Q&A: Rosie Darling Releases Debut Album ‘Lanterns’
HEALING, MOVING FORWARD, AND REGAINING ONE’S CONFIDENCE — are major themes in Rosie Darling’s indie-pop debut album, Lanterns. The Boston native writes about painful experiences such as heartbreak, but sonically she retains a gentle sound, with mellow vocals often accompanied by piano.
Lanterns is similar to her debut EP, Coping, and the subsequent EP, Golden Age, in terms of themes, but Darling experiments with more layered production on this debut album.
Read below as Darling talks about getting personal in her music and what Lanterns means to her.
LUNA: How are you feeling about your debut album?
DARLING: I’m really excited. It’s been a long time coming. I’ve been working on it mostly [in] the last year, and then a few songs [during] the pandemic, so definitely a dream come true.
LUNA: You were recently on tour with Katelyn Tarver. How did it feel getting a live response to some of the tracks off the record?
DARLING: It was cool and very special. A lot of the songs haven’t been out for more than a few months so the fact that people knew the words and were singing along was really special.
LUNA: Like a lot of creatives, it seems the experience of being in LA inspires your work in some ways. In “Justify,” you sing, “Who would I be if I got out of LA?” When you come back from touring, do you find that your relationship with LA alters in any way?
DARLING: I feel like I’m still learning how to function [when] going place to place and having it be so quick. I feel like I’ve cultivated my own space that I feel safe and comfortable in while living in LA. I’ve lived here for five years. Sometimes I feel a little stuck in LA because everyone is kind of here chasing something. It can be a lot sometimes, but I [make] time to escape and go into nature or see my family. I try to make an effort to do that. I love LA and all of my friends and collaborators, but it’s definitely good to take a break sometimes.
LUNA: More on “Justify,” the song has a buildup, with drums coming in slowly as it progresses, until a final eruption that’s almost cinematic. Could you talk about the production of that song?
DARLING: That song is super special. It’s really emotional. There’s a lot going on in the production toward the end. Mostly for this album I wanted to stick with acoustic guitar and layer it or do piano and then add strings and record live drums. I wanted it all to be live. I prefer that. But “Justify,” at the end, is cinematic. It’s about reclaiming your own narrative in terms of somebody putting you down or making you feel like you’re to blame, or not taking accountability in a relationship or friendship. The end is like you’re breaking through that, like, “This isn't my fault and I’m letting you go.” The whole song is one big journey to get to that moment.
Recording it was super fun. We had Ben Barter record live drums and he did a bunch of different takes. It was better than I imagined and I feel like it fits the song really well. From there, we continued to have him record drums for most of the songs on the album.
LUNA: In an Instagram post, you said you wrote “Boxes” for yourself, and the thing about music is that the personal quickly becomes the collective (which is especially special live) due to similar experiences between the artist and the listener. Is this something you think about when creating?
DARLING: I think on my older songs, I would think about it more. But on this album, selfishly, I really was writing it to process my own feelings and emotions that I feel like I needed to shed in a way. I didn’t really involve a lot of people in the project, [and it was] the same people I [usually] work with. So I think it was a little less intentional on this album but everyone feels the same core emotions.
I do find it really special and interesting being at shows, seeing people sing the lyrics back. I’m like, “This is funny because this means something totally different to me than it does to you.” It makes me feel less alone in my experience without having to tell every detail of something that’s personal to you. Leaving [listeners with] room to relate is important to me.
LUNA: You’re considered a “confessional artist,” so I imagine there must be a point where you pause and consider how personal to really get.
DARLING: Yeah, it’s tricky. I usually sit with the songs for a long time. A lot of the time when we’re writing in the session I’ll be like, “I don’t know if I can say this.” I feel like [it’s fine] as long as you’re not hurting anyone. If it’s in a song, at that point I’m mostly at peace with the situation. It’s just a processing thing. It’s definitely a balance. At the end of the day, I feel like whatever is really specific to me, my true experience, is what I’m able to speak on. I wouldn’t want to write about something that I didn’t feel.
LUNA: Also in “Boxes,” I think the lyric “I’m still here” can have a double meaning, as in you’re still there for yourself even when all else is lost. I always find the more honest the lyrics are, the more they allow listeners to put their own spin on things according to experience — and that’s the beauty of your style of songwriting.
DARLING: Yeah, that line feels the same to me. I’m glad you caught that. And it’s kind of an affirmation. There’s one Gracie Abrams song that does a similar thing. It’s called “Right Now,” and at the end of the song she repeats, “I feel like myself right now.” The more you chant it, the more it feels like an affirmation, and you’re like, “Oh, she’s coming back to herself.”
LUNA: Another song that brings different perspectives together is “Villain,” where you sing, “It’s alright if you paint me as the villain in your story.” It’s a fun song about unapologetically moving on. It can be cleansing to write about heartache, but how do you find writing songs that take back power?
DARLING: I think it’s a bit of a new thing that I’m doing. I’ve definitely just been going through it the last couple of years and writing seems to help me process. Sometimes even when a song comes out, I’m not maybe fully mentally in [the] place [of the song] yet. But [it’s like] I’m setting myself up to manifest that I will be [by the time] the song is out. [“Villain”] is a lot of fun on stage because I have a lot of songs that are piano ballads and those are so fun to sing. But sometimes when you go to a show, you want to lighten the mood a little bit.
I think everybody has probably been in a [similar] situation where someone just doesn’t like you or doesn’t want to change their opinion about you, and they don’t even know you. In my twenties I’ve learned a lot about myself, [including] how I engage with other people and how [they] engage with me. It’s [about] learning that you don’t have to necessarily correct every single thing that somebody says about you if it doesn’t align with who you believe you are.
Especially in a big city like LA, it’s hard to make friends when you’re this age and maintain them because we’re all growing in different directions. I just had to check myself and be okay with certain people not understanding me or choosing to not understand me. I think that’s empowering in some ways.
LUNA: I want to talk about “Burden,” which is the most melancholic song on the album. It’s different and spotlights vocals. Could you tell me about the process of creating that song?
DARLING: It kind of started out as a half-written thing [that] sounded a lot different, then we cut a part out of it. I wanted to try to have an interlude or something [but] it ended up being a full-length song. I like how [the song is] just a question over and over again. I like how the production feels like a loop over and over again and it’s easy to listen to. It feels more like a poem to me than it does like a song — that’s what [makes it] special in my mind. We didn’t really try to force it to be a song. We were like, “Let’s repeat the same melody and switch up a few words.” And it still resonates, I think. I hope that people will take the time to listen to that one.
LUNA: Yeah, I think your vocals shine a lot on that song.
DARLING: Super low, which is kind of fun. I don’t feel like I’ve done a song like that [before].
LUNA: If there’s one thing you could tell your listeners about what Lanterns means to you, what would you say?
DARLING: I think that Lanterns is my journey out of the dark. I think sometimes you can’t always see the light at the end of the tunnel, but it’s there. You just have to take it day by day or second by second. It’s based on an Emily Dickinson quote: “I am out with lanterns, looking for myself.” I’ve always loved that quote, and visually it brings a strong image to my head. I think it’s about either finding your way through something or finding your way back to yourself. It’s a process, and it’s probably not meant to happen overnight, but you’ll get through it.
