Jessie J Announces New Album 'R.O.S.E.'
Three years after dropping 2014’s Sweet Talker, Jessie J is ready to release the long-awaited follow-up R.O.S.E.
Named after her mother, the album title is also an acronym for Realizations, Obsessions, Sex, and Empowerment. “For each letter there is a word, and for each word there is a song I will share with you,” she says of the album. “I’m strong enough now to let you in, to be real and to be free.”
To go along with the announcement, the soulful songstress also unveils a confessional video, in which she explains her struggles within the music industry. “I don’t want to make music anymore,” she begins. “I said that out loud. Wow. Then, I tried to stop and I didn’t know how to because it’s impossible to walk away from true love. Art, emotion, lyrics, music, feeling, it’s what I need to survive. Man, that pain woke me up. It’s inside out, you know? I don’t do this because I want to do it. I do it because I have to. I feel everything so deeply.”
Dressed in a sheer black outfit, Jessie continues to explain her ups and downs. “It’s a blessing and a curse,” she says. “I lost my passion to create, to draw a line between business and art. I’d fallen into darkness and allowed myself to be led by fear. Fear was keeping other people happy who didn’t ever care about me. I was running deeper into someone and something I wasn’t. How did that become more important than my life?”
After grappling with this question, Jessie says she began to work on music freely and without pressure. The results are in this album. “The music I said I didn’t want to make is what brought me back to life,” she added. “The anger, the honesty, the heartache, the pain, the joy, the strength, the love, it all happened for a reason.”
The announcement follows “Real Deal,” which dropped last month. Now, she is reportedly prepping the song’s video.
R.O.S.E. will be Jessie’s first album since 2014’s Sweet Talker, which spawned hits like the Ariana Grande and Nicki Minaj-assisted “Bang Bang,” “Burnin’ Up,” and “Masterpiece.”