Ariana and the Rose‘s debut album has been years in the making, and as of Friday July 29, it is finally here. Of her music, Ariana said she hopes that it causes listeners to “dance, cry, and sweat.” When you listen to ‘Lonely Hearts Club’ Ariana and the Rose’s debut album, you will find a song for each. As an artist Ariana has been creating moments for listeners to experience all three of those for years since her ultra-popular ‘light + space’ shows that earned a residency at Brooklyn’s famous House of Yes. Those shows launched Ariana into the intersection of New York’s LGBTQ+, art, and nightlife communities for years with her impressive dance music. With the release of ‘Lonely Hearts Club,’ the artist looks to further cement that legacy with a full catalogue of hypnotic dance synth songs.
The album couldn’t come at a better time. It was written during the pandemic with longtime collaborator Andy Highmore (a producer/musical director whose credits include AlunaGeorge and The Knocks). Of the writing of the album called the process ‘freeing.’ Writing the album allowed Ariana to find a ‘light at the end of tunnel’ after the world was shut down. While the world was still in quarantine during the records writing, it became a source of healing for Ariana who said,
“I think the album is a real healing record. I really, I’m so glad that it feels like there’s freedom in it because that’s what it was. I was really like having fun, and there’s a lot of joy in it. I feel like the album is me, discovering that joy again.” Ariana and the Rose
The album comes at an excellent time. A time where many are wanting the experiences that her music creates. As you listen to ‘Lonely Hearts Club,’ you’ll find yourself dancing and finding the healing energy Ariana mentions that existed writing the album.
We had the chance to have Ariana and the Rose in our photo studio for a shoot and interview. Check out the gallery and full interview about her exciting new album below.
You started in entertainment in acting, and now are doing music. I’d love to hear more about your story and how you started pursuing music as you get ready to release your debut album ‘Lonely Hearts Club.’
Yeah, basically, Long story short, I was an actor. I started as a dancer. And then, like, sort of, got hit by the acting bug and got an agent in New York and auditioned for shows. And I was in theater and working, and I went to this, like weird performing arts high school. Then I went to NYU, and I like, really wanted to be an actor it was like all I wanted to do. I wanted to do like Shakespeare and check off the list. Then by the time I was 20, I was like, ‘I hate this,’ I had auditioned for like, every Italian, Jewish, and Little Sister part available to anybody. And I just was like, I understand how this works. Like, I feel like I get this, and I don’t know if I love this enough to do that. The whole time I was writing music just because I liked music. I played piano. And I was like doing what I know is like sessions now. But at the time, I wasn’t like, I’m going to a session. I just was like going to my friend’s house and like making some music. He was a producer. He lived in New Jersey. And a song that we had made this like terrible, like trance dance song, like no shade to him. We ended up getting put on this like combo like dance compilation record for Universal. Like some weird, like, off, shoot, dance label, whatever. And I was and they were like, ‘Yeah, we’re gonna pay you for using your vocal. And I was like, ‘hold on a second. I can get paid for this? That’s amazing.’ I think I want to try that. I want to do that. I feel like I was like, certainly not like old, but I was like 20 or 21 at the time, so it wasn’t like I was 16 like hustling, you know what I mean? So by the time I even like got hip to the idea of wanting to be musician I felt behind in a way. Which is not true, but that my feeling. From there, once I figured out that I really wanted to do it, I just called anyone I had ever met than I knew might know something about music. Could you introduce me to anyone else? I mean, literally and you know, a couple of those things led to other things and that was really how I started.
Do you think the background in acting helped you feel confident putting yourself out there in that way?
Totally. Yeah, I think that. Like with a lot of things, but in art specifically, you know, just knowing like ‘where do I start? What do I do? How do I even try?’ It feels really daunting. And I think because I had like been in New York and sort of already been inside of something that was sort of similar in the way that you have to just kind of put yourself out there. I think that fear wasn’t in me because I was I felt like I had already done it. Like it was all I knew. Music felt very much more my speed in that way where we could sort of be self-deprecating and hate ourselves at the same time.
How was pursuing music different than acting? Because with acting you were always playing a character, but music was yourself and what was that like for you?
