ON THE RISE
Rose Prince’s first song is a ringing, chiming, singing, rapping pop number that’s all about the party after the party.
It’s called “Freak.”
“It’s a song about the after-party,” he said. “I write the music that I want to listen to. I want to be able to turn on music and hear and feel the same energy that I have when I’m at an after-party and it’s, like, 3:30 a.m.”
Me and her just friends
But a friend brought a friend
She gon’ take off all my clothes
Not the rose on my neck
Wear the rose ’til the end
…Referring to the rose-design necklace that he frequently wears. “It’s really the details that make it appealing.”
Rose Prince is a Bay Area Californian transplanted to Austin, Texas. He has been writing music since he was 12 or so, about 14 years now. He describes his first professionally produced song as “sort of early, mid-2000s electronic pop.”
“It’s like 2008 to 2014 Drake, Weeknd, Blackbear, right when the singing rapping genre was becoming popular, combined with this pulsing electronic rhythm. It’s almost like turning rave music into pop rap.”
Singing- rap is among the music that lands with him, and the after-party vibe is also him.
“Those are some of the songs that I like to listen to the most, because it is just line after line of what resonates with me.”
And that is the way “Freak” is delivered, line after line with the beat rolling along and the ringing melody punctuating the lyrics.
Got a stud
On her tongue
She can’t seem to get enough
Now my homie need a bump
So he can drive straight
“It was a lot of fun to write,” he said.
“If you’re somebody who likes to sleep in until noon and lives for 5 a.m. and goes home when the sun is coming up? This is the song for you.
He added, “I am one of those people.”
His artist name comes from, wait for it, flowers.
“I know it sounds shallow to say that I’ve always loved flowers, but I’ve always loved flowers, roses in particular.”
Still, though, he doesn’t know exactly where the name comes from. It just kind of popped up, “and it felt extremely right.”
“I just remember that ever since it occurred to me, it was going to be my artist name.”
That is the approach he takes to his music. For instance, he issues a standing invitation to any fans hitting the Austin area: Look him up on Instagram, get in touch, get together for a TikTok video.
His artistry is about taking all kinds of music that he likes and turning it into a distinctly Rose Prince kind of pop. After 14 years, he has a lot of music that he is now working on to see what he wants to put out.
He plans to pull an EP out of the material he has on hand.
“Believe me,” he said, “I’ve written so many shitty songs, that I’ve spent a lot of time homing in on which are the songs I want to define and be associated with me as an artist.”
He’s also figuring out the business, deciding how to coordinate the releases, which ones to make singles, which to group with the EP, other stuff.
Like, “Oh, man! This one has a really great first verse and chorus, but I don’t have a second verse or a bridge for it.”
“There’s a fair bit of production and polish that needs to go into a lot of it, too, but, absolutely, I have a pretty broad repertoire of songs that I’ve built up over the years.”
One of the songs he is working on has violins and horns and a lot of classical elements that he’s “turning into a pop song.” His style is to take a lot of different styles and puts them together.
But I would say it all falls under the umbrella of pop music because, thematically, it’s what popular culture can relate to. It’s emotions, breakups, love, sex, depression, despair — you know, reflections on society that is in a sort of standard verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus type format that’s what I consider pop music.”
His next song, in fact, is a breakup song about someone who left the singer but is back and wants to get back together but it’s not going to happen. “That kind of song.” It’s called “You Wish.”
“It’s more of a guitar, indie punk style,” he said.
He wants “to be the next male pop sensation, basically.”
And he’s starting with “Freak.”
“It’s like 2 a.m. and the bars close, but the party doesn’t stop. ‘Freak’ is about the ideal night.”
Connect to Rose Prince on all platforms for new music, videos, and social posts.
“It’s more of a guitar, indie punk style,” he said.
He wants “to be the next pop sensation, basically.”
And he’s starting with “Freak.”
“It’s like 2 a.m. and the bars close, but the party doesn’t stop. ‘Freak’ is about the ideal night.”
Connect to Rose Prince on all platforms for new music, videos, and social posts.
ON THE RISE
As Belle & Sebastian share their buoyant 2026 Scotland World Cup anthem ‘It Only Takes One Lion’, frontman Stuart Murdoch has spoken to NME about capturing the feeling back home and his hopes for the team since childhood.
Released today (Tuesday June 2), the Scottish indie heroes’ bid for their nation’s tournament anthem was written after the team’s surprise 4-2 qualifying win against Denmark.
“I felt like we were watching history in the moment, like the hand of God from the old National Lottery adverts was pointing at us,” Murdoch told NME about that game-changing victory. “It was meant to be. Scotland aren’t a terrific team and Denmark are better, but it just felt that day that Scotland were destined to win. Three out of the four goals were things of beauty.”
Produced by and co-written with Pete Ferguson and premiered at the band’s recent London Royal Albert Hall show as part of the anniversary tour for their classic first two albums ‘Tigermilk’ and ‘If You’re Feeling Sinister’, the soaring song is intrinsically Belle & Sebastian as it morphs from a hymn to a an orchestral disco jam as Murdoch sings of a nation’s hopes and his own boyhood dreams.
NME spoke to Murdoch from the band’s North American tour, where we found him in a graveyard in Texas. “I was just looking for a park because Austin is a pretty scary place downtown now, so I’ve ended up in the Texas Cemetery,” he shared via Zoom.
