Meet Alessi Rose, the Dua Lipa-endorsed pop newcomer aiming for the stars

While it might sound like most people’s worst nightmare, standing in front of 80,000 people who – largely – have no idea who you are was something Alessi Rose relished. On a tour of stadiums and arenas supporting Dua Lipa this summer, the Derby-born singer turned a crowd unaware of her music into converts night after night.

“It’s almost like you’re getting an academic gold star,” she says smiling. “I’m going out to a room of people, most of whom have no clue who I am, and winning them over song by song, or making them laugh in between. “I try to be a bit cheeky, and just think, ‘OK, let me win you over.’”

Through this humour and an already superb arsenal of witty, perfectly crafted pop songs, Rose has brought a legion of Dua fans along for the ride, and will surely do the same when she begins a US tour of arenas in support of Tate McRae this month.

New single ‘First Original Thought’, the first taster of a forthcoming deluxe edition of her 2025 EP Voyeur, should also push her further towards becoming a household name. Full of wit and sharp, incisive lyrics, it shows her as an artist that is far from formulaic but does have the hooks and the personality to be a pop star for everyone.

In our new interview, Alessi Rose discusses ‘First Original Thought’, her ambitions to be a huge pop star, and her often unconventional rise to prominence.

Read the interview and listen to the new single via our Play Next playlist on Spotify below.

Your new single ‘First Original Thought’ fleshes out the story of your Voyeur EP – tell us how the song came about…

I actually wrote that song the day of my first ever LA show. Blake [Slatkin] and Amy [Allen] had a day free randomly, and I’d worked with them once before, and it had been so great. I was like, ‘OK, we need to get in. This will take my mind off the nerves for the show tonight’. That same day, a guy that I’d been seeing had messaged me 11 months after we’d finished, basically asking for closure. I was like, ‘That’s crazy. You should be with someone else!’ I was just passively complaining about it to them, and I’d said verbatim, ‘He had his first original thought that he missed me’. We all knew, but I’m glad that he’s finally on the same page.

The whole process of writing it was so quick and so funny. It’s quite mocking and cutting of the whole situation. It’s very disco-influenced – I’ve been listening to a bunch of Madonna’s first album and a bunch of Angie Stone and Prince. I’m still very new to this, and still learning what my best process of making music is. I had been on stage so much, and people were saying that I can be funny on stage, and that I should be funny [in the songs] more. A lot of my songs are serious, but wouldn’t it be fun to be a bit cheeky, a bit funny? [This song is] really steering in the direction of full-blown pop, but still retaining the lyricism that I’ve always loved.

Why did you want to give Voyeur the deluxe treatment? What story was there still to tell?

When I was writing Voyeur, I was in the headspace of pushing my songwriting, and making it pop that felt like it was leaning left to a more raw, unfiltered side. The three songs on the deluxe version are a microcosm of all of that. They are are the most poppy of the whole EP. It serves as a transitional period for me, going from Voyeur into the next project, which would hopefully for me be an album I’m currently working on it, in the hopes that it’s an album.

You’ve been on tour with Dua Lipa and played Wembley Stadium – did playing to such huge crowds change your ambition?

I’ve only been doing this for two years, so I still feel so new to it, but over this last year of releasing music, I definitely cemented myself as [thinking] a pop artist. I want to be a pop superstar. I love Madonna. I love Brittany, Gwen Stefani. That’s what I’ve always wanted. I want the drama. Being on tour with Dua, she has it all. She has the stage presence, she has the amazing songs. She has the hard-working drive that I’ve always wanted to have. I’ve had a taste of what I would love to have in my future. It’s all very, very motivating for me.

I also had my first headline tour this year. That tour gave me the ability to explore how I was as a performer. I remember being like, ‘Wow, I can actually see myself as a pop performer’. I had my whole stage behind me and it was my first proper example of having crowds screaming every lyric. It steered me in the direction of being like, ‘I want this to be pop’, and I’m gonna double down on that.

Was that ambition to be a huge pop star always there from the start?

I was writing songs in my room with a cracked version of Logic Pro, and I was producing them on my own. This is probably when I was 17 or 18. It wasn’t until I was 19 that I started sending them to producers and trying to get people to listen to me. They were unmixed, unmastered. I definitely had the vision of them being these huge pop songs, but I guess I just didn’t have the physical capability of doing it yet. It was self-teaching – I had no one to steer me on how to use it, and I could play piano, I could play guitar, but I guess I’d never like recorded vocals before. That was all very trial and error. I was using tights as a pop shield, and I was recording it under my duvet in the corner of my room, held up by an ironing board. Looking back now, I’m glad that’s how it happened, because it tells of how I got into this was being pushy and k figuring shit out and being cringe and sending cringe Instagram DMS to try and get what I want.

It’s refreshing to hear you talk about the journey and not omit all the potentially embarrassing bits…

I remember a Tyler, the Creator tweet where he says: ‘Be cringe. Cringe doesn’t even exist’. I remember reading it, and it was my dad, who is works in recruitment and has no involvement to the music industry, who said: ‘Why don’t you just DM people?’ It was like that meme: ‘Why don’t you just call Taylor Swift up?! God, you can’t just DM people. That’s not how it works!’ Then I sat with it for a day and thought, ‘Actually, why can’t that be how it works?’ I got these three demos together and started essentially cold calling producers who’d worked on my favourite songs. 80 per cent ignored, but those 20 per cent got me a step further.

There are so many people that I messaged back then when I was 19 that I have now since worked with, and that’s been a very full circle tangible thing where I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m really happy that I sent that cringe message’.

What has the writing of Voyeur and touring stadiums done for you related to what music you think will come next?

I’m definitely steering into new directions, and I think that’s a testament to the fact that I haven’t been doing this very long. My first two EPs pre-Voyeur were my first example of being in a studio, with a backlog of songs I’ve been writing throughout my teens with no access to being able to record them. With Voyeur, I was more self-assured going into the studio with a bunch of people that I definitely dreamed of working with.

Now I want to bring something different to the pop music I’m writing. A lot of the lyrics sit in an area of discomfort and are not necessarily the lyrics you would expect from a pop song. With the music I’m making now, I’m wanting to push it again and cement it as pop, but it’s pushing what pop can be.