Q&A: ROREY Turns Vulnerable Thoughts into Empowering Tracks with “Standby”
ROREY SAYS WHAT EVERYONE IS THINKING — because someone has to, right? The NYC–based indie artist just released her latest single, “Standby,” from her upcoming EP, DYSPHORIA. The track whisks you away into a dream state, but with biting lyricism it doesn’t call for a peaceful night’s rest. ROREY creates music that is a literal extension of herself, based on introspective and collective experiences. She’s either texting her friends lines of poetry that they beg her to turn into songs or quickly putting words to everything going on in her head.
DYSPHORIA’s tracks were written out of need rather than a planned-out project. Instead of creating a concept for a new EP, ROREY found herself bearing it all, penning 21 songs over the span of a manic six months. Instead of locking up the tracks and throwing away the key, she immediately got in touch with her producer, Scott, and decided to parse it down to a six-track EP.
“Standby” is an incredible example of the beauty that comes out of our darker periods. Rather than standing by, ROREY was inspired to take her feelings into her own hands and ask for help to get her life back on track
Her writing is vulnerable and relatable all at once — even though she felt entirely alone while writing, the songs resonate with listeners who have experienced those same emotions.
Like many of ROREY’s tracks, “Standby” features pointed and elegant lyrics that float sweetly over the top of a wispy, dreamy track. Layered vocal stacks and synth pads envelop listeners and create that euphoric feeling of truly being the main character of your own story. This pairs perfectly with the music video for the track that features ROREY standing alone among the never-ending crowd of strangers in Grand Central Station.
Luna got a chance to chat with ROREY about all things creating, working, and living bi-coastal, as well as how to be the person to get up and say what everyone else is too scared to say out loud. Read the interview below.
LUNA: Your new single, “Standby,” has such a lovely, dreamy quality to it — is this the type of sound we can expect from your upcoming EP, DYSPHORIA?
ROREY: Yes, this whole EP is like a blend of vocals and mellow tracks that you can passively listen to. I mixed it intentionally for headphones, so there's a lot of panning going around. There's a lot of intentional little sounds. I would say this project is intrinsically me … All of myself is in it, mostly because of when I wrote it and why I wrote it. It's my story.
LUNA: The story behind “Standby” is so empowering — can you speak a bit more on that?
ROREY: I was living in LA at the time on my own, and my family lives in New York. Whenever I was having a rough time, I would get on a redeye. Impulsively so — it was very manic. I was constantly physically removing myself from my environment, but all of my issues came with me. There’s a song on the EP, which I wrote directly after “Standby,” called “Not The Way It Works” where I acknowledge you cannot run away from yourself. Anyways, I'm digressing. But “standby” has two very different definitions, like watching something bad happen and taking no action, or [stopping] it and [being] ready and able to assist. So there were two paths I could take. And I think that song was the wakeup call for me where it was like, get help, receive it, or just lament. I think what's so funny — and I talk about this all the time — is sometimes you are just kind of in this liminal state where you're somewhere between reality and the ether. And I think cognitively I was aware that “standby” was the perfect word because of its dual definition. [During the session] we were writing a different song, me and [my producer] Scott, and I wasn't feeling it. I went to the bathroom in the middle of writing and came back into the room and I was like, “Everybody's living life. And I'm just on standby.” He asked, “What are you singing?” and I was like, “I don't know, bro. Like, everybody's living life, and I'm going nowhere.” And the song kind of unraveled itself.
LUNA: You’ve noted that you grew up bi-coastal. Is there anything about the two locations that sticks out to you? It seems like inspiration can really strike and differ depending on the places you spend time.
ROREY: I think I was actually telling someone this the other day, that LA is so chill. In NYC, you walk outside of the door, and there's this frenetic energy that isn't coming from you. The songs I wrote in LA are more introspective, because the stimulation and inspiration that I got while living there very much came from what I was thinking and feeling and not about what was happening to me or with the world around me. I think in New York, I started to talk about the impact relationships and life situations had on me. [My last record] was … punchy. And also it was so cool tracking live instruments. [Recording in New York], we literally didn't use any plugins. New York is very raw, as were my vocals on APT 7D. Like I said LA is super chill so my vocals on Dysphoria are softer and more ethereal.
