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PHOTOS COURTESY OF ROSIE DARUNG
Top: Darling participated
in Elon in LA last summer
which inspired her to
move to the city after
graduation.
Left: Darling’s latest
single was inspired by
health issues she expe
rienced last year that
changed her perspective
about life.
Senior mixes ambition and talent to
pursue a career in music after years of
praciting fhe craft.
Sarah Johnson
Contributor l@sarahjohnson05
Elon University senior Rosie Darling has
been writing songs since she was 11, and
now is on a mission to release one single a
month for the rest of the year.
The singer-songwriter from Canton,
Massachusetts dropped her first single, “I
Miss U,” in June. Though a strategic com
munications major mi-
noring in psychology,
Darling is sure that music
is something she will do
for the rest of her life.
Darling drew her inspi
ration for her debut track
from a series of health is
sues she worked through
during Winter Term of
last year. Darling took
that time to stay home
and work on her person
al growth as singer; from
this time of recuperation
and reflection, resulted
her single
“Ifs actually kind of funny because peo
ple always ask me, ‘Who’s that song about
— who do you miss?’ Honestly, I literally
think it was like I miss myself,” Darling
said.
The song begins with the lyrics “Ifs real
ly cold out/1 feel it on the inside.” Darling
explained that she wrote this song in Janu
ary when it was cold, miserable and dark all
around her.
REAL-UFE
INSPIRATION
Darling bases
her music off
of real-life
experiences.
She had songs
completed
at 14 years
old about the
good and bad
of her middle
school years.
“I wasn’t happy; I was really frustrated
in my own body and with my own health. It
was kind of an interpretation of just miss
ing how my life used to be,” Darling said.
Using real-life experiences is the plat
form upon which Darling’s music is built.
Having written music from a young age,
Darling had entire songs completed by the
age of 14 that detailed the good and bad of
her middle school years.
“That’s how I started writing, kind of
just with boys and whatever. My songs were
always fine for how old I was, but I’d say
last year is really when I came into my own
[and] had a newfound confidence with put
ting out the first single,” said Darling.
But breaking into the music industry
this year, at the age of 21, was no easy feat.
“As a 21-year-old, if you want to be a sing
er or songwriter, you’re already late,” said
Darling.
In an industry where the stars who made
their debuts before the ages of ten — such
as Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato and Taylor
Swift — control the pop charts, Darling said
that it can be tough and, at times, discour
aging to have just broken into the industry.
“The way I think of it is physically I
came into the industry in June, when I put
out my first single, but I already had the
experience of writing when I was younger,”
Darling said.
Darling explained that if she had put out
her material when she wrote it at the age
of 11, that’s the image she would’ve created
for herself. The image of a girl who wants
to sing about boys and nothing else. But
those songs, about boys and middle school,
Darling says, helped her to get to the point
she is at today and to focus in on a specific
genre. Darling was able to step into the in
dustry at a later age with both control over
her image and an idea of where she wants
to go in the future.
u
I WILL BE WRITING AND
SINGING NO MAmR WHAT. I
WILL BE PUTTING MUSIC OUT,
AND I WILL DO WHATEVER IT
TAKES.
ROSIE DARLING
SENIOR
Darling described her music as a back-
and-forth between electronic pop and fu
ture bass. These two genres can come to
gether to form what Darling calls ambient
pop music, or pop with electronic under
tones.
I think Rosie has a really unique voice
because it doesn’t sound like the average
voice you’d hear on the radio,” said Elon se
nior Cathy Schubert, Darling’s friend and
roommate from Elon in Los Angeles. “She
has a really big range, but her voice has
kind of a soft tone to it. I know people in
the music industry think her voice is really
unique because of its tone.” '
Regardless of musical facets and genres.
Darling has one overwhelming goal — to
be honest and relatable.
tk / boys
that 14-year-olds are gonna listen to and
cry to their pillow every night. I want to
write songs about my friends and breakups
m collep, she said. “I want to be relatable
to people my own age.”
And when inspiration can’t be drawn
from everyday experiences, sometimes
Darling has to go looking for it.
“If Tm stumped on lyrics, Tve gone into
weird stores before and tried to look for a
specific word that I like. Just one word,”
Darling said.
After finding her chosen word, either
through hunting at various stores or imag
ining the things around her as the titles of
songs, she runs with the word and tries to
build a story behind it.
If that approach doesn’t work, Darling
will sit down at the keyboard, play some
chords, hum some notes, solidify a melo
dy,and add lyrics afterward. The hardest
part for Darling is executing an idea once
she gets it stuck in her head. A recent ap
proach she has discovered is not getting up
until a song is done.
“If you get up, you lose your creativity,
your intention and the story you’re trying
to tell,” Darling said. “If a song is left un
finished for too long, you might not ever
finish it.”
The songwriting process can take any
where from 15 minutes to an hour. After
the music and lyrics have been solidified,
Darling has friends in the music program
at Elon record vocals for her. One of her
latest projects involved the recording of
an acoustic version of, “I Miss U.” Darling
plans to release a new single every month
for the rest of the year. Her newest single,
“L.A.” is inspired by her summer spent on
the West coast through Elon in LA, is set to
be released on Soundcloud on Friday, Oct.
13.
Darling was so inspired by her LA ex
perience this past summer, that she plans
to move there after graduation. Though her
exact plans are yet to be determined. Dar
ling can say with confidence that her future
will involve music.
“I will be writing and singing no matter
what,” Darling said. “I will be putting music
out, and I will do whatever it takes.