I mean, it was really scary. I was like, ‘Is this terrible?’ You just don’t know, right? It’s like anything when you do something you’re ask yourself, ‘am I so bad? Like, am I really going to put this in front of people? What are we going to do?’ And some of the first writing sessions I ever did, which is so crazy, was with a hip-hop producer. He had been working with like Talib Kweli and 50 cent and he was like, so cool, and successful, and someone I knew knew him, and hewas looking for pop choruses. This was like, ‘Love the Way You Lie’ era where girl sings chorus, rapper raps. So I was in these rap sessions as like some of my first sessions, which is psychotic because I didn’t know what I was doing. And those sessions go so fast, really fast. So some of those songs they like ended up using some of them. So I was like ‘Okay, maybe I’ll write this and make it like, into a song.’ And those were the first sort of songs I ever was like, ‘Okay, well, they didn’t hate them. So like, there’s got to be something you know. I was looking for validation, like, anywhere I can find it and no one was telling me to leave the room. So this has to be like, a kernel of something. Those were like, Yeah, that was like the first step. I did. I know. It’s so crazy.
So that was the start. How did you find yourself a home in the dance synth pop world?
Um, it took me a really long time I feel like, you know, all that like exploration that I was saying that you do kind of with like zero pressure of like making it a career but I did it in reverse. I figured out I wanted to do it and then had to like, find my way with who I was. I had been making like semi-bad, me trying to make synth-pop music in New York, and someone heard it, this guy who’s like a publicist, actually, and he was like, ‘okay, so I think I get what you’re trying to do. And I think you should go to London, like, I think that that’s where they make the kind of music you want.’ And I hadn’t actually felt that way. I just was like, ‘How the hell am I ever going there?’ And he said, ‘I really think they make this kind of music in England.’ He set me up on some meetings and some writing sessions, and that really was the beginning of me finding writers that I loved working with and a home, and I ended up living there for four years. So it wasn’t until like 2015 or 2016, which already feels like 100 years ago. But that was the first time I ever made music that I was like, ‘Okay, I think this sounds like me.’ And that was very much what I feel like my genre is. Like, if you listen to Ariana and the Rose music, you’re like, ‘Okay, that’s it. Totally.’ That ended up being kind of the beginning of me, like getting it together and figuring it out.
That’s incredible. I read a 2017 interview where you said you like to make music that people can dance to and cry to. Is that still the goal for your music?
I still say that. I say that about this album. This album is even more of that dance, cry, sweat, basically. Like, have whatever you need, you know, some sort of catharsis. Yeah, I still do that. That’s the only thing I really like. I mean, I love doing it. It’s the only thing that I feel like I know how to do.
I loved the new album, and I’m so excited for people to hear it. I read that you wrote it during the pandemic. You had basically a whole album completed, the world shut down, and it didn’t feel right, and you scrapped it and wrote the newest project. How’s it feel to be releasing it as your debut album into the world?
I feel like it’s not happening. It is happening. Nothing’s changing it, but I feel like it’s not happening. But yeah, I had an EP. I had put out an EP in 2019 that was called ‘Constellations part one.’ Then I was putting out the second EP part two, and then I was going to put out part three. So I basically had like an album’s worth of music that was going to be like a trilogy. Then when COVID happened, I just, I don’t know why it didn’t feel right. I felt a little, especially with everything going on in the world. I was like, ‘What does anybody need to hear from me right now?’ You know, I just didn’t think it was important to take a minute and be like, ‘do we really need to hear from me?’ Like, is this the right like, maybe there are other artists, right, that need space, and I was home alone at my house was my piano and what was I going to do? Like I was stressed, it became this, like getting sitting down and writing became a way to work out my anxiety and whatever I was feeling. I had broken up with somebody. I had been in a very long relationship and had just broken up a couple of months before COVID. So it was pretty cool, just to get to like, sit by myself for months and really just sit with it. That felt really fun. And yeah, and I ended up sort of having like a lot of the album written on piano. My musical director Andy Highmore, who was just working with me, like for my live show, is a producer, but he had produced like for his own projects. He musical directed for bands like The Knocks, and he was quarantined, and I was quarantined, And I had some ideas, and I just wanted to like, sit with someone. So you know, I just was like, ‘Have you been quarantined for however many months?’ He’s like, ‘yes.’ I was like, ‘you want to just like sit next to me drink a coffee and like, look at someone?’ And he was like, “Yes. 100%.’ So we did our first session, which wrote ‘Lonely Hearts Club’ was like that first session. And in my head. I was like, ‘we’re gonna make an album. He doesn’t know and you’re gonna secretly convince him.’ So I brought it up, and he was like, ‘I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to.’ But I was like, ‘we’re doing it.’ So yeah, it’s crazy because we really started making it in like summer 2020, so it’s been almost it’ll be two years from when we started. We didn’t finish it until like the end of last year.
