If you’ve been on TikTok lately, specifically emo TikTok, there’s a very good chance you’ve seen one or two (or 10) videos from the outgoing, music-obsessed creator known as RØSÉ.
With over 110k followers on the app, the young creator – who became popular thanks in part to her funny, scene-leaning videos – is now looking to branch out with the release of her debut single.
Titled “Are You Tired?,” the theatrical PVRIS-like banger has caught the attention of many as, what initially started as a song on TikTok, has now risen through the ranks on Spotify and iTunes while also earning spins on SiriusXM.
Catching up with the emerging artist, otherwise known as Hannah Collins, the talented frontwoman filled us in on the wild whirlwind that has been the past few months of her career.
“I started making videos about bands and things like that because I genuinely really love the scene and the music,” said Collins. “I had hit about 13k [followers] and was really excited because I felt like I had found my own little tribe of friends. My plan was to just post music on TikTok and say ‘Hey new friends, I also make music.’ Thinking that if I did that maybe a couple hundred of those followers might follow me on Instagram which had always been the place I thought you had to use to grow your music. Fast forward five days later and I had two videos of my music hitting a million or so views and 103k followers.”
To learn more about the rollercoaster ride that is RØSÉ’s rise to fame, be sure to read our insightful Q&A with her below. Afterward, make sure to follow her on TikTok and stream her debut single here.
Congrats on all the success on TikTok and releasing your debut single “Are You Tired?”! Did you ever expect your TikTok profile would blow up the way it has?
RØSÉ: Thank you! I 100% did not think I would get the response I got on TikTok. When I first started making TikToks in April I had no idea what I was doing and was just making random videos that I thought were funny. My first video that got a few thousand views was something pertaining to listening to emo music when I was younger. Because I had posted that I suddenly saw hundreds of emo related videos on my For You Page and realized there was an entire community of emo and alternative music fans on TikTok. I started making videos about bands and things like that because I genuinely really love the scene and the music. I had hit about 13k [followers] and was really excited because I felt like I had found my own little tribe of friends. My plan was to just post music on TikTok and say “Hey new friends, I also make music.” Thinking that if I did that maybe a couple hundred of those followers might follow me on Instagram which had always been the place I thought you had to use to grow your music. Fast forward five days later and I had two videos of my music hitting a million or so views and 103k followers. To see it increase that fast so suddenly when I had already spent so much time just having fun on the app was honestly mind blowing. Now its the main place people follow me.
How much fun has it been creating videos about a music scene you’re clearly so passionate about?
It’s been so much fun for me to make videos about the scene! My favorite part of it has been that with the more followers I gain the more and more people I get to chat with. I’ve genuinely made so many friends from TikTok. So that in itself made me fall in love with the scene all over again. There’s just so much community within it. And seeing people make the same kind of funny or weird videos that I’ve been making with my song is totally surreal. I feel like I really found my wolf pack in the music industry.
As for your new single “Are You Tired?” what does it feel like to finally have it released? From your videos, it looks like it was a bit of a challenge getting it out to the public.
At first I was nervous to drop the song because I’d been dreaming of being able to do a project like this for years and I just wanted people to love it as much as I did. But then I remembered how many people had told me the scene was dying or that I’d never make any money or that it’s impossible to have a following with songs that aren’t traditional pop, yet I still made the song. Obviously, I had made it for a reason. I realized I had nothing to lose. If 13k people hear it and don’t like it, [then] I’m using an app for fun. So I posted it on TikTok saying it was releasing the first week of October and the video got tons of views. When that happened I knew I had to release it early because I was getting thousands of comments and DMs asking me to. I had an issue with the distribution site I was using to put out the song and made a TikTok explaining the situation but ultimately couldn’t get them to put the song out faster when it started going viral. I was feeling defeated because I either wouldn’t be able to get my music out when I wanted or it would drop but it would hit Spotify, Apple Music, etc. on different days. So I ended up taking it off the site it was on and putting it on Distrokid the morning after I made the video saying I was having issues. As fate would have it though, I checked my DMs that morning and my video landed on the [For You Page] of someone at Distrokid who went in and manually approved it for me. Thus, the song came out four days later. When I posted on TikTok that it was coming out on the 8th instead of in October the video got 1.3 million views. Having that many people know about and excited for a project I’ve spent years dreaming about doing was unfathomable. And I felt like I had proved to all those people that I’m not going to be stopped anytime soon. My music is going to hit the scene whether the music industry is ready for me or not.
What was the inspiration behind the new song both musically and lyrically?
My music tends to be a little theatrical. For this song, I had already written a song about a cheater but thought it would be best sung as an angry lullaby. So I made some changes and that’s what it was – a “this is the last song you’ll ever hear from me, goodnight” type of deal. Melodically, I draw a lot of inspiration from bands like Pierce The Veil, Bring Me The Horizon, My Chemical Romance, and 30 Seconds to Mars. I’m a huge emo band nerd with a Pierce The Veil tattoo. But I also listen to massive amounts of pop artists like Billie Eilish and Post Malone and had been writing a lot of pop prior. So the song has a lot of shifts in the tone of my singing voice and hopefully has a little something for everyone.
Lastly, what can fans expect regarding more new music? Anything else before the year ends maybe?
What I’m most excited about is for people to be able to see the full scope of my project. Because I released this first song earlier than I had anticipated it didn’t come with the full visual component I want to make with each song. So with the next song you can expect a lot more cool details surrounding the world that the song exists in. I don’t wanna give away too much about that, but after seeing the reaction to just the song coming out with no video, I think people will enjoy diving more into my head with my next releases. Ideally, my next single will be dropping within the next two months or so and I’ll have an album out before the end of 2021. But as an independent artist, financing things at the level I want them done can get pretty expensive. So although the timeline may not be dead on, you can expect something before the year ends.