Was there anyone famous buried there?
“I was looking around and I found the founder of Austin City Limits, which is pretty cool as that’s where we’re playing tonight. I’m looking at one now and it just says, ‘Martin: he loved the law’. Then underneath it says, ‘Billie Louise: she loved the lawyer’.”
We joke that there’s the opening to a Belle & Sebastian song if there ever there was one. “It’s great! It’s given me inspiration.”
For now, read the rest of interview with Murdoch below as he tells us about Scotland’s chances, 30 years of hurt, if fans will be singing it at the top of their lungs in Canada, the US and Mexico this summer, and what’s next for the band.
NME: Hello Stuart. Here we are with ‘It Only Takes One Lion’ Who needs three?
Stuart Murdoch: “Who needs three? Good question. I wouldn’t know!”
What’s the mood been like in Scotland since you qualified?
“It’s funny. I’ve noticed this everywhere: with the World Cup there’s a mixture of cynicism and anticipation. When the actual tournament starts, everyone will get excited about it. Because of FIFA, the peace prize, the ticket prices, people seem quite down about it. I found that in Mexico. They were quite fed up with the general hype about it. I’m in the States just now and you shouldn’t believe all the hype: people are people. The States are just as ‘great’ as ever. We love coming here, we love the cities. The general sense of North American optimism will make for a good tournament.”
“With Scotland though, people will definitely be excited about it. You have to understand, it’s been 30 years since Scotland qualified so I think everybody and their dog has written a song for the team.”
How do you meet the challenge of penning a World Cup anthem, when there have been so many legendary bangers and absolutely shite duds?
“I never planned it. I woke up with a tune in my head and a feeling. That’s the way it should always be for songs. I couldn’t control myself and it was quite straight-forward. I wrote this initial bit about how I felt about the current World Cup team and the qualifying game. It was more introspective.
“When it starts off with, ‘The days are dark and long…’, it’s just my general feeling about football. I’ve been going to see my own team quite a lot recently. It’s my little anthem for how I feel about football and following Scotland for the last 50 years, just the ups and downs. It’s quite a heartfelt thing. When I was eight or nine, the Scottish team meant so much to me, it the thing I was most invested in. There’s a line in there about how I used to memorise the whole squad before ‘78 and 82.”
Tell us about lyric: “This is Scotland, where everyone knows you start with nothing… where you can join an army for peace”…
“My wife made the video for it and she said, ‘I’m not sure I like that line about everyone starting with nothing’. Our first game is against Haiti and they really have nothing. Their country is pretty poor and they’re going through hard times. It was almost a throwaway line and I’m not sure what I meant by it, but in a footballing sense every game starts with nothing. Even if it’s against Brazil, you’ve always got a chance!
“The army refers to The Tartan Army, which has really been quite a remarkable institution for the past 30 years. We changed from drunken buffoons that used to wreck things to this excellent supporting brigade.”
It’s not your standard football sing-along. Can you see it being sung in the terraces?
“I’m not sure, I didn’t cynically design it for that. Many people have said to me in the past, ‘None of your songs have a chorus, you need to write one’. ‘This is Scotland’ is a chorus! They things need to happen organically. I’m sure the fans will still be singing ‘Yes sir, I can boogie’ for years to come.”
What do you actually think of Scotland’s chances right now?
“With the last Euros, they maybe got stage fright or didn’t have that tournament experience. I think Andy Robertson [captain] will be telling them, ‘We really need to produce our best stuff’. If they do and we see them actually playing football, then I don’t really care about the results that much. I just want to see Scotland exceeding our expectations of them. That Denmark game was so crazy that everything after just feels like a bonus.”
If miracles do happen and Scotland make it to the final, how will you celebrate? A free gig in Glasgow?
“Of course, yes! Free everything. If we even got close, I think the whole country would shut down for a year and the GDP would drop. We’d go into a massive recession but no one would care.
“We were playing a gig in Mexico City and I told the crowd, ‘It’s you and us, Mexico and Scotland in the final’. Mexico have never really got close either. I told them it would be five goals a piece, even after everyone takes a penalty and we have to share the trophy. I would settle for that.”
You released two albums in quick succession with 2022’s ‘A Bit of Previous’, 2023’s ‘Late Developers’ and then your debut novel Nobody’s Empire in 2024. You’ve been busy! Is there any progress on new material?
“We went through a period where we recorded a lot and we said, ‘Let’s not record for a while and give ourselves a couple of cycles off’. We’re doing these 30th anniversary shows so we’re just going to lean on the back catalogue and cruise for a while. We’re doing a year on and a year off so everyone can focus on different things.
We’re not looking at new Belles stuff for a while. I’m meant to be developing Nobody’s Empire into a film, so that’s my next task. It’s a long way off from being made but I’m going to write the script for that.”
Scotland’s first World Cup tournament match is against Haiti on Sunday June 14, before they go on to play Morocco on Friday June 19 and Brazil on Wednesday June 24.
The band’s ‘Tigermilk’ and ‘If You’re Feeling Sinister’ anniversary tour continues throughout the summer, performing the iconic albums in full during across the UK, Europe, North America, Mexico, Australia, Singapore and Japan. Visit here for tickets and more information.
