Maggie Rose's unlikely return to Nashville

Ten years ago this month, everything seemed to go to hell for Maggie Rose. In July 2014, the Maryland-raised singer, then 26 and trying to find her way into mainstream country music, dropped a song that should have finally given her the Nashville success so many predicted.

Instead, Rose's answer to the sisterly country trend, “Girl in Your Truck Song,” was overshadowed by another single with nearly the same title — Maddie & Tae's “Girl in a Country Song” — released on the very same day . Any remaining hope that Rose, who by then had released half a dozen failed singles, had for a breakthrough at country radio was gone.

“It was crazy and dramatic and it felt like the world had ended when that happened,” says Rose. “But I needed it to get it all out. It was an opportunity for me to look at what I was doing and change it and make it more sustainable and more enjoyable for me.”

Now, at 36, Rose has managed one of the most successful—and natural—reinventions in recent Nashville history, evolving from a country singer who never fit the myopic Music Row mold to a confident soul performer. R&B and American roots. Country elements are still part of Rose's music. and she is illegitimate in the way she took the reins of her career.

Sitting on the back porch of her East Nashville home as a late-afternoon thunderstorm rages around her, Rose is calm and collected. She leaves for a week-long tour later that night that will cover the Northeast and Midwest, but she's in no rush to pack them up, even as boxes of her latest album, No one gets out alive – one of Rolling rockThe best albums of 2024 so far — sitting at the front door ready to load.

Rose shakes her head when she remembers what she thought was necessary for success a decade ago. “Going on country radio tours and making sure you like all the program directors and pouring yourself into the success or failure of a song. You feel so one-dimensional,” he says. “Now, it's really organic in the sense that I've gotten to know myself better. It's as simple as making music I love and doing it on my own terms.”

Raul Malo, the frontman of Mavericks, a band that is often as hard to pin down as Rose, asked her to sing on their latest album. Moon & stars. She says the difficulty she finds in trying to classify her sound ultimately works in Rose's favor.

“It's harder, because you're in this nebulous world, but that's okay. You keep reinforcing the message that 'I'm an artist, I'm a person, this is what I do. I sing with whoever I want. This is the music I make,” says Malo. “And her album is killer.”

Released in April, No one gets out alive is a dazzling journey that highlights Rose's supple voice and often cathartic composition. It promotes the distinct sense of independence that Rose began to cultivate in 2018 with its release It changed everythingher first album not aimed at country radio, and 2021 is just as challenging Have a seat.

Unlike many of Rose's early country singles (Malo says he never saw her as a mainstream country artist: “She's too soulful”), he co-wrote each of the 12 tracks on No one gets out alive. On “Fake Flowers,” currently on the Americana Singles chart, she sings, “No one says what they mean to your face / It's all just fake flowers and sympathy,” before declaring on a huge chorus, “I won't let you take me down/no, you tried to burn me to the ground.” “Mad Love” returns to the smoldering motif, with Rose wailing, “You lit a fire and my whole world burned.”

While the record mostly slips into good vibes, like Rolling rock wrote in his review, these two album highlights were born out of some heavy feelings.

“'Fake Flowers' has a lot of anger in it. 'Mad Love' also has a bit of anger, but also determination and there's a confidence in that too,” says Rose. “It was a really dark time. When I wrote a lot of these songs, I was in relationships that were long-term that just couldn't sustain the pandemic. There were relationships that were friendships that also had a work component that, once removed, became very weak.”

The team around her for No one gets out alive, however, was rock solid. Produced by Ben Tanner, the album features guitarist Sadler Vaden and drummer Chad Gamble of Jason Isbell's 400 Unit, keyboardist Peter Levin and bassist Zac Cockrell, along with Rose's bandmates Kaitlyn Connor on keyboards and Kyle Lewis on guitar. Don Hart came on board to arrange the strings that tied the album together.

The wildcard was the label that released it: Big Loud Records, home to some of country music's biggest radio stars, including Morgan Wallen and Hardy. Rose admits there's an irony to her signing with the Nashville label in 2023, but says Big Loud has encouraged her to take her music where it resonates, regardless of audience.

“They know I'm a bit extreme, but instead of being confused by the fact that we can exist in so many different spaces, they're motivated by it,” he says. “They're giving me the resources I've been asking for from this city for a long time.”

Rose has toured with artists as diverse as Kelly Clarkson and the Mavericks, and will open for the Dave Matthews Band at the Gorge in Washington in September, along with Neko Case. She's also supporting jammers like Dispatch and the Tedeschi Trucks Band this summer between dates on her own groundbreaking tour. “I never expected to end up in this jam space,” he says, “but if you have an audience that connects with you, then walk through the door.”

Bill Murray, the movie actor, is a fan who has been in a relationship with Rose and has become an unlikely champion. Rose says they share a “funny, sweet little friendship” of about six years. In April, he appeared at his annual Caddyshack charity event in St. Augustine, Florida and posted a photo was hugging him as Murray shot one of his looks. He gleans wisdom from the comedian's eccentric outlook on life.

“He was a very good confidant in so many ways,” she says. “He just takes everything in his stride. He says people will exaggerate or embellish things, but if it's right with you, it's right with the world.

“I think that's how you should make music,” Rose continues. “I have to be satisfied with that first. And it took a long time to get there.”

Just then, a gust of wind knocks a dead branch off a nearby tree, landing with a thud in Rose's backyard shed. She barely looks up. Just another old thing that had to fall away.