So, you want something experiential, transformative, transportative, different? While some may say turn on some Charley Crockett, Orville Peck, or Kaitlin Butts, these acts aren’t different. They fill minority sub-genres within the country canon. However, in an age where more music is being created than ever before, they don’t stand alone artistically.
To you, reader, I urge you to reach towards something fresh and otherworldly for the current country sphere, where vibrancy meets angst and grunge. Try the album I Just Wanna Be Loved by Gabriella Rose. Top to bottom, it’s extraterrestrial and intriguing in more ways than one. Conceptually, this album captures the essence of modern-day romance and the misery that it entails, while filling a gap in the genre where nothing comparable predates it. I Just Wanna Be Loved redefines what pop-country can be.
Sonically, the album runs on whiny, grunge-inflected electric guitar and thick, rolling drums: a punk-garage backbone dressed up in pop-country clothing. It’s heavy and almost demonic, with the occasional strange sound effect.
Perhaps the reason it is most enjoyable, and a thrilling listen in its own right, is because the lyrics could mean absolutely nothing to you, yet you’re still hooked. But instead, Rose’s descriptors are hyper-specific memories that capture something self-evidently true to her life.
Take, for example, “Scoreboard.” Rose puts an ex-football-playing would-be lover in his place, finally detaching herself from a man who saw her as points on a scoreboard as he pleaded for one more go. There’s an unbelievable amount of movement in this track that it’s impossible to get enough of. It’s told through quick clucking drum beats that swirl under a muffled electric guitar with intriguing storytelling. Quickly slipping off her tongue are lines like “some yeti-cup lap dog met her at a coffee shop,” and “you’re still playing football, I’m still 17 and making McFlurries.” Can you picture it?
Similarly, “Range Rover” hosts this same enigmatic craft. Conceptually, she sings about being married with highly specific imagery of what that means to her (pretentious, lavish, and scandalous). It’s tongue-in-cheek yet tastefully curated, lush with oddities like “silicone tits” and “Shiplap kitchen” all in one turn. It opens with the click of car keys and production effects that support simple electric swipes throughout.
“Spokane” showcases the twenty-four-year-old’s range and husky undertones through a casual bravado and modern lingo that ordinarily sound cheap rather than tasteful. Whereas the focal point of its sonic opposition, “Angel,” is ethereal and moody. Rose is entranced by a blue-eyed, “Lucinda song” man, and you can hear it in the melody.
Listeners are then brought through the trials and tribulations of modern dating, each covered by a different melodic ground. “Backroads” epitomizes the very substance of modern-day dating where unavailability and emotional avoidance turn into situationships. It’s foot on the gas, pedal steel driving relentless memories as she dreams about someone she once had. In the same vein, “I Just Wanna Be Loved” is haunting and eerie, its electric guitars speeding to her high bpm vocals as desperate pleas unravel the problems of today’s ‘men’ lack of romance.
This album is a masterpiece, and this opinion will not do it justice. Rose is a bottle of formula, defining the core of country pop by smuggling the emotional rawness of alt-pop into a genre that’s spent decades curating weepy ballads or dressing them up in rhinestones. Gabriella Rose isn’t selling sex appeal, showgirl spectacle, or Barbie-doll charisma. She sells the badass persona first by melody, then by lyricism, in an unmatched capacity. Don’t believe me? Try it out, and she might take your lunch money too.
