In 2012, Vogue magazine named Lucy Rose “one of indie music’s breakout stars.” Since then, Lucy has become one of the most influential and respected UK artists. The indie singer is headlining her own tour throughout March in North America. After spending two months in South America, Lucy began to work on her third studio album, Something’s Changing. The third full-length album was inspired by her South America tour and was released on July 7, 2017.
The South America tour was inherently special because for two months, Rose played free, fan-booked DIY shows, while staying with those fans who hosted her along the way. These gigs were decided entirely by fans who wished for her to play in their town. In her leaving letter, she proclaimed “I need to stop worrying about getting new fans and go visit those who exist now.”
The singer-songwriter stopped by our studio to talk about her experience living with fans, performing solo and most importantly, “Moirai” from her newly released album Something’s Changing.
On unique fan experience: “When I was there [in Latin America and South America] , living with fans and getting to know them and spending three days with each person, I guess enabled me to understand on a deep level why my music had mattered to them, because they could open up to me. That really changed my whole perspective of everything.”
On where that idea came from: "Me and my husband really wanted to go traveling. We hadn’t been on holiday I think for three years since we got married, our honeymoon. So we were kind of thinking that we should go on holiday and do stuff. We both had a fascination with Latin America and South America so we thought we’d go there. I felt a bit guilty that I wasn’t doing any music while I was there ‘cause so many people had asked me to go there over the years. So I just combined the two things."
On playing solo: “I was very aware that I wanted the live songs to be really strong, even when it was just me on my own. That was a really important thing. Financially, it can be quite restricting when you have a band and a lot of your sound comes from the bands sound, because then it just means that it's big parts of the world that you end up not going to. So for me it was important to play as many places in as many countries as possible. Which meant that I really wanted to be able to do a great performance just on my own. Which then I think it kind of raises the bar sometimes of the songwriting than when you’re just with a guitar or piano.”
On Moirai, Goddess of Fate: “I think the song I’m most proud of off the new record is "Moirai," because I think it touches on a subject that I’ve never broached before, never thought about before, which is fate. And Moirai is the great God in charge of everybody’s fates. The more people I met, the more stories I heard from people afterwards at merch telling me about why they connected to a certain song. So many of those stories were really tragic and I guess I just thought about it a lot. I went to bed thinking about all these people's lives and what people had gone through. I was thinking about fate and I wanted to write a song to Moirai just to say - I guess you’ve let people down, in some way.”
Watch our tour update episode with Lucy Rose here.
Lucy Rose is currently touring through the month of March. For more information regarding tickets and tour dates, check out her website.