Well, I think the way you describe it and the way it sounds musically is very freeing. The way you describe it with as an escape from a really hard time. How would you describe the album?
Um yeah, I think the album is a real healing record. I really, I’m so glad that it feels like there’s freedom in it because that’s what it was. I felt like it really has. I was really like having fun, and there’s a lot of joy in it. I feel like the album is me, like discovering that joy again. I knew that I wanted it to be sort of like in this dance genre world because I didn’t want to make an album like for COVID. I wanted to make an album for when the world was open. I was like, ‘it’s sad now I don’t want to make more sad music; I can’t.’ So the album became this like light at the end of the tunnel. We didn’t know at that point right when the tunnel was ending. So I was like, ‘we’re just gonna make some light, we’re gonna make bad yeah, and we’re just gonna light it ourselves because this is so bleak and sad.’ I also you know, the way that like music trends, I just knew that like house music and dance music and people wanting to go out was going to be needed. I just knew that that was going to come back around. So yeah, I mean, the album was definitely, it’s a healing record for sure.
You can hear that in the music. You made it with people going out in mind. How excited are you to play it live for people here soon?
Oh my gosh, I’m so excited. Every time we’d make a song, I was like, this is gonna hit so good live. This is gonna feel so good to do with people in a room dancing. I feel like this album is really actually the first time I’ve been able to capture like that feeling that you’re talking about that that was at Light and Space. I didn’t feel like it was in my music in the way that I wanted it to be. I was like, ‘How can I make the music feel like it can move people to want to, like, become friends with anyone, you know, to feel free to feel uninhibited? How can I make that experience in a song or an album, the way that we’ve made it for this show.’ And this, this is the closest I feel like I’ve gotten to doing that. So then to be able to take that music that already feels that way and then put it in this setting that I feel like really does that. I mean, I don’t know. It’ll be different. I’m pumped. I think it’s gonna be really fun.
You have the Light and Space shows you mentioned, you’ve created connection across so many mediums and one of the newest is TikTok. What has it been like going viral on TikTok for your piano chats?
So weird. I was with my whole Family actually. It was just a year ago, and I was on a family like not vacation, but like a weekend, and I have like a very big Italian family. So it was like on a Sunday I posted at 12:00. I was posting like three times a day, every day. I started posting those little piano things. I noticed quickly that like people were responding to them. So I leaned into it and did more of it. I mean, initially, I was posting all sorts of weird stuff. I was posting like makeup videos because you don’t know what everyone’s gonna care about. So I noticed people were doing that. So I posted it at 12:00 and I put my phone down. Then I came back like an hour later, and it had like 100,000. And then and then like another hour later, it had like 300,000 views, you know what I mean? Then all of a sudden, I was watching it collect like 20,000 views every two seconds, 100,000 views, and it was a million to 2 million and 4 million. And I was like This is crazy. This is crazy. And so then it all of a sudden it like maybe it was a week later, like kind of trickled over to Instagram and my friend was like, ‘Are you going viral?’ And I was like, ‘I think I am. I think that that’s what’s happening right now.’ It was cool, and I got lots of cool messages from people. I got some, like cool followers of like, famous people. It’s been like people saying really kind words. It’s cool because I feel like I was just talking about stuff I cared about. Yeah, I was just talking about my experience, and a lot of that is specifically like a female experience or a female identifying experience. It was cool. I still get them every day. I get messages from women specifically, I get messages from lots of all people but women specifically being like, ‘I feel seen.’ That’s amazing and that’s a really cool thing because I was just talking about my shit. Yeah, you know, so that’s nice that by them feeling seen, I feel seen.
So I wanted to wrap up with a rapid fire about ‘Lonely Hearts Club’ with a few quick questions.
One word you would use to describe the album?
Free.
Which song would be your favorite to dance to?
Oh my gosh, that’s such a good question! Maybe ‘In The Night’? I don’t know. ‘Cosmic Lover’ is pretty fun to dance to.
What would be the song to cry to?
You know, it’s the last song on the record but ‘This is a Song’ is like one of my favorite songs I’ve ever written. ‘If New York is Dead, Then Bury Me With Her’ is also a good one. It really tells you everything you need to know.
Which is one you would put on your road trip playlists?
Maybe ‘Fuck Boy.’
Listen to Lonely Hearts Club:
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