'm getting all this feedback that, 'wow, you said exactly what I was thinking, wow, you put into words what I had no idea how to say,'" she said.
Rosie believes, "the only way out is through," and music provided a relief for her as an adolescent.
"When I wrote music, everything in my life became clear, and I could unpack everything I was feeling," she said.
Since then, she has written more than 300 songs, and what began as self-help is now about helping others.
"If I do it right, I'm bringing together a community of people who feel alone in their suffering, and in my experience the worst part of suffering is the feeling you're suffering alone," Rosie said.
Thanks to this star-in-the-making, her fans know they they are not alone.
"Two really huge parts of who I am is being authentic about mental health and being authentic about physically how I look," she said.
She has defied the advice she was given to change her appearance and become a social media sensation on her own terms...which is to say unfiltered. ROSIE wears no make-up and refuses to use apps like Facetune to try and improve her look online.
"If someone were to see me in real life, I want them to think 'wow that's exactly how they appear and seem to be online,'" she said.
What you see is what you get and what you hear is what she really sounds like. It's really no surprise, then, fame hasn't changed her, and she remains close to her family. In fact, her brother Matteo is her manager and plays keyboards behind her.
Rosie credits her mother and father with encouraging her to pursue songwriting when she faced crippling self-doubt as a teenager.
A member of my extended family urged me to listen to ROSIE, and I bless him for doing that. I hope you'll take my advice and check her her out yourself.
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