Kyle Kellams: A Beautiful Noise follows a musical career that takes place over decades. Singer-songwriter Lily Rose is very much in her first decade of what promises to be a rewarding career.
Her song “Villain” was her first hit — an out-of-the-blue viral sensation in 2020 that changed her career almost literally overnight. Lily Rose will be at Ozark Music Hall in Fayetteville tonight. Critics and fans alike praise her ability to create songs that are instantly relatable. Lily says that comes from writing first for herself.
Rose: Oh yeah. Definitely. It’s a write for me. I think one of the toughest things is making sure you’re not trying to write a hit. I had a song, “Villain,” that did really well, and for a couple of months after it, I just felt like I was trying to write a follow-up hit, and it was the most inauthentic stuff I’ve ever written.
So for me, it’s just making sure that I’m writing the most authentic stuff for myself. And if I’m lucky and, you know, I love the song but it doesn’t feel like me, we can pitch it out to other artists.
Kellams: I like that. One of the songs I love on the new record is “I Know What I Want,” which is a very confident title. And as you listen to the lyrics, it’s someone who is becoming more confident. Do I have that right?
Rose: Yeah, definitely. I think, you know, that song, if you really zoom out, it does appear as a breakup song, but for me it’s just kind of like, I know what I want in life, and I know what I want in work and everything. And that’s why we made it the title track, because you’re right, it does kind of tell a story along the entire song of knowing more and more what you want. And I love — yeah. Confident title. That’s it.
Kellams: And what I also like about that song is it sounds as if you — the narrator, the singer, the songwriter — are coming up with it kind of spontaneously, like as you’re thinking about it, you’re singing it. I wonder if the writing session for that was anything like what I’m interpreting.
Rose: You know, what’s funny is this is one of the most atypical songs that I’ve ever been a part of writing. Most of the time, yeah, we are pulling from past experiences, current experiences — what would the listener connect with — all of this. But this song actually came to fruition at like 1:30 in the morning while we were out on tour with Cole Swindell.
He had some writers out, I had some writers out, and they knocked on the bus door after probably a few too many beers, and we just kind of wrote it. We were like, let’s just write something catchy. And we all just kind of started singing that, and it kind of trickled down. So, you know, I think when we came back soberly to fine-tune and polish it, yeah, there was probably a little bit more of, all right, what’s the story we’re telling here? But that thing came out of Bud Light and Tito’s.
Kellams: You mentioned “Villain,” which was that hit in 2020, which — I don’t know if I would say it catapulted you, but suddenly a lot more people knew you than did before. And I wonder what that was like navigating that then and still navigating that now.
Rose: Yeah. No, catapult’s a great word. I didn’t have — you know, I had maybe $50 to my name, and I was working a bunch of part-time jobs trying to make a presence here on Music Row, but I didn’t really have anybody that knew who I was yet after living here for a few years. So catapult was correct.
But yeah, you know, it’s definitely kind of the anchor point of a before-“Villain” and after-“Villain” of my life. And it’s shown me — back to the song — that a song can change everything in a matter of seconds. So it was just really cool to see the way that that song kind of changed and introduced me to all of Music Row and all of you beautiful people at radio and around the country.
But yeah, “Villain” was just one of the craziest experiences, and it still is. Every time I play a show, they sing a lot of songs loud, but nothing’s as loud as “Villain.”
Kellams: Lily Rose will be at Ozark Music Hall in Fayetteville tonight. We spoke by phone earlier this week.
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