Singer-songwriter Maggie Rose's new album celebrates her resiliency and creative spirit
"I'm not an overnight sensation after 16 years."
Veteran Nashville artist Maggie Rose is equally frank and funny when discussing her latest album, "No One Gets Out Alive," with The Tennessean at East Nashville's Urban Cowboy Hotel.
Though the album has been completed for nearly a year, she's still surprised at the new home label that's releasing her 12-track collection: Big Loud Records.
Yes, the same label that is home to multibillion-streaming contemporary country singer-songwriters like ERNEST, HARDY and Morgan Wallen is also releasing a collection of piano and guitar-driven pop songs that don't pale in the face of the classic Brill Building to Laurel Canyon-era American songbooks.
Republic Records distributes Big Loud's recordings. This is the same Republic Records that distributes multibillion-dollar revenue generator Taylor Swift, plus pop superstars Ariana Grande, Drake and the Weeknd.
Via Republic's success, Big Loud now has the capital to grow from a solely country and rock-defined imprint to a label capable of releasing singer-songwriters like Charles Wesley Godwin and Stephen Wilson Jr., making what label executive Nate Yetton told Billboard in October is "art that transcends genre and will be playing at dinner parties and on stages across the globe."
Acclaim and an identity crisis
Releasing music strong enough to bear the weight of its artistic bravery and the criticism it receives in equal measure wasn't always so simple for Rose.
She arrived in Nashville as a soul-stirring, East Coast-born, 21-year-old ingenue co-signed by producer James Stroud. Stroud is a pop creator with country success who counts Swift among the artists with whom he has worked.
Notable record executives Tommy Mottola and Narvel Blackstock are included in her journey over the past two decades, which includes releasing a new album, EP or single — independently or via a label — roughly every 18 months.
The gambit's success allowed her to make over 100 Grand Ole Opry appearances and earn enough critical acclaim to maintain a frequent and lucrative touring schedule.
However, COVID-19 proved a near-fatal flaw in her piecemeal strategy for maintaining a thriving career.
"I went from being an artist who stayed out on the road to one whose full run of 60 shows got canceled overnight," Rose says. "The identity crisis that followed forced me to take a lonely journey to write super-personal songs to rediscover how to trust myself and my artistry."
An album as a catharsis
Luckily for Rose, Nashville's past two decades have filtered out a group of creators, singers and songwriters whose renown exists oftentimes within but without the full involvement of the mainstream country system.
Thus, a seeming hodge-podge of Grammy-winning talent was commissioned for this album. This included producer Ben Tanner (Alabama Shakes), country songwriter Natalie Hemby, fellow Grammy winners Chuck Harmony and Claude Kelly (Weirdo Workshop's Louis York), and Pat McLaughlin (John Prine's "I Remember Everything"), plus members of Jason Isbell's 400 Unit (guitarist Sadler Vaden and drummer Chad Gamble) and bassist Zac Cockrell (Alabama Shakes).
The songs that arrived showcase her "cathartic falling in love" with a type of music that "bonds with an audience" but also reflects time battling with what she describes as "getting older, feeling disillusioned with the music industry, the passing away of friends and family and living life with a renewed urgency."
A life where outcomes exist past radio charts and feeling constrained by not meeting the expectations of the mainstream country music industry arrived with intentionally directed song titles like "Dead Weight," "Fake Flowers," "Lonely War" and "Underestimate Me."
About partnering with Harmony and Kelly for "Fake Flowers," Rose notes: "It's liberating to be angry and not have to soften the edges of my feelings for anyone or worry about how it would land. The lyrics have some piss and vinegar that comes from digging in deep and letting it all out."
"On this album, I'm dramatically swinging for the fences because I have nothing left to lose," says Rose.
"Emerging from darkness to celebration required me to quadruple down on my conviction in discovering the confidence that the light at the end of my work's tunnel achieves."
Proudly independent-minded music
Rose's Nashville career has moved between Americana, country, funk, pop, R&B, rock and soul.
In previous eras, that would merely have made her a clear analog to the success of Kelly Clarkson, Sheryl Crow, the Pointer Sisters, Bonnie Raitt and Linda Ronstadt in Music City.
However, in the past two decades, male, alt-rock and hip-hop-aided mainstream country stars have keyed a commercial and cultural boom that has redefined not just country music but Nashville's economic bottom line.
"Fear has led to an underestimating of the country audience's desire to appreciate sounds that are not clearly and concisely marketed to them," says Rose, referring to her own Nashville career compared to critical expectations. "I strongly feel like people desire to be drawn to fearless, dynamic artists whose (metaphorical) train is always moving."
Nashville's train is also moving in a "fearless" and "dynamic" direction as a city. It now welcomes over 100 new residents daily from locales as far-flung as Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City and San Francisco.
For as much as those new residents are moving to Music City for the benefits of two decades of mainstream country's boom, both Big Loud and Rose are cautiously optimistic that Nashville's population growth could spur a moment for the city beyond being a country music hub.
"I clearly revere how much Nashville values an authentically great song, regardless of genre. This album reflects me making curious and self-indulgent music that reflects an independent-minded investment of how proud I am of the creativity in my work," Rose says.
"Nashville has both supported me and broken my heart so many times. Making an album for myself that I hope people enjoy allows me to enjoy being a part of the city's fabric as it grows."
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Nashville's Maggie Rose releases new album 'No One Gets Out Alive'