LUNA: You started writing your upcoming EP in 2021. What was the process like to put this project together over the past three years? Was there overlap between this and the last project you put out in 2023?
ROREY: These songs mean so much to me because they came from this urgency to express. There was no intention behind these songs being a project. They were literally to keep me alive. I would text Scott, my producer and one of my closest friends, at 4 o'clock in the morning being like, “I have a song idea, can I come in?” I couldn't sleep; I didn't know what to do with myself. The only thing that gives me meaning is creating. [these songs] sat as demos for three years. I just made the decision [that] if the songs don't come out, I will never forgive myself. And I texted Scott … “Can I come to LA and make this a project with you?” And we sifted through 21 songs I had written in the span of six months because I was manic, and picked our favorite eight. Two of them were written after my recovery. So they touch on those feelings in a more retrospective way, and that perspective was so healing for me.
LUNA: You have a headlining show coming up in New York pretty soon. Do you enjoy performing your tracks live?
ROREY: This project has a lot of synthy tracks, so reworking them with my band for lives is going to be really fun. My headline at the knitting factory will be my sixth show, so I'm very new to performing. This last show I played at Heaven Can Wait, there were like 100 people there, which for me is kind of a big deal. I got off the stage and wanted to cry. It just hit me — I can't always be perfect. When you're in the studio you can do another take and intentionally manipulate your voice to give an emotion or sometimes it just happens. But when you're on stage, because it's so new to me, you have to keep going. I hope for my headline that I'm gonna get over myself and bring more of myself onto the stage.
LUNA: What do you hope people take with them when they listen to your music?
ROREY: Oh my god. So many things. I think that a lot of times — and I don't mean this in a grandiose way — I think that I say out loud [what] a lot of people are afraid to, in my music and in conversation with my friends. Everyone tells me I'm a safe space. Like, they can tell me anything, honestly — strangers and everyone. So I think my music has that quality in it because of that quality myself.
I got a DM from this guy recently. He said, “I wish I didn't resonate with this song, thank you.” It really made me feel seen. That's the only reason I make music. I don't want anyone to ever feel as invalidated and alone as I did. Because when you're going through something, even though you said it's universal, you don't feel like anyone will understand. It's so isolating, because that's the narrative you're building in your head. So no matter who I talked to or tried to explain the feeling to, I didn't feel understood, but I think when someone puts it so concisely into a song that you can digest… It provides that feeling in some weird way. That's what music does for me, like other people's lyrics. So yeah, I guess that's all I want.
LUNA: You seem to take inspiration from everything, even text messages. Do your friends ever notice that something you’ve talked about pops up in songs, or is it more of a place to start finding ideas for your tracks?
ROREY: I'm a writer first and foremost. I even told people I didn't consider myself a singer at all. Honestly, I still kind of don't. I just use my voice as a vehicle to express myself. I take inspiration from everything around me. But I can give examples: My friend asked me last year how I was feeling and I responded, “I'm trying to light a wet match in a dark cave.” I'll be speaking a lot and my friends are like, “Write that down.” And then I broke up with my ex last year, right? When my EP dropped. That was a mess. And he had really blue eyes. I was texting my friend. I said, “I watched his blue eyes turn crimson on a dime.” And she's like, “Can you put that in a song?”
LUNA: If you could wake up one day and be an expert at anything that isn’t music, what would it be?
ROREY: An expert at anything. Can I be abstract about it? It'd be really cool to be a medium. I'm obsessed with the occult, and not in a creepy way. All things esoteric and spiritual. So if I could talk to dead people and be a bridge to provide relief for people, that would be really cool.
LUNA: Anything else you’d like to share with the Luna community?
ROREY: Yeah, just that there's no shame. There's no shame in getting help. I think there's so much stigma around needing medication or hearing psycho educational words associated with behavior that it makes it heavy and makes it real. But you can't think your way out of a chemical imbalance. My friends said that to me, there really is no shame in getting help.
