Rose Gray is a singer from London who has just released her first album after several years taking firm steps in the industry. Gray, from the London neighborhood of Walthamstow, signed his first record contract when he was a teenager, but his album began to take shape during the pandemic, a time when he met Justin Tranter, one of the most important composers in current pop.
Co-author of ‘Good Luck, Babe!’ by Chappell Roan, the Best Song of 2024, and other hits by Justin Bieber (‘Sorry’) or Selena Gomez (‘Good for You’), Tranter participates as a composer on several cuts of ‘Louder, Please’, the debut of Grey. He is not the only guest name: authors such as Max Wolfgang (Blackpink, Why Don’t We) or Vaughn Oliver (Katy Perry, Kim Petras) collaborate on ‘Louder, Please’, or stars such as Sega Bodega, Alex Metric or Uffie.
‘Louder, Please’ is an homage to the hedonistic pop-dance of decades past. One of the curious facts about Gray’s biography is that, many years ago, he worked at the entrance to Fabric, the famous London nightclub. On the cover of ‘Louder, Please’, Gray poses ecstatically on a beach in Barcelona, listening to a Walkman.
In ‘Louder, Please’, Gray gives himself over to that hedonism, jumping into different rhythms of dance music, from jungle to house to future disco. Specific themes emit echoes of Katy B or Madonna’s ‘Confessions on a Dancefloor’ (2005). Although the star single – or one of them – takes you directly to Ibiza with its 100% Balearic and summery sound.
‘Free’ is one of the key singles from ‘Louder, Please’. Its producer, Kevin Hickey, that is, Zhone, responsible for ‘Rush’ by Troye Sivan or ‘Joyride’ by Kesha, knows what he is doing when he takes the chorus of ‘Free’ to the realm of EDM explosion by way of an attack of electronic shock waves that lead to euphoria. However, ‘Free’ works above all thanks to its spiritual message, which invites us to free ourselves from consumerist slavery: “Everything good in life is free, look around you, tell me what you see.”
