Maggie Rose Shares New Music During Successful Head Count Event

The two new songs, “20/20” and “Only Human (I Wanna Get Out),” are featured on Rose’s upcoming Quarantine 45, written and produced entirely in isolation by Rose and her collaborative bandmates (Sarah Tomek, Alex Haddad, Larry Florman).

After John Prine (one of Rose’s songwriting heroes) lost his battle to COVID-19, Rose — lauded by The New York Times for her “astute, aggrieved songwriting” — sat down at the piano to pay him tribute, penning the “20/20” chorus. Days later, she, along with Tomek, Haddad and Florman, finished the tune.

“The four of us were on my back porch hacking away at the lyrics and trying to encapsulate in this eerie tune what we were all feeling in the midst of this dumpster fire of a year,” Rose shares. “We all felt swept away in a figurative tornado that was destroying everything in its path. We felt the immediate pain of the literal tornado that devastated our beloved neighborhood, so we wanted the chord progression to swirl around the listener in a dizzying way to mimic that feeling.”

Adding, “The vortex of this year had swallowed up the music and dreams for so many, which was something we deeply felt. The loss of legends like Bill Withers and Kenny Rogers felt like punches in the gut. The dystopia we found ourselves in when racial tensions reached a boiling point was something we had to wrap our hearts around, so we made this song that touched on physical sickness and all of its implications evolve further into one about the emotional sickness of our fractured society, too.”

Hailed by NPR’s World Café as a must-see “multi-genre powerhouse,” Rose describes writing “Only Human” as the “getting-back-on-the-horse moment we all needed.”

“Alex [Haddad] had been working on a chorus with a melody so infectious that we couldn’t deny it,” recalls Rose. “I think of his idea as a gift in so many ways because it was a major catalyst for me — it invited us to mourn some of the things we had lost. It was romantic and tragic all at once to think about how good we had it and how being connected and unconfined is in our nature. Writing the song together was the therapy that gave us a chance to revisit memories of our not-so-distant past life that we loved so much and reclaim what was, what is, still ours, which is the music and the hope it brings.”

“20/20” is slated for release via Soundly Music on Sept. 11 – pre-save here:
https://maggierose.fanlink.to/2020

“Only Human (I Wanna Get Out)” (Soundly Music) will drop on Sept. 18 — pre-save Quarantine 45 here: https://maggierose.fanlink.to/Q45

Follow Maggie Rose on social media:
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/iammaggierose
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iammaggierose
Twitter: https://twitter.com/IAmMaggieRose
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsc8KXnpKKTGVdUr1lWxElw
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4FrAfXWWNZapoX4O1LEoLn

Stranded like the rest of us in a world stopped cold by quarantine and social distancing, the girl who cut her teeth sneaking into Maryland and Jersey bars to sing with a Springsteen cover band at 16 years old, grew into a woman who’s distilled the roots of many genres into a sound that’s distinctly her own.

It gives Rose the versatility to play Bonnaroo, the massive CMA Music Fest, Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in France, The Grand Ole Opry, AmericanaFest and Cayamo with Jason Isbell, Dawes and Emmylou Harris, while also being able to align with artists as diverse as those taking part in Marcus King’s live ‘Four of a Kind’ and the “Last Waltz Tribute” including Jennifer Hartswick, Devon Gilfillian, Nicki Bluhm, Elizabeth Cook and Billy Strings.

That same musical expansiveness has marked the rhythm & blues classicism that has shaped her time making a friskier, more rootsy sound on her upcoming Ben Tanner-produced Muscle Shoals-record.

The new Quarantine 45 singles, written and produced entirely in isolation and under quarantine, by Rose and her collaborative bandmates (Sarah Tomek, Alex Haddad, Larry Florman) that move through muscular pop slink on the Madonna/British new romantic “Only Human (I Wanna Get Out),” then draws a line to the piano/phased vocal witness of “20/20” that sift through the wreckage of tornadoes, COVID, and the human spirit in times like these.

Rose understands the state of mind, the heart, the soles. It informs her wildly melodic, often shimmering melodies and a voice that’s equal parts Dusty Springfield and Annie Lennox.

As The New York Times proclaimed, “Maggie Rose is a sturdy heartbreaker…full of astute, aggrieved songwriting … and attitude that even in the post-Miranda Lambert era feels knifelike.”

That incisiveness results in compassion for all of us. The way she and her collaborative music makers Them Vibes’ built tracks draws listeners in and invites them to celebrate the best of the human condition in times unthinkable in 2019.

Blazing a trail beyond genre without concern for what people call it, only the desire to capture the smolder and the earthy truth – propers to “I Ain’t Your Mama” – life during quarantine has yielded the music the world needs.

For Rose, between the organic recording at FAME studios with the legends who’d played for Aretha Franklin, Al Green and more and making socially distant sessions work with Quarantine 45, she’s tapped her songs’ essences to deliver music that soothes, soars and inspires without ever being overcooked, layered with the unnecessary or weighted down by effects. For the young songwriter/vocalist from Maryland, music is the bottom line.

Bring your heart, raise your voice, speak truth to the moment and exult in the way songs move you from one emotion to the next, from frustration to exultation, stagnation to inspiration. Because beyond all the obvious music critic takedown on parts, tech specifics and existential signifiers, there’s this: Rose knows how to take music and help listeners fly.